VF Corporation Announces New Programs and Actions to Advance Racial Equity
February 11 2021 - 6:55AM
Business Wire
VF Corporation (NYSE: VFC), one of the world’s largest apparel,
footwear and accessories companies, today announced that it is
implementing new programs and actions to advance racial equity
within the company and beyond.
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the full release here:
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Building on the company’s Council to Advance Racial Equity
(CARE), VF is complementing its previous work by adding a
combination of actions and programs, community partners and public
policy initiatives to address opportunity gaps that Black and Brown
Americans face in the areas of access to education, economic equity
and environmental justice.
VF’s CARE recently established an initial set of commitments for
VF to pursue, which directly align with the company’s Inclusion,
Diversity, Equity and Action (IDEA) strategy. These commitments
focus on a core set of actions to support VF’s employees,
communities, consumers and society more broadly:
- BIPOC Representation – VF aspires to achieve 25 percent
Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) representation within
its Director and above population by 2030. To support this
commitment, VF has partnered with PENSOLE, an innovative footwear
design academy that provides students with the knowledge required
to become professional footwear designers. The collaboration will
introduce Black and Brown students to VF’s Timberland®, The North
Face® and Vans® brands. Students will participate in a masterclass
that will develop them into capable designers with robust knowledge
of the footwear and retail industry. Top performing students will
earn the opportunity to participate in a year-long rotational
apprenticeship at VF’s brand offices to gain intimate knowledge of
each of the brands’ consumers, culture and ways of working, and to
further develop their skills in footwear design.
- Diverse Candidate Slates – VF will apply Mansfield Rule
requirements, a recruitment benchmark originally developed for the
legal industry, to its talent acquisition and development decisions
across all company departments. The Mansfield Rule requires initial
candidate slates to contain at least 50 percent diverse candidates
(defined as women, BIPOC, LGBTQ+ individuals and individuals with
disabilities) when hiring or promoting candidates.
- Pay Equity – By 2024, VF will assess and resolve any
identified pay gaps for employees, sponsored athletes and
influencers across the organization through a pay equity
analysis.
- Leader Compensation – VF will leverage its annual
goal-setting process to cascade IDEA goals to all people managers.
Directors and above will have a portion of their financial bonus
tied to successful implementation of IDEA goals as evaluated
through a formal performance review process.
- Supplier Diversity – VF will establish a supplier
diversity program to double its spend with minority- and
women-owned businesses by 2025 through enterprise direct and
indirect procurement, and the activities of its brands.
- Committed Grant Making – The VF Foundation, the
philanthropic grantmaking arm of VF, will commit 10 percent of its
annual U.S. grant funding to support community initiatives that
advance VF’s racial equity strategy in alignment with the
Foundation’s investment priorities.
- Mentorship & Sponsorship – VF’s vice presidents will
commit three hours per quarter to mentoring BIPOC employees within
VF and individuals outside the company through community
engagement. VF will also leverage talent boards and review
processes to identify clear advancement plans for high-potential
BIPOC employees and proactively pair them with executive leaders
for active sponsorship.
- Education, Listening & Learning – All VF employees
will participate in a foundational inclusion and diversity learning
journey to ensure they share a common vocabulary and commitment to
establishing a culture of belonging, allyship and advocacy. VF’s
leaders will play a key role in this commitment and will be
required to plan and commit to quarterly listening and learning
sessions as a component of their people strategies.
To further elevate its commitment to promote equity, VF has
partnered with the national non-profit organization, Management
Leadership for Tomorrow (MLT), as it launches Black Equity at Work,
a first-of-its-kind certification program designed to establish
corporate standards around the support of racial equity. The Black
Equity at Work certification will help VF develop a rigorous plan
to pursue diversity goals and focus on equitable actions that
impact people, purchasing and philanthropy. Also, VF’s partnership
with Black Equity at Work will further the company’s efforts to
create both internal and external accountability metrics and
directly align overall commitments to racial equity through the
work of CARE.
“We’re excited about our new partnership with Management
Leadership for Tomorrow and its Black Equity at Work certification
program as we take our support for social justice to the next
level. At the same time, our partnership with PENSOLE directly
aligns with our commitment to enable racial equity for marginalized
communities with a specific focus on uplifting the Black and Brown
communities, which have been traditionally underrepresented in the
fashion and design space,” said Steve Rendle, VF’s Chairman,
President and CEO. “Given the profound inequities that negatively
impact the lives and livelihood of Black and Brown Americans, the
actions we are taking through our CARE initiative, combined with
our strategic partnerships at the corporate and brand levels, are
critical steps to elevating and accelerating our work to promote
racial equity. We are committed to the actions we’ve outlined and
will hold ourselves accountable for making meaningful progress and
leading by example.”
For more on VF’s CARE commitments, please click here.
About VF
Founded in 1899, VF Corporation is one of the world’s largest
apparel, footwear and accessories companies connecting people to
the lifestyles, activities and experiences they cherish most
through a family of iconic outdoor, active and workwear brands
including Vans®, The North Face®, Timberland® and Dickies®. Our
purpose is to power movements of sustainable and active lifestyles
for the betterment of people and our planet. We connect this
purpose with a relentless drive to succeed to create value for all
stakeholders and use our company as a force for good. For more
information, please visit vfc.com.
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version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210211005107/en/
Colin Wheeler, Senior Director, Corporate Affairs &
Communications Colin_wheeler@vfc.com
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