People
Creating Agents of Change
The garment industry employs 60 million workers across the developing world. Over 80% are female and many are rural migrants, entering the workforce with minimal education and skill development. On the one hand, this presents risks of exploitation; on the other, a pool of untapped potential. With the right tools and platforms, they have the power to both improve their personal circumstance and bring new value into our business. They are the catalysts for change, all they need is the chance.
Through Empowerment
At Esquel, we seek to provide quality employment that creates opportunities for all. This means investing in the growth of each individual by empowering our workforce with the appropriate skills, tools, and a modern workplace experience, while also prioritizing the safety and wellbeing of our employees and their families. Through this, we not only foster innovation, productivity, and high-quality work in our operations, but upskill our workers, increase take-home pay, and improve quality of life to reduce poverty long-term.
from words to action
People Development
According to a global employee survey, 45% of employees don’t feel engaged at work, with many citing inadequate opportunities for personal development as a reason. These days, manual jobs that require little skill are being phased out in favor of more technically demanding roles amidst the rise of Industry 4.0. At Esquel, we nurture our employees to thrive at work, with their future goals in mind.
In leading industry-wide efforts to close the wealth gap and digital divide, Esquel offers a variety of opportunities for people development. Our diverse programs cater to our entire workforce and bring out the potential of every single member, including factory operators. To meet the strong demand for digital skills and interdisciplinary expertise, we designed our Esquel University classes, the role of Managineers (managers + engineers), You Can Code and other programs and events to share knowledge openly and indiscriminately upskill our workforce regardless of their age or background. Uplifting the communities in which we operate begins with us empowering our employees.
Wellness
We believe that maintaining a physically and mentally healthy workforce is essential, because it is the reason why talents work for us and grow with us. Thus, we take a proactive approach in actualizing our mission – “Fun people serving happy customers”.
We prioritize improving employees’ physical and mental fitness, as well as maintaining fairness and respect in the workplace. Our goal is to have our people come to work every day feeling fairly treated, empowered, and motivated to accomplish more. We accompany our efforts to bring our designs, hardware and software up to date across our offices, introduce brand-new dining halls with a people-first culture as well as providing exercise and health consultation to our employees. Our management philosophy results in higher productivity, job satisfaction, and loyalty.
Diversity and Inclusion
At Esquel, we maintain that diversity and inclusion are critical for an open and positive workplace environment. We are determined to set an example in the industry with our adoption of inclusive policies that promote a spirit of “One Esquel, One Team” across all our sites around the globe. Our global workforce carries a vast array of opinions and perspectives, educational backgrounds, skills, religions, and ethnicities. Esquel encourages proactive, open, and transparent dialogue between employees to continuously challenge the status quo and pursue excellence.
Our progressive localization strategy employed in our operational sites in China and Vietnam is built on the vision to facilitate local jobs creation and skills development in these communities, as well as mutual trust among the Esquel leadership team and local employees. We have also committed to signing the Women’s Empowerment Principles to show our full support on gender equality. Our Management Trainee Program is designed to nurture leaders of tomorrow without discrimination, to be the true agent of change for our business and society.
Labor and Human Rights
Ethics form Esquel’s top guiding principle, defining and cementing our leading position in the industry today. Esquel’s entire workforce, including every factory worker and member of the management team, are expected to strictly follow our Workplace Code of Conduct when making any business decision, with an internal oversight system to ensure compliance to local practices at each site.
On top of this, we promote open workplace communications and implement a rights-based grievance mechanism based on the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. These enable us to continuously improve our working conditions and corporate culture. We closely review take-home pay against the local minimum wage to make sure we offer wages above the minimum standard of living, and encourage a proper work-life balance for all our employees. It is our ongoing mission to bridge the wealth gap, boost productivity, and sustain loyalty to the company.
Our work in numbers
