PEOPLE
Improving health and wellbeing for people in our supply chain
We're working to improve access to effective grievance channels and expand support for the mental and physical wellbeing of the workers who make our clothes. Discover the initiatives and partnerships that are helping us achieving that.
Making safety the priority
We work with suppliers to raise and maintain health and safety standards in factories that make our products and it forms part of our Supplier Code of Conduct. Our programmes in this area range from training managers on health and safety topics to helping factories prepare for emergencies.
Challenging stigmas around physical and mental health
Working environments can be high pressured. We’re working with suppliers to help reduce stress and encourage people to reach out for help.
Some of our support programmes run training on health and wellbeing topics, because this helps to open conversations and break down stigmas. Other programmes give workers someone trained to talk to about their experiences. But they all share a goal to help build trust between workers and managers, so that people feel comfortable sharing issues and asking for help they need in the confidence that they will be listened to.
One of our key initiatives is the My Space programme, which operates in supplier factories in India in partnership with St John’s Medical College. This programme focuses on mental health support, building trust between workers and management and promoting open conversations about mental wellbeing. Through My Space, carefully selected staff are trained to become lay counsellors, offering colleagues peer support and a safe space to share their concerns.
You can read more about our programmes improving health and wellbeing
Clear Vision Workspaces with VisionSpring, India, Bangladesh
Globally, over one billion people could see clearly if they had glasses. To help workers across our supply chain improve their vision, we’ve partnered with global social enterprise VisionSpring in India, Bangladesh and Vietnam.
This project involves setting up pop-up stations to test every worker’s vision and provide glasses when needed. Glasses are provided on the day if a screening result show they are needed. Additionally, selected factory employees will also be trained as ‘Vision Champions’ to encourage workers to wear their glasses. Through our support, VisionSpring visited nine factories in 2024 across India, Bangladesh and Vietnam, and conducted screenings testing the vision of 3,673 workers. Early results show that 1,854 of these workers required glasses of which 89% were first time wearers.
EHS Now!, China
This programme trains managers in environmental health and safety (EHS) topics such as chemical safety and personal protective equipment, so they can train others. A new EHS KPI Dashboard also helps factories to keep track of health and safety initiatives within the factory. This project is running in 90 finished goods supply chain factories in China.*
*As of August 2024.
Moner Kotha, Bangladesh
Using learnings from the successful My Space project, Moner Kotha (‘mind talk’ in Bengali), was set up in 2022 across four factories in Bangladesh. It aims to raise awareness of mental health issues, share self-coping mechanisms and build people’s understanding of supportive services. It is run in partnership with the British Asian Trust and Sajida Foundation. The programme has delivered the first round of mental health and wellbeing awareness sessions to 2,500 workers.
My Space, India
Our My Space programme, in partnership with St. John's Medical College, aims to raise awareness about mental health issues in the workplace and reduce stigma around it for the workers in our supply chain in India. You can read more about programme here.
Safety on Site, Türkiye
Following the devastating earthquakes in Türkiye in February 2023, we identified disaster preparedness as a priority for workers and factories in the region. In partnership with a local NGO AKUT, we ran a pilot helping five factories in Türkiye identify areas for improvement in their disaster preparedness responses and processes. AKUT then guided the factories on ways to enhance their emergency risk assessments and emergency action plans, before rolling out disaster preparedness training. We will use our learnings to develop a toolkit that we can roll out elsewhere in our supply chain.
More information on the programmes we support in our supply chain can be found here.
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