People
We care deeply for our people who play a critical role in making LEGO® play experiences possible for everyone. With the goal of energizing everybody every day, we aspire for our colleagues to feel heard and valued, and we focus on removing barriers so each of our colleagues can succeed and be at their best.
We are committed to embedding diversity and inclusion into the delivery of products, experiences and communications for our colleagues, communities and our role models: children.
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Responsible workplace
A motivating workplace
We recognize the importance of having inclusive and diverse workplaces, where all colleagues feel a sense of belonging.
To ensure progress, we set targets for employee motivation and satisfaction, which we track through our annual employee engagement survey – the LEGO Group People Pulse. We ask specific questions related to belonging, inclusion and psychological safety, which we monitor and work with as part of our Inclusion Index.
In 2022, the LEGO Group once again achieved a strong result in terms of Motivation and Satisfaction rating and scored 83 points, 9 points above the 2022 external target (74 points). The result places the LEGO Group 7 points above our survey provider, Ennova’s, external benchmark and among the top 10 percent of their international clients.
A responsible and inclusive workplace
During 2022, we have updated our inclusive workplace guidance. Our ambition is to build a diverse and inclusive organization with a unique sense of belonging to inspire and develop all the Builders of Tomorrow. This means that we must consider a variety of factors that affect workplace decisions and experiences, including colleagues’ location, local culture, language, heritage, physical and cognitive requirements and other aspects of diversity, to create optimal spaces for everyone to succeed.
Safety
At the LEGO Group, employee safety – both physical and psychological safety – and well-being are a top priority, and we aim for zero accidents in our factories, stores and offices. Our Occupational Health and Safety Policy sets the ambition for all activities to be carried out with health and safety in mind. We comply with national and international legislation as a minimum requirement. In 2022, our lost time injury rate was 0.5, i.e., number of injuries per million working hours.
Inclusive benefits: Creating a family friendly workplace
In 2020, we launched an extended parental leave policy globally.* By the end of 2022, all employees, both hourly and salaried, in our offices, production and retail sites irrespective of their location, will receive a minimum of 26 weeks paid childcare leave for the primary caregiver and eight weeks paid leave for the secondary caregiver. Parents decide who takes the role as the primary caregiver and we encourage all our colleagues to take their time to build a bond with their family.
Over the past three years, we also enhanced our global safety net to ensure financial security for colleagues and their families in case of death or permanent disability.
*We adhere to local laws and regulations in our local markets. This global policy was fully implemented, in all markets, by the end of 2022, as the minimum standard for paid parental leave at the LEGO Group. In countries where local/governmental policies offer a more generous leave, the local policies take precedence.
Inclusive branding – marketing, partnerships and products
Removing gender stereotypes from play experiences:
We focused on solidifying the LEGO® brand’s role in building STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics) skills, amidst a society that continues to restrict girls’ access to it.
International Day of the Girl:
We launched a campaign focused on the need to nurture girls’ interests in STEAM through LEGO play experiences.
World Children’s Day:
In partnership with UNICEF, we launched a playbook and industry framework on promoting diversity and inclusion in advertising, particularly in a way which centers children’s rights.
Annual D&I audits:
With our partner, the Geena Davis Institute, we monitor and analyze TV, video, imagery assets to ensure representation, gender balance etc.
Senior leader mentoring program
The program provides opportunities for our senior leadership mentees to be matched and mentored by employees from underrepresented groups to engage in dialogs that build empathy, awareness and understanding of the barriers and challenges mentors have encountered.
The program, now in its second year, has enabled a more robust two-way meaningful dialogue between mentors and mentees, aligned to our Leadership Playground behaviors of being brave, curious and focused. To date, over 100 participants have taken part in the program.
Fostering a D&I learning culture
In 2022, our D&I Conscious Inclusion program, grounded in the LEGO® Leadership Playground behaviors, was rolled out to hourly colleagues in our factories and LEGO Retail Stores. The program entails tailored training which is designed specifically to reflect the unique working experiences and workplace context of shop floor and retail store colleagues.
Shift leaders and store managers were upskilled through a Train-the-Trainer program enabling them to facilitate local sessions with their teams on site. We are proud to have included 12,000+ hourly LEGO colleagues across 15 countries.
As we expand our D&I Learning Portfolio, we have shared targeted Learning content for 2,850 salaried LEGO colleagues with several offerings including Conscious Inclusion, Building Bridges, Cultural Explorer D&I programs and Inclusion Month sessions.
D&I communities at the LEGO Group
Spearheaded by LEGO® colleagues around the world, six global Employee Advocacy Groups (EAGs), strategic self-organized groups of employees and allies advancing D&I in our workplace, were established in 2021.
The six EAG groups focus on supporting LEGO colleagues and communities centered around Age, Asian colleagues, Disability, LGBTQIA+, People of Color and Women.
Similarly, we have successfully established and grown our 11 D&I Taskforces spanning the U.S., Latin America, Denmark, Hungary, Czech Republic, China, Western Europe, Singapore, Middle East & Africa and a global D&I Council to provide local, functional and diverse identity-grounded perspective to our global D&I roadmap and to deliver D&I initiatives locally.
Pride celebrations
Responsible sourcing
Human rights
The Human Rights & the Rights of Children policy, alongside the Responsible Business Principles (RBP), outline our fundamental policies relating to human rights. The RBP outlines how the LEGO Group commits to respect for all internationally recognized human rights as enshrined in the International Bill of Human Rights, the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, and the eight ILO Core Conventions.
We collaborate closely with our suppliers to ensure they uphold our Responsible Business Principles. These 12 principles reinforce our ethical way of working and how we relate to children, our planet and our colleagues. Their primary purpose is to ensure all workers involved in making LEGO® products have fair and decent working conditions and that the environment is protected for future generations.
We regularly assess our human rights risks and impacts through a combination of third-party audits, internal assessments and consultation with external stakeholders.
Capability building
In 2020, we launched a capability building program where suppliers receive training in the Responsible Business Principles, with the aim of building supplier competencies to reach a higher level of compliance and proactively resolve non-conformities.
In 2022, we continued to strengthen the program and expand the training academy not only with our suppliers and licensing partners but also with our internal colleagues.
Modern slavery
The LEGO Group does not accept any form of modern slavery or forced labor. Modern slavery is the term used to describe situations where coercion, threats or deception are used to exploit individuals and undermine or deprive them of their freedom.
Although supplier assessments in 2022 have not found any instances of modern slavery to be present in our supply chain, we will proactively develop robust mitigation plans to address any identified potential risk areas. We’re taking steps to further strengthen our efforts to assess and mitigate against modern slavery risks across our entire value chain, including strengthening the LEGO Group audit program/monitoring tools with a focus on forced labor indicators and developing suppliers’, partners’ and internal colleagues’ capabilities in identifying and addressing modern slavery risks. All while continuing to explore involvement in wider initiatives to drive systemic change.
Monitoring, assessing and remediating non-conformities in our supply chain
In 2022, 94 percent of scheduled onsite audits were completed against an end-of-year target of 100 percent.
The continued impact of the pandemic, especially in Asia in the first half of the year, affected the ability to conduct onsite audits. Once restrictions allowed, we resumed onsite audits and managed to complete all audits in the region. In other regions, site relocations and audit lead times resulted in delays.
We identified higher risk non-conformities in 25 percent of audits undertaken in 2022, which is below our set annual maximum of 36 percent, which in part indicates that capability building and supplier engagement continue to have a positive impact on suppliers.
Higher risks
Higher risk non-conformities include both high-risk and zero tolerance non-conformities. They are both defined as a severe breach of local law and/or the LEGO® RBP, with zero tolerances requiring the most urgent response and mitigation as it poses an immediate risk to employees or workers. If we identify a zero tolerance breach, we take immediate action to work with the supplier to remediate. We demand an urgent response from the supplier and hold the right to terminate the business relationship with immediate effect if no effort is taken to remediate the concern.
In 2022, the most frequently identified higher risks remained related to excessive working hours and lack of adequate record keeping, with health and safety concerns also notable, as shown in the chart. None of the higher-risk non-conformities in 2022 identified any form of modern slavery, child labor or discrimination.
When we identify a non-conformity, we work closely with the supplier to understand what immediate corrective and remediation action has been taken, and how we can support to ensure it does not happen again in the future.
Zero tolerance breaches in 2022
Three zero tolerance breaches were identified and addressed in 2022 in three different supplier facilities.
All three of these concerns were related to overtime.
