In responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, one of our top priorities was working to ensure the health, safety and well-being of the Tiffany & Co. workforce. Our approach was carefully considered and aimed to be global, sustainable, consistent and inclusive.

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, a substantial number of our retail stores were temporarily closed. The pandemic also impacted the operation of our office locations, manufacturing and servicing facilities and distribution centers, including through the effects of facility closures, reductions in operating hours, staggered shifts and other social distancing efforts. We have continued to gradually reopen a number of retail stores across our markets in accordance with applicable guidelines established by local governments. As a part of our global reopening process, we developed guidelines to help us ensure that health and safety considerations were consistently applied and met.

During this time Tiffany & Co.’s cultural values, commitment to diversity and inclusion and network of Employee Resource Groups have continued to be reinforced throughout the Company. To support the well-being of our employees, we have relied on existing policies to support our response to the pandemic, including our flexible work program, caregiver leave and sick pay policies. We also emphasize transparency and connection among our employees, regularly sharing important company updates, as well as wellness tips, tools for coping and information on community, giving and volunteering. 

At Tiffany, we find constant inspiration in our communities. We’re recognizing local leaders with our Tiffany Hometown Heroes initiative. From brave COVID-19 healthcare workers to fearless frontline volunteers and heroic advocates in the fight against systemic racism, over 200 individuals were selected by our Tiffany & Co. store teams for having made a significant impact in their communities during this challenging time. To express our gratitude, each hero has been celebrated by their local Tiffany & Co. store and gifted a one-of-a-kind, engravable Tiffany charm pendant, featuring our Tiffany Hometown Heroes logo.

Our mission for Diversity & Inclusion is to fully leverage the power of our people to make Tiffany & Co. the most inclusive luxury brand. We define diversity as the unique identities, expressions, ideas, abilities and cultures of all our people—from our more than 14,000 employees to our cherished consumers and the communities where we live and operate. We believe the combined power of all these perspectives enables our company to grow and succeed.

We build our efforts around three strategic pillars with clear objectives:

Talent: Expand our diverse workforce and build competencies to deliver for our business, customers and communities.

Culture: Build an inclusive workplace where employees feel all aspects of themselves are valued and leaders demonstrate and model inclusive behaviors.

Brand: Become the most inclusive luxury brand by implementing successful diversity and inclusion practices that grow our business.

In 2019, we achieved a number of successes in advancing our diversity and inclusion goals, including the global launch of our unconscious bias training for all employees, the creation of Employee Resource Groups to build space for inclusion and belonging across our global workforce, and our ongoing efforts to speak out publicly in support of diversity and equality around the world.    

Tiffany & Co. is proud to champion women as clients, 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. We believe our ongoing efforts help ensure equal opportunities for all of our employees to reach their full potential in the workplace. 

We believe in fostering a diverse, engaging and inclusive work environment for LGBTQIA+ employees. 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 LGBTQIA+-inclusive practices. At Tiffany, we are proud of our history of support for LGBTQIA+ equality, which we champion through recruiting outreach, employee training and benefits, and expanded representation of relationships in our marketing materials and advertisements.

As a global organization, we value our multicultural workforce. We have three multicultural Employee Resource Group chapters—African Brilliance Collective, LatinX and InspirAsian ML. As we strongly believe in using our voice to advance racial equality and social justice, Tiffany has entered into a partnership with the National Urban League and the Lower Eastside Girls Club. We have also hosted open conversations around Race, Ethnicity and Gender in the workplace and a Juneteenth Town Hall—as well as heritage celebrations around the world for Lunar New Year, Black History Month, Juneteenth and Hispanic Heritage Month for our employees.

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 on-site 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 TiffanyU, Grow with Tiffany, the Tiffany Academy for Excellence and Diversity in Retail Leadership and our performance management process.

In 2020, we created TiffanyU, a modern approach to learning and development for all Tiffany employees. This global platform provides access to on-demand learning, leadership and management development programs, including live and virtual programs, peer-to-peer social learning and more than 15,000 courses in seven languages. We believe that giving all of our employees access to these capability-building tools will strengthen our Company and help us continue our growth and success.

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 develop diverse, high-potential professionals and provide them with the chance to experience different business roles and build rewarding careers. Combined with the training programs we have 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. As part of our efforts to embed sustainability throughout our business, in 2020 we added a sustainability focus to our annual goal-setting and performance management process for all managers and above, aligning their work with support for Tiffany’s sustainability goals.

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 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 will have the opportunity to earn a living wage. Using the Anker Methodology, a pioneering calculation for measuring living wage, we endeavor to pay living wages to employees at our manufacturing facilities in developing countries, which exceeds government minimum-wage requirements. We determine a living wage as pay that is intended to support 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 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.