Champion Better Lives

We respect and encourage individuality at Ralph Lauren. Our company’s innovation, creativity and continued success depends on our diverse, talented workforce. By investing in a culture of inclusion and celebrating differences, we ensure everyone has a sense of belonging and can thrive.

One way we are ensuring we have a robust and diverse talent pipeline is through recruiting, interviewing and hiring female leaders. This year, we achieved our gender parity goal for equal representation of women in VP level and above positions three years ahead of schedule. In the US, we achieved gender pay equity providing equal pay for equal work and we will expand our pay equity assessment to our global workforce in the coming year. Ongoing education helps us maintain an environment where every employee feels safe and respected. All employees, including Board Members, completed unconscious bias training this year and we will deliver allyship and advocacy training in FY21.

It’s important that everything we do reflects our values, especially our love of people and culture. We are, with great intention, working to ensure our sources of inspiration are respected and strengthened when they are represented through our brand. This principle guides our creative process from product design and development to marketing and advertising. By 2020, all of our design, production and merchant teams will complete training on inclusive and culturally aware design.

Read more about our diversity and inclusion efforts in our 2020 Global Citizenship & Sustainability Report.

The talent and commitment of half a million workers in our supply chain make the timeless style and quality of Ralph Lauren pieces a reality. On average, women make up half of the apparel supply chain workforce, yet the vast majority of supervisor positions are held by men. To address this disparity, we partnered with the International Finance Corporation on their Gender Equality and Returns Program (GEAR). GEAR advances women from basic factory worker roles by training them in people management and technical skills. We’ve launched GEAR in select Bangladesh factories and will continue rolling it out in the region over the next year.

We also continued our work with the HERproject™ in Bangladesh and launched the HERhealth program in five factories. The program provides information on women’s health topics such as healthy eating, personal hygiene and maternal health. The HERproject has benefitted over 20,000 supply chain workers to date, half of which were in the HERhealth program. We’re looking forward to expanding HERhealth to Cambodia next year.

We aim to create a culture of belonging where everyone can be their best selves and succeed, both in the workplace and our communities. As part of this mission, Ralph Lauren and the Ralph Lauren Corporate Foundation have proudly supported the LGBTQIA+ community for more than 25 years.

In 2019, we partnered with the Stonewall Community Foundation in support of their mission to drive positive social change and LGBTQIA+ awareness. During Pride 2019, we designed a five-piece gender neutral collection from which a portion of the proceeds for every item sold was donated to Stonewall. We also engaged our employees in these efforts by providing donation and volunteering opportunities to give back to the LGBTQIA+ community.

Within our own company, we are proud to offer transgender- inclusive healthcare benefits and to support our employee community group RL Pride. This global, employee-led group now has more than 500 members and helps drive LGBTQIA+ education and awareness. In Pride Month 2019, RL Pride hosted nearly 30 events across our offices worldwide.