Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Practices
Last updated: April 2024
Global-e platforms and offerings are designed to promote access and reduce borders and barriers in global e-commerce, where such access can potentially be offered while taking into consideration and contributing to the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) goals of our stakeholders, including our merchants and the shoppers. To that end, we have committed to develop our ESG strategy and workplan in alignment with our business strategy and the expectations of our stakeholders, our partners within the value chain, our employees and our local communities.
We continue to gradually develop our ESG strategy. The ultimate responsibility for our ESG strategy, goals, practices and the underlying workplan is vested with our Board of Directors, and the powers and authority to monitor and oversight were delegated and vested to the Board’s Nominating, Governance and Sustainability Committee (NGSC). The NGSC established an executive committee (consisting of c-level management) under its supervision and direction to lead the development and execution of our ESG workplan, and such executive committee has been, and will continue to work closely with various relevant departments and officers, including Facility Managers, Human Resources, Operations, Security and Tech Ops and Legal, among others in designing, furthering and implementing our ESG work plan. In 2023, the Executive Committee held 10 meetings in which key ESG strategy and workplan were discussed.
In 2023, we started to prioritize the enhancement of awareness and understanding of our ESG workplans among the members of our management and Board of Directors. The objective of these initiatives was to enable our leadership team to be adequately-equipped with the knowledge necessary for our ESG related decision-making processes.
In the course of our ongoing Board of Directors and NGSC meetings, we held sessions on ESG fundamentals and the relevance of ESG considerations to our business operations and our workplan (including discussions related to the SEC climate disclosure rules). Special focus was given to cybersecurity. The sessions aimed to provide our board members with an understanding how our ESG workplan fits our strategy, in accordance with the materiality assessment conducted by the company. In addition, as part of its ongoing meeting agenda, the Executive Committee underwent sessions that contributed to the understanding of its members of certain functional areas related to the company’s workplan. These sessions covered topics such as integrating sustainability into business operations, stakeholder engagement, and measuring and reporting ESG performance.
We view ESG as an integral part of our corporate strategy and we remain committed to fostering a culture that values sustainable, conscious and responsible business practices. We believe that the sessions conducted during the past year mark the beginning of an ongoing commitment to ESG education within our organization, and serve as a foundation for continued learning and application of ESG considerations in our business operations. We plan to gradually include relevant managers and employees in certain session in the future, and provide relevant tools for encouraging creativity, and fostering engagement, leading to sustainable value creation.
In 2023, we took the first steps to review climate change impacts and addressing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) gaps across the organization. We have started to develop a plan to prioritize and promote efforts to manage key long-term non-financial parameters important to our business.
Following our 2022 engagement with the ESG advisory team of Nasdaq Corporate Solutions, LLC, that conducted our first ESG materiality assessment based on what we believe were and still are our stakeholders’ values and our internal leadership views and attitude on ESG, in light of our missions and business strategy, our 2023 workplan was designed and prioritized in consideration with such materiality assessment.
Sustainability
In 2023 Global-e initiated preliminary steps towards assessing and potentially reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with our operations. Recognizing the impact of our activities on the environment, we have started exploring measures to reduce our carbon footprint.
We have always considered the importance of energy efficiency within our office spaces. We have recently adopted facility management policy. We aspire to explore how we can reduce waste generation in our offices, focusing on identifying opportunities to reduce use of paper (by setting a must-have only printing policy, and have reduced significantly the use of disposables including paper cups in our largest office location in Israel), as well as taking steps to implementing recycling practices (for example, in our London office, which is our second largest office facility). For example, the policy requires us to donate unused electrical appliances to non-profit organizations and schools, and placed measures to using only wired computer accessories to limit the use of battery.
We have initiated collaborative discussions with our carriers to jointly assess the measuring of carbon footprint associated with transportation and logistics. These collaborative assessments will inform future strategies for emissions reduction within our supply chain. We are pleased with our carrier network for having their own programs and initiatives, and while we cannot directly influence the scope or success of such programs, we believe that having our lion-share shipments carried through such network, has a meaningful contribution to any carbon-reduction goals.
In collaboration with some of our carriers, we were able to pilot a proposed rate card that incorporates optional offsetting fees for GHG emissions. This initiative aims to encourage and facilitate carbon-neutral shipping options for our merchants. We cannot control or impact our merchants’ choice or the actual offering made by such carriers, but we remain committed to making such rate cards available as part of our proposition as long is the carriers make it available on their end. We believe that such offering echoes the importance of emissions reduction along the supply chain.
In tandem with our efforts to address GHG emissions, Global-e is considering initiatives related to circular economy. Global-e has commenced internal preliminary mapping of areas where circular economy modalities could be applied. We are in the early stages of engaging with our carriers and other vendors to explore circular economy initiatives collaboratively. We are committed to taking on these initial steps and further considering and integrating sustainability considerations into our business practices and commercial offering. These efforts align with our commitment to responsible corporate citizenship and addressing the environmental impact of our operations.
While the steps taken are in an early stage, Global-e views sustainability as an ongoing journey, and we are dedicated to exploring and implementing initiatives that could positively contribute to the environment and support sustainability.
Employee Recruitment, Retention and Engagement
Our workforce has grown significantly in recent periods, and that has, and continues to require us to seek to build and maintain a working environment that caters for employees motivation, talent, wellbeing and safety, while promoting personal and professional development.
We consider the needs of our clients in our existing and new markets for local culture and local business etiquette. In 2023, we continued to recruit relevant talent to strengthen our team capabilities in our offices worldwide. As we continue to grow our workforce and to expand geographically, diversity will continue to be important to who we are, allowing us to better serve our customers in a local culture fashion yet with a global expertise earned through cross-organizational collaboration.
We remained committed to creating an inclusive and diverse workplace where all employees feel valued and empowered. We acknowledge the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion in driving innovation, fostering creativity, and promoting long-term sustainability. In 2023 we took some initial yet meaningful strides in enhancing our commitment to DEI within the organization. We also take our legal responsibilities seriously, and our DEI efforts are and will continue to be undertaken in a manner that is consistent with applicable law. As part of our workplan, we considered and undertook various initiatives to measure and plan how to address DEI gaps and promote a culture of diversity and equality. The Executive Committee is responsible for the governance of our DEI roadmap planning and execution, in consultation with its member, our VP of Human Resources. We call out the following items for the past few periods:
1. DEI Gap Assessment: With the support of the PWC Israel, Risk and Forensic Services, ESG group, we conducted preliminary assessment to identify areas of improvement and opportunities for enhancing diversity and inclusion across various facets of the organization, including but not limited to hiring, promotion, and professional development.
2. Policy Development: in tandem with the abovementioned assessment, which was designed in accordance with our management’s guidelines and spirit, and in alignment with industry standards, we initiated the development of DEI policies aimed at providing better guidelines for promoting diversity and equal opportunities within the organization, initially aiming to serve as a guide to the Human Resources (HR) team.
3. Measurement and Analytics: With the support and guidance of PWC Israel, ESG group, we built a matrix of available measurable data, based on industry standard metrics and parameters. This includes the collection and analysis of relevant data to assess the representation of diverse groups in different departments and levels of the organization, in a manner consistent with applicable data privacy laws. On the date of this Annual Report, we are still in the process of analyzing the data we gathered.
While initial steps were made, it is important to note that the DEI forward plan is still under development. We are committed to keep on building the foundation laid during the previous financial year and continuing to prioritize diversity, equity, and inclusion in our long-term strategy, all based on measurable data and in conformity to our management’s visions and spirit, aligned with industry best practices and recognized reporting standards. We recognize that DEI is an ongoing journey, and we are committed to furthering such efforts. Among other things, we are likely to consider initiatives associated with DEI data measuring, analysis and supporting policies, and training programs.
Human Capital Development, Compensation and Evaluation
We value the uniqueness of each of our employees. We appreciate the talent and the caring they put into their work in making us a better organization, which in turn defines our culture, and eventually will make our business strategy, our solutions and our services better. We therefore always aim to encourage and promote our employees’ talent, ambition and sense of devotion.
We seek to provide and constantly develop compensation and equity incentive plans that will remain attractive and rewarding. As such, we offer both stock-based and cash-based compensation awards (in each case subject to eligibility criteria) that are designed to commensurate individual performance and meeting objectives.
Our recruitment spans through students, junior professionals through senior seasoned executives. None of our employees is represented by a labor organization or is a party to a collective bargaining arrangement or expansion orders of such arrangements, with the exception of a small number of employees in France, Spain, Australia and Israel who are covered by mandatory industry-wide collective bargaining agreements in accordance with local law.
We are extremely proud of our employees. In 2023, more than 70 employees (approximately 7.5% of our global workforce) were promoted or assumed new roles within the organization. We believe that such vote of confidence is the result of our culture.
During 2023 our hybrid remote work policies remained in place, enabling our employees to work remotely for parts of the work-week, while still fully operating all our office facilities, and maintaining health and safety measures.
We consider inclusive work culture to be an important criterion in promoting collaboration and transparency among our employees, while still offering private spaces for personal and professional needs. To that end, we strive to have an open workspace with optimized balance between team collaboration and private space.
We offer our employees opportunities to acquire new skills, and to develop through exploration, experience and learning, by providing them learning and development programs. We have a dedicated personnel within our Human Resources team, supervised by our executive leadership, who focus, and will continue to focus, on developing learning, training and growth policies and plans, through internal and external platforms, to be made available for our people worldwide. The Juno Journey platform, which was implemented in 2022, offered tens of thousands of external learning resources from which each employee could choose for own personal and professional growth path. The use of Juno as part of our new-employee induction and training program supported the onboarding of our new hires in 2023, where all new hires used Juno as part of their induction training. Over 70% of our employees are actively using the platform. We have allocated each employee an annual budget allowing them to attend, on average, 2-3 courses of their choice. We continued to create and develop in-house courses and professional sessions covering our products, technology and offering.
In parallel, we started building our in-house competence development program. The program is expected to focus mostly on spreading the knowledge about our solution across all verticals in the organization.
In an effort to promote candid and effective dialog between employees and their managers with a view to contribute to career development and personal accomplishments, we carried on with our annual review processes for all employees across the world, making the process streamlined and efficient. In 2023, employees went through their annual performance review, the vast majority of them within the first two months from the end of 2022, and complete salary review withing the first quarter of 2023. Any annual performance and goals review is based on personal individual work and development plan with specific objectives and, if applicable, resource requirements, always attempting to balance between business needs and personal aspirations and targets.
Business Ethics
Our unique position as an e-commerce enabler comes with great responsibility to the value chain stakeholders – our merchants (brands and retailers), our consumer shoppers and the vendors we work with or collaborate when we perform our services. We aim to hold ourselves to the highest standard of business and professional ethics, and expect our stakeholders to do the same. We are committed to making equal and unbiased selection of partners, honor our promises and commitments, and stay accountable to our actions and choices towards our stakeholders.
Being a founder-led organization, operating under the oversight of our Board of Directors and its committees, we are committed to the values and standards of behavior set forth in our Code of Conduct. We will keep our employees appraised of the code by annual training and making it available to all, including by reference in our service contracts with our merchants. Our Board of Directors, with the support of our management, has recently conducted a review of the Code of Conduct to reaffirm our commitment to maintaining the highest standards of integrity, transparency, and ethical behavior in all aspects of our operation. No material changes were made in the course of such recent review of the Code of Conduct.
Board Composition
We are privileged to have experienced industry-relevant leaders as our members of the Board of Directors. The members of our Board of Directors bring years of leadership experience, making it fit for overseeing our organization’s governance and compliance. We maintain a majority independent Board of Directors, with five independent directors. We believe our Board of Directors demonstrates balanced perspectives of relatively newly appointed directors and required industrial knowledge from the more tenured directors. Under the supervision of the NGSC, we previously conducted Board of Directors and Committee evaluation to facilitate an assessment of the performance of the Board of Directors and its Committee and assessing its strengths and weaknesses and laying a foundation for discussion and future improvement. 3 of our directors self-identify as women or non-binary, and 2 self-identify as members of traditionally underrepresented racial/ethnic groups in their home jurisdiction.
(*) These statements are based on information available to us as of the date they are made, and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, some of which are outside of our control. While we believe that our current information provides a reasonable basis for these statements, that information may be limited, incomplete or inaccurate. Our statements should not be read to indicate that we have conducted an exhaustive inquiry into, or review of, all relevant information. We may also provide information herein that is not “material” under the federal securities laws for SEC reporting purposes, including information that is informed by various ESG standards and frameworks and the interests of various stakeholders. Much of this information is subject to assumptions, estimates or third-party information that is still evolving and subject to change. For example, our disclosures based on any standards may change due to revisions in framework requirements, availability of information, changes in our business or applicable government policies, or other factors, some of which may be beyond our control.