Corporate Social Responsibility

The Watches of Switzerland Group is committed to operating in a responsible and environmentally conscious manner. Our approach looks to embrace the responsibility we have for our planet, our colleagues and to make a positive contribution to the communities in which we live and serve.

Our CSR policy spans four key areas: Colleagues, Supply Chain, Environment and Communities.

Our Colleagues: We are proud to be a people business and employ over 2,000 colleagues across the business in the UK and the US. In our stores, in our warehouses and in our offices, we strive to provide a dynamic and open workplace where the rights, needs and unique contributions of every member of our diverse teams are respected and valued. In return, we expect our colleagues to contribute to our company culture by embodying our common values and provide our clients with a best in class experience.

Our Supply chain: We are committed to work to consistently improve the sustainability of our supply chain. As an important component of our supply chain, we inspect the third-party factories where our products are manufactured to ensure that working conditions meet our standards and comply with all industry-wide requirements. Our Environment: We strive to conduct our business in a responsible, sustainable manner in order to protect the environment. Our environmental statement and policy highlight our commitments and improvement measures and continue to evolve in line with our growing business.

Our Communities: We are committed to making a positive contribution to the communities in which we live and serve in the UK and USA. In the UK, through our strategic partnership with The Prince’s Trust, we are committed to help improve the lives of disadvantaged young people through a broad range of educational programs and fundraising activities. In the USA, our approach is to support local community projects and charities in the communities in which we operate stores, namely in Florida, New York and Las Vegas.

Our Colleagues

Our colleagues are an integral part of ensuring the continued success of our business. We are committed to providing our colleagues with an open and dynamic workplace and to ensuring they are equipped with the most comprehensive tools to develop their full potential. This applies to colleagues in both offices and stores who are vital in offering our clients an unrivaled experience. Our vision and embedded values system enable us to celebrate and reward the achievements of our colleagues every day.

Learning & Development

Product knowledge and client experience skills are critical to our business. We are proud of our wide range of training and development programs both in the UK and USA and work closely with our brand partners to ensure that our colleagues are true experts in our category. Our e-learning modules make learning and personal development accessible to all.

Recognition & Celebration

Our award-winning recognition program Vibe! provides all colleagues with the ability to recognize and celebrate achievements across the employee population instantly via a digital platform. We celebrate these achievements in style at our annual award ceremonies. Clarity, our bi-monthly internal magazine, is another platform through which we engage with our colleagues, provide company news and recognize and celebrate the achievements across the workforce.

Workforce Engagement

Our Designated Non-Executive Director is responsible with representing the voice of colleagues at Board level and in January 2020 we launched How Are We Doing?, our first company-wide engagement survey. A How Are We Doing? colleague forum will follow in Spring 2020 with plans to further develop the program in the future.

Disability Discrimination Policy

The aim of The Watches of Switzerland Group is to provide an inclusive and accessible environment for all by proactively fulfilling our obligations wherever we operate. In the USA we comply with The Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”)

The Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”), prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities because of their disabilities. The Company is committed to complying fully with ADA and ensuring equal opportunity in employment for qualified persons with disabilities.

All employment practices and activities are conducted on a non-discriminatory basis. Reasonable accommodations are available to disabled employees whose disability affects the performance of their essential job functions, unless such accommodations would cause undue hardship to the Company.

The Company is committed to taking all other actions necessary to ensure equal employment opportunity for persons with disabilities in accordance with the ADA and all other applicable federal, state, and local laws.

As a company, we will endeavor to evolve and improve the access and facilities our properties provide by making 'reasonable adjustments' to help our disabled clients enjoy their visit. Unfortunately, there are some premises where alterations would be detrimental to the wellbeing of the building, which may lead to certain access points and facilities being impossible to provide. In this situation, we will seek to provide an alternative shopping location where possible.

Watches of Switzerland USA appreciates the importance of having a website that is easily viewed and used by all, regardless of any disability. Below you will find the measures we have taken to ensure all our clients have an excellent experience. Please let us know if you have any questions or feedback regarding the accessibility of this site or if you experience any difficulty using it.

Equal Opportunity Policy

The Watches of Switzerland Group has in place an Equal Opportunities policy and we believe we have an opportunity to be inclusive and encourage diversity within our workforce. Our recruitment process allows people with disabilities to have fair and equal access to employment opportunities. We make reasonable adjustments to roles and environments to accommodate disabled applicants and for employees who become disabled while employed by The Watches of Switzerland Group. Any acts of disability discrimination are dealt with in accordance with our internal policies.

Our Supply Chain

We have in place a robust Code of Conduct for our suppliers, ensuring ethical trading practices are adhered to. Compliance to The Watches of Switzerland Group's Code of Conduct is mandatory in order to engage in business with us. The Watches of Switzerland Group monitors compliance by means of factory audits. Vendors are requested to provide The Watches of Switzerland Group with full access to their production facilities and to any documents pertinent to legal, employment or environmental practices. Any vendor found to be in violation of this code will be notified of corrective action required to avoid termination of our business relationship.

There are 14 key principles to The Watches of Switzerland Group’s Vendor Code of Conduct and definitions of each are provided in this document;

Employment is freely chosen
Freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining are respected
Working conditions are safe and hygienic
Child labor shall not be used
Living wages are paid
Working hours are not excessive
No discrimination is practiced
Regular employment is provided
No harsh or inhumane treatment is allowed
Responsible environmental practices
Zero tolerance of conflict products
Bribery and Facilitation Payments
Anti-Money Laundering and/or financing of terrorism
Compliance to the code

Please click here to download the full document.

Our Environment

The Watches of Switzerland Group affirms its commitment to global environmental protection and recognizes the importance of incorporating environmental issues within its business decisions and activities. The organization acknowledges the potential for serious environmental impairment which could arise from its operations if these are always not carried out in an environmentally responsible manner. The Watches of Switzerland Group is committed to complying with the requirements of the Environmental Protection Act 1990, and all legal duties and obligations imposed by other Environmental Acts and Regulations.

Over recent years we have introduced several initiatives to increase the focus on sustainability of our business. We will continue to move towards a more structured, systematic, transparent and measurable environmental program.

Our commitments:

Raw Materials: We comply with the relevant international laws and industry regulations when sourcing our products and insist on written guarantees from vendors that our products conform with international regulations
Endangered species: We occasionally sell products made from specialist skins and exotic woods. Vendors are obliged to provide us with written guarantees that these products comply with the international laws and industry regulations
Reducing our contribution to climate change: We will quantify the energy, fuel and water used in our business and develop and implement an action plan to achieve year-on-year reductions
Minimizing waste: We continue to take steps to reduce packaging in our supply chain and increase the re-use and recycling of materials
Communicating clearly with our colleagues and vendors: We engage with our colleagues and our main vendors to look for their ideas and support in delivering our program of environmental improvements
These commitments apply to all businesses owned by The Watches of Switzerland Group

We will continue to improve by:

Capturing the data that we need to form a company baseline and then setting targets for improvement
Raising awareness of our achievements and targets with our colleagues
Assessing which accredited environmental management system (EMS) is most appropriate for our business and aligning our program accordingly

We will continue to work closely with our vendors to ensure The Watches of Switzerland Groups Code of Conduct is upheld across our supply chain.

We are deeply committed to ensuring our raw materials and products are sourced from vendors that meet high ethical standards with a focus on sustainability and transparency:

Diamonds: The Watches of Switzerland Group is a signatory of the Kimberley Process (KP), a certification scheme established in 2003 to prevent conflict diamonds (also known as blood diamonds) from entering the mainstream rough diamond market. The United Nations defines conflict diamonds as: "Diamonds that originate from areas controlled by forces or factions opposed to legitimate and Internationally recognized governments". The KP scheme requires guarantees of diamond origin through the supply chain (www.worlddiamondcouncil.org). As a result, our diamonds are acquired from legitimate sources which are not involved in funding conflicts and ensure the absence of any conflict diamonds.
Gold: The Watches of Switzerland Group is a signatory of the 12 Golden Rules initiative driven by CAFOD (Catholic Fund for Overseas Development; www.cafod.org.uk). The initiative has been introduced in 2006 to ensure gold mining minimizes damage to the environment and communities local to the mines. The gold we buy as part of our supply chain is entirely from legitimate sources. The Watches of Switzerland Group also requires all suppliers of Gold, Silver and Platinum metals to sign a declaration that all these metals are sourced through responsible suppliers and are authorized by the LBMA good delivery list (www.lbma.org.uk/good-delivery-list). Our vendors are also required to provide the name of their precious metals source.
Specialist skins: A small number of our products use animal skins, which is usually restricted to watch straps. Our watch strap manufacturers only source skins from farmed sources and conform to the relevant international laws that include the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (www.cites.org). In addition, whilst we only buy watches from the most reputable manufacturers, we have systems and controls in place to ensure our watch vendors only use any animal skins from farmed and sustainably managed sources.
Product packaging: At the warehouse and distribution level, paper, cardboard and space filling are re-used and/or recycled. In our retail operations, we have moved from polythene branded bags to recyclable paper bags. Our packaging supplier (Adare) operates to ISO9001 & ISO 14001 standards as well as SEDEX &SMETA.
Printed materials: Our printed materials available in-store are supplied by Adare, the same third party as the packaging therefore operate to the same standards ISO090001, ISO14001 and FSC.

In addition to raw materials, we continue to apply an environmentally conscious approach to all our operations. We continue to look for areas in which to improve these.

Energy: In the Summer of 2019, we complied with our Energy Saving Opportunity Scheme (ESOS) obligation well ahead of the deadline on 5 December 2019.
The most significant saving identified was in-store lighting – replacing spotlights with LED equivalents. We have in fact already completed this improvement in 60% of our stores. Where this work has not been completed, it is because it is uneconomic to do so. There is an ongoing program in place to install LED lights in the all our stores over the next 2-3 years.

This improvement in lighting has also led to a decrease in heat produced by older light fittings, which in turn as decreased the demand on HVAC systems. The ongoing replacement of HVAC systems during major refurbishments has also led to more energy efficient systems being installed.

We have half-hourly meters installed in 36 of our largest stores, to closely monitor the consumption of our higher usage stores. We are in the process of procuring specifically Green energy (solely from renewable sources) rather than Blue (a mix including nuclear) or Brown (Fossil fuels)

Our Group head office buildings, located in Leicester England and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, have lighting that is controlled by movement sensors which also take account of natural light levels and dim lights accordingly. LED lighting has also been installed to some areas and a program of replacing them throughout is ongoing. In the UK, we are gathering the data needed to map our energy consumption and energy trends on a site by site basis. Once we have done this, we will set targets to reduce energy use and develop a plan to hit these targets. In the US, the same mapping will begin in FY21.
Waste: At The Watches of Switzerland Group Corporate Office in Fort Lauderdale, waste is segregated into bottles, cans, and cardboard and is recycled with local authorities. Confidential waste is shredded and then recycled. We have developed a recycling program for store and office printer toners. We recycle electronic equipment through a third-party recycling program. Batteries are sent from stores to the Corporate Office and are recycled. We recycle paper, cardboard and plastic in stores in conjunction with the mall owners’ recycling efforts. We always work towards using economically viable ways to divert as much waste as possible away from US landfills.
Transport: We partner with third party parcel distribution companies for the delivery of our products. These companies have an Ecovadis Gold sustainability rating and have made a commitment to reducing their carbon footprint. Our air travel within the company is limited and our fleet of more than 100 company cars has halved over the past 10 years, comprising only clean diesel or hybrid models.
Supplier Responsible environmental practices: The Watches of Switzerland Group believes that a business should protect, and where possible, improve the environment, promote sustainable development and prevent the wasteful use of natural resources. We expect our business associates to comply with all current local environmental laws and regulations. Additionally, we encourage our vendors to promote responsible environmental practices.

Assessment of our environmental impact

The retail jewelry business involves selling small, high value products. These products have a very long product lifecycle and most of our raw materials are highly recyclable and actively recycled (30% of the world's gold being sold is estimated to be recycled). The high product value-to-volume ratio in jewelry means that transport and storage are small when compared with many retailers. Consequently, our footprint is relatively limited. Distribution of our products to our network of stores happens through a parcel carrier leading to efficient distribution. Similarly, our industry has very high sales density and stores are therefore relatively compact. The multi-site nature of retail and the similarity of our own stores make our network easy to benchmark both internally and relative to our retail peer set.

Retailing jewelry does however require significant display lighting which in turn increases the need for air-conditioned cooling. The nature of our retail business often demands that we fit stores to a high specification leading to a high cost per square foot and greater use of materials. At the luxury end of our range, products frequently have elaborate packaging. We continue to take steps to reduce packaging in our supply chain and increase the re-use and recycling of materials across the business.

Whilst the retail jewelry business has a relatively low environmental impact, we conduct our business in a responsible way and look to continuously improve controls and processes to minimize this further. The most important area of environmental risk sits within our supply chain, particularly in the countries where many of our raw materials originate. We will continue to carefully manage and monitor both our environmental and social impact at the source in order to ensure our values are upheld across the supply chain.

In summary, The Watches of Switzerland Group is compliant and responsible when sourcing products to ensure a high standard of environmental and social values is upheld across the business. We will continue to expand our program of social and environmental quality checking. In the UK, we have made progress through several initiatives focused on the environment during recent years. The group plans to implement a more structured and measurable environmental program and to re-engage with colleagues and stakeholders to shape behavior and reduce its environmental impact.

Our Communities

We support the communities in which we live and serve in a variety of ways. In the UK, our corporate partnership with The Prince’s Trust provides the framework for our fundraising and volunteering activities with colleagues encouraged to be mentors and role models to young people still in education. Teams at our UK support center in Leicester are also very engaged with supporting local charity initiatives.

Given the different landscape in the USA, we do not currently have a national partner but choose instead to support initiatives local to our hubs in Florida, New York and Las Vegas. We also support the fledgling Prince’s Trust USA and were pleased to support their launch with an event at our Watches of Switzerland Store in Soho, New York in 2019.