Overview
Message from the CEO
Each and every day at Signet’s store banners, we have the precious opportunity to help Customers Celebrate Life and Express Love®.
This privilege of selling products that inherently carry a strong emotional attachment, and our unique opportunity to impact the way people express their love and celebrate their most significant and memorable life moments, is a gift. It is a gift of trust from Customers to us. It is also an important responsibility our Customers place in our hands, one that holds us to the highest standards of Corporate Social Responsibility. Our Customers respect integrity, require value and care about the story behind what they purchase.
During my five-year tenure as a Signet Board Member, I was always a strong supporter of Signet’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) efforts. Now, as CEO since August 2017, I am proud to be an advocate and champion of the multi-faceted, extensive, and enduring commitments this Company is making across each of our four CSR pillars: People, Responsible Sourcing, Environmental Stewardship, and Charitable Giving. Corporate Social Responsibility is an important part of Signet’s culture.
In this report, we share an overview of our 2017 performance, as well as review some CSR challenges that we and our industry are proactively addressing. It is important that we strengthen our shareholder value through a program of strategic activities. This report is also a reflection of how we expect each of our Team Members to treat all our stakeholders, including Customers, who are at the center of everything we do.
People
While this CSR Report looks back at 2017, in reality, it is about the future of Signet. And, at the heart of this Company and our future successes are our People, guided by our core values. Following extensive dialogue and a broad survey of Team Members, we launched our five new core values in early 2018.
- 1: People First: Signet is all about our #1 asset, our people. People First speaks to the culture of diversity and inclusion that we are always looking to strengthen. It is about valuing all Team Members, embracing differences, celebrating uniqueness, and unleashing our full potential. We aim to have fun together and feel the joy of delivering our mission every day.
- 2: Lead Bravely: Transforming Signet’s future requires us to move out of our comfort zones and take bold action to lead change. We ask our Team Members to Lead Bravely, to courageously stick to priorities, to always look for innovative solutions, and to indulge their curiosity so that we’re constantly questioning the status quo. We act with passion and courage.
- 3: Own It: Every Team Member at Signet has an important job. We are accountable, strive for continuous improvement, and are trustworthy, always operating with the utmost integrity.
- 4: CUSTOMERS! At Signet, we don’t just want to give Customers a pleasant experience, we aim to give them a truly memorable and meaningful experience. This is why Customers is in all caps with the exclamation point. We must deliver excellence and exceed Customer expectations every time. We delight in gaining Customer trust and loyalty and developing lasting relationships.
- 5: Straight Talk: For Signet to successfully shape our future, we can’t waste valuable time tiptoeing around a point or glossing over the truth because it’s too uncomfortable to be straight-forward. We must communicate openly and clearly about what is working, what isn’t working, and how we’re going to improve. We tell it like it is, while always showing respect, listening, and collaborating as one team.
Our new core values are designed to strengthen engagement among team members, and we are enhancing our communications internally to focus on behaviors that will drive our transformation strategy. We are developing a culture that is more agile and efficient. Leaders at every level can access more data and analytics to ensure they make sound decisions. We are increasing our training and development programs to align skills with changing business needs, to ensure equal pay and promotion opportunities, and to provide paths for career growth and advancement.
Responsible Sourcing
At Signet, we work hard to foster a transparent and responsible supply chain. Leading the industry in sourcing conflict-free gold is a tremendous achievement that we are quite proud of. For the fourth consecutive year, we are one of only four companies, and the only jewelry company, to report a conflict-free gold supply chain. Additionally, in 2017, we inaugurated the reporting process for our pioneering Signet Responsible Sourcing Protocol for Diamonds. This transparency-focused initiative dramatically deepens our visibility into the diamond supply chain in a way that no other jewelry company has ever done. We understand that the importance of leading these efforts is good for us, our Customers, and the industry.
Environmental Stewardship
As the world’s largest retailer of diamond jewelry, Signet has thousands of locations and Team Members, all of which have an impact on the natural environment. We recognize our responsibility to minimize that impact. I am therefore pleased to report that, year over year, we have further lowered our energy use by 2% and greenhouse gas emissions by 5%. In this report, we are, for the first time, publicly announcing goals to lower our environmental impact even further. Reducing our energy use, increasing our water efficiency, and recycling our waste are not only the right things to do for our environment, they make us more efficient and save money, too.
Charitable Giving
I am proud of Signet’s decades-long commitment of giving back to the communities and places in which we live and work. We support charities and causes for underserved women and children because our Customers and our Team Members are very often young families with children.
In order to truly make a difference, we have carefully identified highly respected and effective national and local charities to work with. Our Team Members take pride in being part of a Company that encourages them to give back to their communities and integrates our Customers into our efforts as well.
Signet is 100% engaged and committed to Leadership - with a capital ‘L’ - in addressing the social, ethical, and environmental issues that affect our Team Members, Customers and our industry, as well as the world in which we live.
I am extraordinarily pleased to present Signet’s second annual Corporate Social Responsibility report. I look forward to working with our stakeholders and industry partners over the coming year as we continue to lead efforts of uncompromising continuous improvement. I hope you enjoy reading it, and I look forward to hearing your feedback at CSR@signetjewelers.com. Thank you for your interest in Signet Jewelers.
Virginia C. Drosos, Signet Jewelers Chief Executive Officer