People

We believe that all employees—and all people—should be treated fairly and with respect. We are proud of the diversity of our global workforce—more than 14,000 full-time and part-time employees, spanning over 30 countries and speaking more than 60 languages. We encourage our employees to share their unique perspectives and abilities. Through each stage of employment, from recruiting to retention to career development, we aim to strengthen our culture of inclusion and respect. We are active in our support for equal employment opportunities and the elimination of discrimination and unconscious bias. We also work to communicate our culture of inclusion to our customers through our advertising.

We particularly focus on issues pertaining to women, the LGBTQ community, cross-cultural fluency and communities of color, with a particular focus on the U.S. Our efforts to advance diversity and inclusion focus on strategies for Talent, Engagement, Learning and Leadership:

• Talent: The variety of people and ideas contributed to our organization and the total benefits we offer.

 

• Engagement: The ways we foster employee participation and commitment.

 

• Learning: Our efforts to create a common understanding of how to mitigate bias and be inclusive every day.

 

• Leadership: How we raise awareness and drive accountability through what we say, what we do, and how we operate.

We encourage our employees to connect, learn and speak openly about ideas related to identity as well as celebrate each other’s differences and accomplishments. These efforts are aimed at building a sense of belonging and inclusion to strengthen our employee community and increase the diversity of our Company.

Tiffany & Co. is proud to champion women—as customers, employees and leaders in our Company. We focus on the representation of women throughout our Company and embed respect for gender equality through our policies and commitments. In 2017, we reinforced our commitment to women’s rights, human rights and diversity and inclusion by signing on to the United Nations Women’s Empowerment Principles. In 2018, women held 60%* of all positions in management and above; and following our Annual Meeting of Shareholders in June 2019, 45% of our Board of Directors is women. We continue to look for ways to advance gender equality. In 2018, we expanded our comprehensive parental leave program to provide new parents with greater flexibility and work-life balance. We believe these efforts help ensure equal opportunities for all of our employees to reach their full potential in the workplace.

_{*See the Report of Independent Accountants}

We are proud to maintain a culture of inclusion for members of the LBGTQ community. Since 2018, that commitment to inclusion has earned Tiffany & Co. a top score of 100% in the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s Corporate Equality Index in recognition of our LGBTQ-inclusive practices to foster a diverse, engaging and inclusive work environment for LGBTQ employees. We are proud of our history of support for LGBTQ equality, which we champion through recruiting outreach, employee training and benefits, and expanded representation of relationships in our marketing materials and our advertisements.

We strive to maintain an open and ongoing dialogue with our employees, which helps us to make Tiffany a better, more fulfilling place to work. Throughout the year, we engage our employees through a variety of onsite events, including trainings and health and wellness activities. We actively seek employee feedback through formal and informal touchpoints, including a biannual employee survey. We also continue to identify ways to foster connection between our retail, office and manufacturing employees across the globe. 

We believe that by helping our employees grow as professionals, we grow as a company. We support career development and growth through a number of programs, including Grow with Tiffany, the Tiffany Academy for Excellence and Diversity in Retail Leadership and our performance management process.

We launched our Grow with Tiffany career-development program in 2017 to make a variety of resources available to employees at all levels, including career-mapping exercises and discussion guides. We launched the Tiffany Academy in 2015 to give high-potential professionals the chance to experience different business roles and build rewarding careers. Combined with the training programs we’ve developed for workers in our global manufacturing facilities, these career development programs aim to help our employees achieve their career aspirations and our business objectives.

We created our performance management process to provide a structured approach to employee evaluation and to identify opportunities for our employees to excel in their careers. This process utilizes tools that aim to help employees and managers identify strengths and areas for growth, while attempting to mitigate unconscious bias that can affect performance assessments. 

We believe that respecting human rights in line with the UN Guiding Principles on Business & Human Rights and other international human rights laws and standards is fundamental to our work as a responsible company. We strive to embody these values in our culture, and we seek to embed respect for human rights across our value chain through our vertically integrated business model. Because we own and operate our own manufacturing facilities, we can better ensure that manufacturing workers’ human rights are respected.

In our own diamond cutting and polishing facilities—located in five countries—we offer safe and healthy work environments; and we adhere to health and safety standards that, in many places, go above and beyond local laws. We also primarily hire locally, which contributes to local economies and communities, and we pay our workers at our manufacturing facilities a living wage in developing countries. Outside the walls of our business, we seek to advance respect for human rights through advocacy and philanthropy.

By holding ourselves to high standards, committing to continuous improvement of our practices and speaking out for human rights, we believe that we can help to influence change in those locations where we operate and in the broader jewelry industry.

For more than 10 years, Tiffany & Co. has endeavored to pay a living wage to our skilled workers at our manufacturing facilities in developing countries. Beginning in 2019, we enhanced our living wage program such that all regular full-time employees at our manufacturing facilities in developing countries, whether skilled or unskilled, will have the opportunity to earn a living wage. Using the Anker Methodology, a pioneering calculation for measuring living wage, we are able to pay living wages to employees at our manufacturing facilities in developing countries, which exceeds government minimum-wage requirements. We offer employees pay that supports their needs, including for decent housing, a healthy diet, adequate health care, transportation, education through secondary school, and other essential needs, while also meeting cultural expectations and affording for some discretionary income and unforeseen emergencies. 

Tiffany & Co. is committed to the health and safety of our employees. In 2018, we codified our global Occupational Safety and Environmental Management Standards to articulate our expectations around managing the safety and environmental aspects of all worldwide retail, offices, distribution facilities and manufacturing locations we operate. Our new standards align with the internationally recognized ISO 14001 environmental management and ISO 45001 occupational health and safety standards. We have also created a number of programs to reduce workplace hazards and educate our employees on how to lead healthy, productive lives through our Healthy Tiffany program.