Community Development
Gildan operates manufacturing and distribution facilities in Honduras, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Bangladesh and the United States, has an important contract manufacturing presence in Haiti, and has offices in Canada, the United States, Barbados, Europe, and China.
In these countries, our operations and activities generate a social and economic added-value in the communities surrounding our facilities and offices, especially where Gildan is a major employer, such as in Honduras or in Barbados.
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Building on local management teams
It is common practice at Gildan to hire local employees. We have always placed emphasis on putting in place well-educated and highly motivated local management teams as the most effective way to develop and implement best practices in our manufacturing facilities. By providing employees in each of our operating regions with competitive compensation and benefits, along with training opportunities, we are creating both optimum conditions in our facilities and benefiting our employees’ families, the community and economy. This has been a key ingredient in our operational success.
In 2011, Gildan’s global proportion of local managers – director level and up – was 63%.
2011 Percentage of local managers (director level and up) by countryREGION 2011 CENTRAL AMERICA 69% CARIBBEAN BASIN 18% NORTH AMERICA 98% ASIA 81%
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Contributing to the local economy
In addition to creating diversified employment opportunities, Gildan’s presence in a community generates a positive impact on a great variety of local businesses and service providers, for instance, transportation, food services and local suppliers for materials such as dyes, buttons, zippers, boxes and office supplies. It is Gildan's common practice to buy the majority of its materials locally.
2010-2011 Percentage of non-yarn supplies purchased from local suppliers*
REGION
2010
2011
CENTRAL AMERICA
85%
85%
CARIBBEAN BASIN
73%
80%
* Local suppliers are providers of materials and products based in our two main manufacturing hubs.
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Addressing local specific needs
Gildan brings a significant contribution to community development through in-kind and cash donations, primarily to youth education and humanitarian aid related causes. These donations are managed locally, following the criteria set at the Company’s head office and included in Gildan’s Donation Policy. The vast participation of our employees in the various activities organized through our Employee volunteering program has had appreciative impact, and further accentuates Gildan’s impact within the local institutions.
Our local management teams and our employees represent our eyes and ears in order to identify the essential needs and investment priorities in their own communities. For instance, in Honduras, a large survey was conducted amongst the employees in 2008 in order to obtain a better portrait of the basic needs of our employees – and at the same time of our communities – in terms of education, health issues, nutrition, etc. A similar survey was conducted in the Dominican Republic in 2010. These exercises provided us with a better understanding of our employees’ needs and allowed us to develop and align our employee programs accordingly.
At the beginning of 2011, in Nicaragua, we launched a program called “Part of your Life” through which our employees are invited to provide ideas of community projects they would like the Company to be involved in. One of the first investment project that was selected was the Pedro Chamorro Joaquin School, to which Gildan donated a total of U.S.$ 22,000 to repair the ceiling of the school’s 19 classrooms. These are only a few examples of the many initiatives undertaken by Gildan in each of the local communities in which we operate.
Relationships are also established with local authorities, such as the mayor, municipal authorities, local charities or education and health related institutions, in order to identify other projects that would benefit the whole community and in which Gildan could bring an added-value.
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Measuring Gildan’s direct and indirect economic impact in Honduras
While we are aware that Gildan’s economic impact goes beyond the scope of the organization itself, measuring our indirect economic impact, not only in the countries in which we operate, but across our entire supply chain as well, including cotton farmers and third-party contractors, is a much more complex analysis. Such an analysis takes into account direct employment (number of employees), dependents (number of people or relatives depending on these employees) and indirect employment (number of jobs a company supports or creates within its supply chain or distribution chain).
As a first step, in 2011, we undertook the process of defining our impact in Honduras, where we currently employ the largest proportion of our workforce.
Over the coming years, we will continue to work at better understanding and measuring these types of impacts for our global operations.
