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Building a Culture of Development: How Gildan Supports Its People

T.GIL | November 7, 2024

NORTHAMPTON, MA / ACCESSWIRE / November 7, 2024 / "We believe in our people" and "We act like entrepreneurs" are two core values, part of Gildan's DNA. While the former signifies the Company's belief in succeeding through teamwork and collaboration, the latter highlights the Company's entrepreneurial spirit and leadership's passion to do more, do better, and continue driving the organization's growth and success. A large part of these values is Gildan's commitment to empowering its employees and ensuring they have the right resources available to collaborate and take ownership of their careers. This is why the Company invests in identifying, creating, and providing Learning and Development (L&D) opportunities, allowing both employees and the organization to advance.

We sat down with Cristal De la Cruz, Manager of Global Organizational Development (OD) at Gildan to learn more about Learning and Development (L&D), its importance at Gildan, and how the Company builds a culture of development to drive talent further.

Can you speak about the importance of L&D at Gildan and how the Company approaches talent development?

At Gildan, we are constantly looking for opportunities to allow our employees to reach their full potential within the organization. This starts first and foremost with openness and transparency when it comes to the employee's development aspirations and needs. So, encouraging a culture where that is conducive is something we consistently try to reinforce. We encourage our employees and managers to have regular and transparent feedback sessions, identifying employees' strengths, competencies, and gaps, both on an individual level, and in terms of their larger role at the organization. By facilitating these conversations through our performance management process, known internally as GPAT, we help the organization gain insight into its talent, and also allow employees themselves to recognize what they need to achieve their professional objectives.

This is where L&D comes in. The L&D function defines the best approach and provides the tools to continuously cultivate our talented workforce of over 45,000 people, such that they are able to bring their talent to areas that are meaningful to them and find their true fit at the organization.

How does Gildan go about creating a culture of development?

Our approach to creating such a culture is to provide the tools and resources employees may need to propel their development, and make sure people are aware of these tools' availability. For instance, we provide our administrative employees with Gildan Academy, an online resource consisting of training modules from a wide range of areas, including leadership, technical development, DEI, cybersecurity, health and safety, and more, all offered in alignment with Gildan's competency framework. With Gildan Academy, our networked employees have access to L&D resources right at their fingertips! Last year, administrative employees completed over 35,000 hours of training through Gildan Academy. In addition, we regularly send a newsletter to our employees, imparting knowledge about a certain development topic, highlighting Gildan Academy courses to supplement it, and motivating people to continue their development journey.

For our hourly employees as well, there are multiple training opportunities available. For example, in Honduras and the Dominican Republic, we offer a nine-month long Mechanic School program, allowing employees to develop theoretical and practical knowledge about Gildan's production teams. In Honduras, we run the Six Sigma Academy, training employees to solve problems using data, optimize processes, and reduce waste. In addition, we are constantly looking to build partnerships with local and external vendors to provide technical training to our employees. All these programs, created in response to our employees' actual needs, encourage people to participate and engage in development. A testament to this is the 2.5 million hours of training completed in 2023 by our employees across the organization, including technical, production floor-related, and leadership and mandatory training.

You mentioned Gildan's competency framework. Can you tell us more about that? How does that play a role in building a culture of development at the Company?

Gildan's competency framework was created to highlight what success looks like at every level of the Company, and it acts as a guide for employees and people leaders alike to chart an employee's advancement at the organization. The framework, which consists of five core competencies, came about as a product of evaluating what the organization needs, as well as the Company's core values. Employees are encouraged to benchmark themselves against proficiency scales for each of the core competencies and become aware of the skills needed for a current or future position.

This self-awareness within each employee feeds into the organization's culture of taking ownership of one's development, encouraging employees to leverage available L&D opportunities and advance their careers.

Can you tell us about some of the L&D programs initiated by Gildan's team and how these help employees, as well as the organization, advance?

One of our most popular programs is Leading the Gildan Way (LTGW), a 10-month training equipping first-line managers from all locations to lead and inspire teams in line with Gildan's core values. This program is an investment in Gildan's next generation, equipping them with the leadership skills needed to manage talent. In the five years since this program's initiation, more than 600 managers across eight countries have completed the training, which includes in-person and virtual sessions, and collaborative learning with peers.

Another one of my favourites is the Women in Leadership (WIL) - Ignite Your Impact program. This six-month program is offered to approximately 20 women at the manager-level and above each year, providing them with hands-on training, development, and networking opportunities. Of all the WIL graduates we've had so far, 45% have been promoted or have made lateral movements within the organization. Last year, we introduced a new component to this program, implementing activities connecting all the past cohorts and strengthening the community of women leaders at Gildan.

Our newest program, ASPIRE, is an intensive program for directors, strengthening their skills in crisis management, inclusive leadership, and driving change. Last year, 20 directors from different locations graduated from this program, and we intend to continue providing it over the coming years.

What's next for L&D at Gildan?

L&D is a continuous journey, evolving as the organization and our employees evolve. Our team is always looking for solutions to help our employees and the organization meet their targets more efficiently. For instance, this year, in response to feedback from regional HR teams and past cohorts of our leadership programs including WIL, ASPIRE, and LTGW, we improved the candidate selection method by initiating a self-nomination process. Now, managers at Gildan who believe they may benefit from these programs can nominate themselves as participants. In addition to encouraging people to take their development into their own hands, this new method inspires Gildan's employees' entrepreneurial spirit.

We are also continuously revamping our learning programs to respond to business realities and always reviewing our internal L&D processes to continue to enhance and strengthen Gildan's learning and development framework. In 2023, we administered our latest Global Employee and Engagement Survey which allowed us to understand how we could best support our workforce across various departments and regions. We look forward to using the learnings from this survey to continue implementing impactful L&D solutions across the organization and contributing to Gildan's growth.

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