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People

Flying Tiger Copenhagen is held accountable for creating a work environment that respects our employees’ human and labour rights and allows them to thrive as professionals. Our Human Rights Policy outlines our standard to comply with all applicable UN and ILO conventions and applies them to our employees working across all levels. At Flying Tiger Copenhagen, we rely on our ability to attract, motivate and retain highly qualified employees at all levels of the organisation, from store staff and managers to creative and administrative people at head office. As we aim to offer an engaging workplace with equal opportunities for all, we employ people with a wide range of nationalities and educational backgrounds. Now that we are a truly global company, it is a particularly crucial task for us to keep working on the issue of diversity to live up to our values of being a welcoming and inclusive organisation. In leadership positions we employ 46% female and 54% male employees.

As part of the transformation process, the Company changed its board composition during 2019. Consequently, at the end of 2019, the Board of Directors of Zebra consisted of six males. It is still the Board’s ambition to increase diversity, including gender representation on the Board. It is the target to have at least two female board members before 2023. It is the current assessment that the Board has the required qualifications and composition to oversee Zebra’s strategic development. Achievement of the target will be sought in connection with ongoing changes to the composition of the Board, where special efforts will be made to ensure that female candidates are identified and participate in the selection process.

It is our responsibility to build the competencies of our colleagues. Flying Tiger Copenhagen has a Group HR function that supports our employees in the HQ in Copenhagen and our locally operating partnerships.

In 2019 we introduced Peakon at HQ in Copenhagen. Peakon is an engagement survey tool that measures employee engagement across the organisation. The Peakon results have provided a strong data foundation and vast material about the well-being and beliefs of our employees. The people managers of Flying Tiger Copenhagen now have real life data about their teams and individual team members. This input has resulted in transparency in terms of improvement areas as well as information about strengths of the company.

The HR Business Partners act as strategic partners for the business. In 2019, we strengthened this vital role in supporting our employees at all levels to ensure they have a great working experience at Flying Tiger Copenhagen.

In order to continuously grow and develop the organisation, the Talent Attraction area and ensuring that Flying Tiger Copenhagen remains and attractive employer of choice, we have during 2019 increased the focus on Employer Branding primarily through LinkedIn activities and postings. We believe that it is particularly important to recruit the right profiles for our company, we use several personality assessments to assess our candidates against our organisational culture and values.

The digitalisation process that kicked off in 2018 continued throughout 2019 and will remain a strong focus area during 2020./

In the UK, the Gender Pay Gap legislation, under the Equality Act 2010, requires an employer with 250 employees or more to publish their gender pay gap for their employees.

Single-use products

Single-use products are products, which are thrown out after only one use. The environmental impact can be very high considering the short lifespan, which is why we want to halve our number of single use products by 2025. The single-use items, which we have decided to keep for now are either low impact and/or have no natural replacements; like paper napkins (made from sustainable forestry) and bandaid-plasters (no natural replacement). Another consequence of this focus area is that we will have no single-use paper straws or snack bags from 2022.

Materials

In 2020, our most used product material was plastic, quickly followed by wood and metals. Our strategy for materials is to use more renewable (like wood, paper, bamboo and straw) and easily recyclable (like metal and glass) materials and less plastics. Plastic is a versatile material: It is light-weight, durable and can be used for many different things. However, we want to be clever about how we use it; reducing the amount we use and using a lot more recycled plastic – thereby supporting the overall global reduction and more recycling of plastics.

We want to help customers with their recycling of our products by embedding the recycling category into all our plastic products.

Our plastic targets supports the transition to a circular economy. We want to heavily reduce our use of plastics, but will continue to use it when it is the right material for a particular product. At the same time focusing much more on buying recycled plastics, in order to support the global system of plastic recycling.

Social compliance process

1. 1. Commitment to the Flying Tiger Copenhagen Supplier Code of Conduct.

   All product suppliers must sign the Flying Tiger Copenhagen Supplier Code of Conduct. The Code is based on international standards as defined by the United Nations (UN) and the International Labour Organisation (ILO). It defines our requirements in the areas of workplace health and safety, terms of employment, working hours, wages, environmental protection and business ethics. Among other things, it prohibits child labour, forced labour, dangerous or severely unhealthy working conditions, and abusive disciplinary practices. No purchases can take place without a valid Code in place. Commitment to the Code must be renewed every other year in writing.

2. 2. Risk assessment and factory audits.

   Factories are selected for audit by assessing the risk based on (a) country of production, (b) purchase volume and (c) product category combined with individual assessment of:
   
   (a) brand exposure of product; and (b) audit history and performance of factory, including sub-contracting practices.
   
   Factories, rated high-risk, are selected for audit. On-site factory audits are carried out either by our China-based audit team or by Elevate, an organisation specialising in social compliance factory audits. All audits follow the Flying Tiger Copenhagen Audit protocol that consists of 115 questions and assesses practices in the areas of ethics, sub-supplier management, human rights, labour practices, and the environment. Audits include a combination of site assessment, documentation review, management interviews and anonymous workers' interviews. Audits can be announced, semi-announced and unannounced, depending on progression of audits and types of findings in previous audits. All factories are evaluated from A (compliant) to E (zero-tolerance) and most of the factories we used are rated C. We have a strategic target to raise the rating of the factories we use.

3. 3. Improvement and remediation

   All factories, apart from A-rated factories, must implement a corrective action plan (CAP) within a defined timeline. The CAP is reviewed regularly until closure by Flying Tiger Copenhagen, and the factory must go through a re-audit to verify improvements. Re-audits are semi-announced or unannounced. Factories that present severe zero-tolerance issues are rejected (e.g., use of child labour, forced labour, severe safety and human rights issues, attempted bribery of auditor). In some cases, where good faith and procedural errors can be verified, the factory is put through a requalification process, which includes training, a strictly monitored improvement plan and a re-audit. In case a supplier and/or factory is unwilling to improve, we stop the collaboration permanently.

   We do, on occasion come across factories using child labour. We have a zero tolerance for child labour and strict rules for young workers (between 16 and 18). If we find child labour, the factory must immediately remediate the case and will be put on hold until further notice.

   We have entered a collaboration with The Center for Child Rights and Corporate Social Responsibility (CCR-CSR) in China that helps us with child labour remediation and prevention. CCR-CSR makes sure that every case is handled with respect to the individual child's circumstances. They engage in dialogue with the family and ensure appropriate measures like enrolling in vocational schools and monthly living stipends throughout the remediation period. In 2020, we had zero child labour cases.

   In 2020, we conducted 121 audits in our factories in China. In normal years, we conduct around 300, but due to COVID-19, travel restrictions and social distancing, the number of audits in Q1 – Q3 was heavily reduced. In Q4, we were almost back to normal. The most common issues to improve were ensuring a safe and healthy working environment and reducing overtime. Our target for 2021, is to return to our usual number of audits of around 300, and to pursue greater transparency through intensified pre-screening and further capacity building of our suppliers.

Homeworkers

Recognising that each year we buy several products that are handmade by homeworkers and the fact that we know very little about the working conditions that far down our value stream, we have a target to have a positive influence in the homeworker societies, which we source from. In the beginning of 2020, we planned to do a pilot in one of these communities, gathering data and knowledge in partnership with the homeworker focused NGO, Nest. This initial project was unfortunately delayed due to COVID-19, and we now expect it to take place during H1 2021. The insights gathered in this pilot will guide us in reaching our target of 1,000 homeworkers positivily affected. However, we do not expect to reach the target within the original timeframe.

Sustainable packaging

When it comes to great packaging, less is more. Packaging is one of the biggest waste categories worldwide, and we, as a company, strive to find the right balance between minimising the packaging, and using better packaging design and materials, while still protecting the products and communicating necessary information to our customers.

In 2020, we have developed a new primary packaging manual defining both brand and sustainability guidelines around the principles of clear communication, minimal packaging and optimal recyclability.

Minimise packaging

Minimal packaging ensures less waste and more efficient logistics. We have an overall focus on using as little packaging as possible and a strategic focus on removing plastic when possible. Our target to reduce the use of plastic packaging by 20% in 2022 is on track, and we might set an even more ambitious target in the future. Our focus on plastic reduction means that we sometimes use more cardboard, which is heavier overall, thereby growing our logistic emissions. We realise that this might be a negative consequence, but still believe that plastic reductions are the right way forward.

Maximise recyclability

We want to make it as easy as possible for our customers to recycle packaging, and we have a target to have 100% recyclable packaging in 2022. When packaging materials are monocomponents or easily separated into waste categories, more packaging is ultimately recycled.
To support our reduction and recyclability targets, we will, for examples, prioritise using stickers and hangtags (paper), drastically minimize our use of blister packaging, and ban the use of expanded polystyrene and PVC.

Pens

One tangible example of working with our packaging principles is the casing for many of our pens. The old version was a plastic box and tray, with an insert in cardboard. Transporting extra air, because of the tray, and two types of material. The new version is made solely in cardboard – which is fully recyclable and still more lightweight than the previous packaging which means less carbon emissions. Selling millions of these pens annually make changes like this impactful; in 2020, this new pen casing alone resulted in 1.2 tons less plastic packaging.

Sustainable forestry

FSC™ - Forest Stewardship Council™

With our membership and certification of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), we support the promotion of forests managed with consideration for people, wildlife and the environment. Among other things, an FSC certification entails protection of biodiversity, and respect for the rights of local people as well as the people working in the forest: including that workers are properly trained, have decent health and safety conditions, and receive fair wages.

Notebooks, gift wrapping, napkins, and paper cups were an early part of our FSC-certified product portfolio, and our customers continuously find more FSC-certified wood and paper products in our stores, since it is our ambition to exclusively sell wood and paper products from sustainable forestry in 2022. When it comes to store furniture, we began to use FSC-certified wood in 2012. Since then, all new store furniture is FSC-certified, while the existing stores switch to FSC-certified furniture according to their usual refurbishing cycle.

Sustainable palm oil

Palm oil is a highly versatile oil used for a large number of products in primarily food and beauty on a global scale. Palm oil has also been, and continues to be, a driver for deforestation. Therefore, we want to only use palm oil in a responsible manner. Since 2019, we have worked to use less palm oil in our products and to only use sustainably certified palm oil. We are on track towards our goal of 100% certified palm oil in 2022.