Our
people
At Inditex we believe that our teams are the engine of the Company’s transformation and continuous growth, thanks to their talent, commitment and capacity to adapt to environmental changes.
The people strategy rests on four pillars
Promoting our values and our culture; diversity and inclusion in our teams, with equal opportunities; a firm commitment to talent, providing opportunities for development, internal promotion and mobility; and guaranteeing the safety, health and well-being of our teams, with quality, stable and stimulating jobs.
In figures
Diversity
Diversity and inclusion, grounded on essential values such as fairness, collaboration and respect, drive our business performance and facilitate the achievement of our corporate objectives, helping us to anticipate all the market’s fashion needs.
In May 2023, Inditex unveiled its Diversity and Inclusion Manifest worldwide, with our corporate purpose at its heart: ‘We design opportunities for all’.
In December 2023, Inditex was listed in the Financial Times-Statista Diversity Leaders 2024 ranking for the fifth year in a row.
Gender equality
78% of management positions are held by women. Furthermore, in the last few years the representation of women on the Board of Directors has also improved notably, reaching 50% in 2023.
In April 2023 we signed the Group’s Equality Plan in Spain, which applies to all store and central service employees across all our brands and standardises the measures in effect under previous plans. The Plan comprises more than a hundred measures aimed at promoting workforce training and professional development, nurturing work-life balance and co-responsibility, reducing bias, and protecting victims of gender-based violence. This Plan coexists with the equality plans already in place at all our logistics centres and factories.
With regard to other equality-related labour measures, the pay gap analysis in 2023 shows wage parity between women and men in our workforce.
Another highlight last year was the update of our Global Anti-Harassment Policy, reinforcing its areas of action.
Our efforts to implement initiatives that bring about gender equality were recognised by Inditex’s inclusion, for the fourth year in a row, in Bloomberg’s 2023 Gender-Equality Index.
Inclusion of the LGTB+ community
To prevent all discrimination against transgender and non-binary persons, we continued to strengthen our internal anti-discrimination policies. Among other measures, we are adapting our systems so that our people can express their gender identity within a spectrum of options ranging from binary ('Male' and 'Female') to 'Non-Binary' and 'Other/Unspecified.
Also, through our corporate project I AM PROUD, we nurture environments where everyone is welcome and where prejudice, gender stereotypes and discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation are tackled. In the US, we held the third edition of IN Pride, a program to help transgender and non-binary people access employment, focused on creating job opportunities at our stores in conjunction with two New York organisations: The Door and The Ali Forney Center.
Inclusion of the vulnerable
At Inditex we also know that migrants and refugees are the people most vulnerable to discrimination and racism at work. To promote the integration of these groups and reduce inequalities, we have employability programmes, most notably the Salta programme, focusing on the socio-occupational inclusion of vulnerable groups. This programme, whose footprint extended to 18 markets in 2023, has facilitated the hiring of over 1,800 people to date into our store, logistics and factory teams over the years.
Inclusion of people with disabilities
At year-end 2023, we directly employed 2,041 people with disabilities at Inditex. Moreover, since 2022 in Spain, alternative measures (collaboration with special employment centres, donations and sponsorships to conduct employment insertion activities for people with disabilities) are no longer used.
Other noteworthy workplace integration initiatives for people with disabilities include INCLUYE, created in 2021 to encompass all direct employability programmes at Inditex; our alliance with Plena Inclusión, thanks to which we hired 235 people with intellectual, physical or sensory disabilities in Spain; and for&from, our occupational integration project which currently has 16 stores in Spain, Italy and Portugal.
Equal pay and compensation policy
Inditex's remuneration comprises a fixed component and a variable component. The variable remuneration depends solely on objective parameters, and not on a discretionary assessment of the person's individual performance. Our purpose: to eliminate any room for discrimination. In this regard, variable remuneration is one of the key components of Inditex’s remuneration policy and applies to employees in all areas of the Company’s activity.
Global average remuneration in this period at Inditex amounted to 28.726 euros gross annually in 2023. Average remuneration is defined as the average wages in the Group (considering the total salary: fixed plus variable, consisting of commission and bonus), translated into euros, using the average exchange rate in 2023.
Labour relations
100% of the Spanish workforce is covered by collective bargaining agreements. In Spain, a significant agreement on working conditions for store staff was also reached. In February, the leading national trade unions in Spain and the commercial brands of the Inditex Group signed the State Collective Agreement for the Improvement and Standardisation of the Remuneration and Social Conditions of the Group’s Employees.
Talent development and training
The Company’s job portal, Inditex Careers, is our most important recruitment tool, with over 6.2 million visits from 200 markets in 2023. Our selection processes continue to prioritise candidates’ experience. We create interesting, flexible and sustainable experiences in which our potential employees can get to know Inditex, our purpose, values and opportunities in order to find the ideal fit between each candidate and vacancy.
Our employer brand has been recognised externally in the form of first place on the Merco Talento ranking of the best places to work for the last 12 years.
In 2023 we covered 72% of our vacancies internally, giving rise to 12,760 promotions, of which 74% were for women.
We also provided close to 2.8 million hours of training to nearly 2.3 million participants. The most important training initiatives were related with compliance and diversity & inclusion content, the latter provided to over 156,000 people all around the world. We continued to foster a culture of sustainability through #BoostYourPower, a programme which encompasses The Sustainable Fashion School and Changemakers initiatives. In 2023, The Sustainable Fashion School completed the first and second editions of the ‘Foundations of Textile Manufacturing’ training programme, created in collaboration with the University of Leeds. More than 1,200 people from all our brands completed that course. Elsewhere, Inditex has over 2,200 Changemakers, internal sustainability ambassadors who are leading this cultural transformation from the heart of our business: our stores.
Workers in the
supply chain
Our 'Workers at the Centre' strategy for 2023-2025 is articulated around respect for the human rights of the workers populating our supply chain. Our goal is to reach three million people by 2025. We are prioritising the following impact areas: social dialogue, living wages, respect, health and resilience.
Worker at the Centre in 2023
In the area of social dialogue, the main initiatives in 2023 were:
- Implementation of the Global Framework Agreement with IndustriALL Global Union (global).
- Training on the Global Framework Agreement (Morocco, Türkiye, Tunisia).
- Training of local IndustriALL affiliates on the Global Framework Agreement mechanisms (Cambodia, Morocco, Türkiye).
In addition, on 2 October 2023, Inditex and the International Apparel Federation (IAF), an organisation that represents 100,000 manufacturers from over 40 countries, signed a framework agreement designed to fuel significant transformation of the global apparel industry. The overriding goal of this agreement is to create an industry that is more respectful of people and the planet by increasing circularity, transparency and worker wellbeing, with scope for carrying out projects related with these areas.
In November 2023, Inditex renewed its commitment to the International Accord for an extended three-year term and agreed an automatic renewal for a further three years after that, making it the longest Accord pledge to date. This enduring commitment reflects the conviction of the signatory brands and trade unions regarding the Accord's impact on workplace health and safety through independent factory inspections, remediation, safety training and an effective worker grievance mechanism.
Communities
In 2023 we lent our support to 910 social and environmental projects, in which we invested €112 million. These initiatives, focused on the SDGs most closely related with our activities, directly benefitted more than 4.3 million people.
Among the new initiatives launched last year, we would highlight:
/ Development of emergency relief programmes, in response to the earthquakes in Türkiye and Morocco, as well as Hurricane Otis in Mexico, in collaboration with national organisations like the Red Cross and the Red Crescent.
/ Strengthening stable collaboration in emergency relief, starting with support for the Emergency Unit of Médecins Sans Frontières and its programmes to assist refugees and migrants in Bangladesh and Mexico.
/ Establishing a strategic partnership with Conservation International to develop the Regenerative Fund for Nature to support the transition from fashion-related raw materials production to regenerative agricultural practices.
/ Promoting development cooperation through the Every Mother Counts programme extension, in order to provide pre-natal care to pregnant women in Bangladesh and the United States, as well as renewing the Missão Paz programme for welcoming and supporting the integration of immigrants and refugees in Brazil.
/ Strengthening social action in Spain based on collaboration with FAD Juventud to provide quality jobs to young people in Spain, in particular women, in technological professions with good future prospects, as well as raising awareness for young people in addiction prevention.
/ Strengthening of community programmes in the area of Inditex’s main headquarters, based on, among others, renewal of the “A Flote” emergency relief programme for persons in a situation or risk of social exclusion in A Coruña, in partnership with the Municipal Government and Fundación Emalcsa, and the collaboration with the Galicia Regional Government to launch the ‘Fund for the integrated recovery of the Galician territory affected by wildfires in 2022’.
/ Inauguration of the first for&from store in Portugal, under the Zara Home retail format, in collaboration with Associação VilacomVida.
/ Promoting research talent in the university environment, with the renewal of the inMOTION Predoctoral Residency Grant Programme in collaboration with the University of A Coruña.
/ Renewal of the three-year agreement with Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management (China) for student placements abroad, grants for low-income students and traineeships for students in connection with support for vulnerable people.
Our
customers
Customer relations and the continuous improvement of their experience at our stores and online platforms are among the pillars of the Inditex model.
This contact with our customer before, during and after sales is unique and integrated through different channels. Providing a response that matches customers’ requirements at the right time and place constitutes what we consider to be a differential shopping experience.
In 2023, the quality of the customer service provided by five of Inditex’s brands (Pull&Bear, Massimo Dutti, Bershka, Oysho and Zara Home) obtained certification to ISO 18295:2 international standard. This certification underpins the customer service strategy throughout their shopping experience and interaction with each brand, the operations and protocols for customer service through the various contact channels, as well as the standards of service quality and satisfaction of our customers.
In 2023 the customer service areas of the Group's brands fielded a total of 45,443,721 customer contacts (calls, e-mails, WhatsApp conversations and messages via social media profiles), concerning questions on products, the purchasing process, shipments, incidents or current issues affecting the brands, among other matters.
