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Embracing Inclusion and Diversity


To support TJX’s future growth, we are continually looking for enthusiastic and committed individuals from a broad range of backgrounds and experiences to join our team. We believe that the diversity of our Associates makes us a stronger Company and better able to serve our customers around the world. We also believe that creating an inclusive environment in which Associates are engaged and empowered strengthens our business and fosters a culture where Associates are inspired to work hard, challenge themselves, and be innovative in their thinking. At TJX, inclusion and diversity are both important to us. We encourage partnerships among leaders, managers, and Associates so all Associates feel welcome in the Company, valued for their contributions, and engaged with our business mission.

Diversity Presents Itself in Many Ways

The Diversity Wheel focuses on specific aspects of race, ethnicity, age, gender, sexual orientation/gender identity, creed, national origin, mental/physical ability, socioeconomic status, work experience, education, political belief, organizational role, language/communication skills, and appearance.

Adapted from Johns Hopkins Diversity Wheel from http://web.jhu.edu/dlc/resources/diversity_wheel/


Our Differences Make Us Stronger



Each one of our Associates brings something unique to our collective culture – a diversity of experience, gender identities, race, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, ability, and more. At TJX, diversity is not something we mark off of a checklist; it is something we continuously value and celebrate.

Women are an important part of our diverse workforce, and we are proud of the strong representation of women across our workplace, including an increasing percentage of our leadership team.

Globally, women make up 78% of our total workforce, and they hold 67% of our managerial positions.1,2 Further, women are strongly represented in our more senior ranks, with women comprising 53% of Assistant Vice President and above positions, 44% of Vice President and above positions, and 42% of Senior Vice President and above positions. Additionally, averaged over the past three years, women earned 78% of our promotions. We are also proud that six of the 13 members of our Board of Directors are women as of October 2020.

Our workforce also reflects a diversity of races, ethnicities, cultures, and nationalities. In the U.S., members of racially or ethnically diverse groups comprise 57% of our total workforce and 34% of managerial positions.3 We know we can do better and want to increase the number of people of color, including Black Associates, within management.

At TJX, we have high management tenure rates. We are pleased with the stability of our leadership team, which gives us the benefit of years of off-price retail experience to provide to our newer team members. We continue to strive towards a more diverse workforce across our Company at every level, and we are moving our programs forward with a goal of continuous improvement.



STANDING FOR RACIAL JUSTICE AND CREATING OPPORTUNITIES


As we have shared, inclusion and diversity have long been a priority at TJX, but we recognize that now, more than ever, we need to continue working to do more and be better. At TJX, we stand with our Black Associates, customers, and communities, and we stand for racial justice. We know that action is required to make a difference. Our programs need to be incorporated into our ongoing development efforts, and sustainable to have real long term impact.

In the near term, in addition to making contributions to organizations that are focused on supporting racial justice and equity, we are committed to taking action to further strengthen our inclusion and diversity programs. Ultimately, we want our Associates to be heard and actively engaged in our journey as we build out and execute longer-term plans.

We have conducted virtual discussion sessions and town halls for Associates across all regions that provided a forum for open and honest conversations about racial justice and equity. From that starting point, we are focusing on these critical areas:

  • Foster Honest Conversations – Our success is built on relationships, and our core values of honesty, integrity, and treating each other with dignity and respect are the foundations for these relationships. We recognize that we need to listen, learn, empathize, and make it okay to talk openly about racial injustice as we build an even more inclusive environment. We are committed to helping our Associates at all levels learn how to have these important and honest conversations. In the short term, we have provided additional access to our online inclusion learning resources available to all Associates, including "Supporting Your Teams: Making It Okay to Talk about Racial Injustice" and "Coming Together as a Community: Creating a Space to Talk about Racial Injustice." We have plans to continue building programs that support this effort.
  • Education – Following up on a large-scale Associate training program on unconscious bias that we started conducting two years ago, we have expanded our online training on inclusivity, including sessions that help team leaders guide open conversations with Associates and ultimately grow our collective capacity to be champions for racial justice. We are hosting orientations around the world to educate Associates about our current inclusion and diversity approach, which will be followed by more in-depth "Being Inclusive" education sessions.
  • Engagement – We are hosting focus groups globally to gain Associate feedback and their thoughts on future efforts and have created a central resource center for leaders to support them in engaging with their teams.
  • Career Building – Several of our long-term charitable partners focus on expanding educational and career development opportunities for the Black community. Internally, TJX has strong resources to help Associates develop professionally, including our Global Leadership Curriculum. We also help create access for Associates to a variety of external professional development programs for our diverse workforce from organizations such as the NAACP, the National Urban League, The Partnership, the National Hispanic Corporate Council, Conexion, Disability:IN, and Diversity Best Practices. We intend to continue to expand these offerings so that we can grow a more inclusive and diverse organization at all levels, and, more importantly, support access to management opportunities for diverse and talented Associates.

These are short-term steps. Standing for racial justice and creating opportunities is a long-term commitment for TJX, and we look forward to continuing to report on our efforts. More information on our existing, inclusion-related programs is available below under Inclusion-Building Activities and Awareness.


Pay Equity


At TJX, we are firmly committed to pay equity and fostering an inclusive and diverse environment that provides attractive and accessible opportunities throughout our organization. As a large, complex, and global business, we believe it is imperative that we attract and retain the best talent for TJX at all levels and in all functions. We have designed compensation structures intended to pay our Associates competitively in the market and equitably based on their skills, qualifications, role, and abilities, and we are proud that women fulfill many key roles across the company. We have long-standing processes in place to monitor and support the objective evaluation and approval of compensation decisions in the many geographies where we operate. Our incentive plans have emphasized objective, performance-based pay and team-based execution of our business goals across the company.

We have expanded our efforts to include a pay equity analysis of our U.S. workforce that covers gender and race/ethnicity. We are pleased to report that, in the U.S., accounting for job title, geography, and full- or part-time status, we found, on average, no meaningful difference in base pay between Associates based on gender or race/ethnicity at TJX.

We intend to monitor our processes and review our data periodically to support our goal of continuing to compensate our Associates equitably based on their skills, qualifications, role, and abilities.


OUR APPROACH TO INCLUSION: WELCOME, VALUED, ENGAGED


Our culture places great value on relationships, which has been a key to our success since our founding and is a guiding factor driving our inclusion efforts. We encourage Associates to form strong, lasting relationships with each other. We recognize that our commitment to this relationship development must include ensuring that Associates feel welcome, valued, and engaged if they are to make a long-term commitment to TJX. We strongly believe that:

  • TJX Associates who feel welcome want to come to work. One way we help our Associates feel welcome is by encouraging them to bring their whole self to work and provide their unique perspectives to the business.
  • TJX Associates who feel valued have an emotional connection to their job, not just an economic one. We help Associates understand that we want to listen to what they have to say, and we appreciate their perspective and experience.
  • TJX Associates who are engaged see the significance of their contributions to our organization. We seek out our Associates opinions and ideas. Associates who want to come to work and have an emotional connection to their job are fully engaged with our mission of delivering off-price value to our customers.

Our goal is to equip our Associates with the tools and support needed to further enhance a workplace culture of inclusion. Across our regions, we have formal and informal initiatives underway to foster this.

78%

of promotions globally earned by women, on average, over the past three years


  • INCLUSION-BUILDING ACTIVITIES AND AWARENESS

    We do not tolerate harassment or discrimination, and we expect Associates to treat each other with dignity and respect. These expectations are reinforced to all Associates in the TJX Global Code of Conduct. In addition, engagement and learning about our inclusive culture begins almost right away for our new Associates. In 2019, we rolled out a global new hire orientation program that included a video and supporting materials discussing our approach to inclusion and our Welcome, Valued, and Engaged goals. We are excited to be able to deliver a unified message across the Company that lets our new hires know that inclusion and diversity are parts of our culture that we truly value.

    In addition to our global efforts, our various regions have inclusion-related activities. Below are examples of our initiatives.

    U.S.

    Raising awareness of unintentional bias is woven throughout our U.S. operations, including through onboarding, store communications, learning tools, processes, and more. In 2018, over 190,000 U.S. Store Associates participated in an unconscious bias training, designed to raise awareness of unintentional biases and provide the knowledge and tools needed to identify and mitigate them. In 2019, this training became part of the new hire and new manager orientations across the organization. It is available on the Company intranet and is refreshed periodically in our stores. Throughout the year, we have kept the dialogue going through ongoing conversations. For example, we have provided talking points and scenarios for Store Managers to use during Associate shift “huddles.” In the U.S., store managers also have a tool called “Culture Pulse” available to them. Culture Pulse helps store teams gauge performance in the areas of customer engagement and in their connections with each other.

    In the U.S., we have formal groups established to support Associate engagement around inclusion and diversity. These Associate Resource Groups are one of many key components for us in fostering an inclusive workplace. The groups offer networking, development, and support for new and long-time Associates and are open to Associates in our corporate offices, loss prevention (LP) departments, and select distribution centers. In 2019, these Groups featured events like “Being the Authentic You,” women’s leadership days, and a Hispanic heritage celebration.

    We aim to celebrate diversity in other ways as well. For example, our U.S. distribution centers fly the flags of countries represented by our Associate base and celebrate key holidays that are important to our diverse Associates. And, we have a large presence in several annual PRIDE parades.

    Our policies and practices also reflect our philosophy of inclusion. For example, prior to nationwide recognition of same-sex marriage in the U.S., TJX offered benefits to same-sex domestic partners who did not have access to marriage. Today, we are pleased that our benefits program provides benefits to same-sex married Associates and their spouses. We also offer transgender-inclusive healthcare benefits and related healthcare services, as well as Workplace Gender Transition Guidelines and a Workplace Gender Transition Plan template, which are designed to help transitioning Associates, their managers, and human resources partners ensure that adequate support is in place prior to, during, and after transition for those Associates. Additionally, we have updated our dress code policy to make it more gender-neutral and we have an enhanced parental leave policy. We are proud to have scored a 100 on the Corporate Equality Index of the U.S.-based Human Rights Campaign in nine of the past 12 years and earned the highest ranking in the Human Rights Campaign’s “Buying for Workplace Equality” guide.

    Canada

    In Canada, we have diversity committees in our home office and distribution centers as well as a diversity representative in stores. We also have a Values Committee in the home office for coordinating inclusion-focused events. We offer formal programs, such as “A Winning Balance,” to help Associates better understand their teams and be more effective leaders, and “DRIVE,” which stands for delivering results, innovation, value, and engagement. In addition, we have informal processes across the organization, such as pre-shift “huddle” discussions and short “did you know” postings that cover topics that support our goals for driving inclusion and diversity. In an effort to inspire, motivate, and reinforce Associate morale, TJX stores run The JOY Project, a customer service and Associate engagement initiative. This effort works to build strong connections between managers, Associates, and customers, and recognizes behaviors that mirror important aspects of our culture.

    We also aim to celebrate diversity. As in the U.S., we participate in annual PRIDE parades across Canada, and we also host a diversity picnic at our home office that kicks off with an Associate huddle around why diversity is important to us.

    Europe

    In Europe, we are investing in additional training related to inclusion and diversity, designed to continue to foster a creative, inclusive, respectful, and productive workforce. An important part of the process is to continue to seek feedback from a broad range of Associates. We have focus groups across our organization to drive deeper insight into the day to day experience of working with us. We have developed a partnership with Everywoman, which works with organizations to enhance opportunities for women to flourish. We are focusing initially on our processing centers and working on career development for all of our processing center Associates, both women and men.

    We are passionate about continuing to provide attractive and accessible opportunities throughout our organization for Associates to fulfill their potential. We plan to continue to work on solutions that build on our existing Associate engagement program to support the needs of our diverse Associate population.

  • EXTERNAL RECOGNITION

    We’re proud of what we are doing. However, we are striving to move our programs forward with a goal of continuous improvement. Below are some distinctions our work has received:

    • In 2019, Forbes Magazine listed TJX among America's Best Employers, Best Employers for Diversity, and Best Employers for Women.
    • In 2019, TJX was honored with Color Magazine’s All-Inclusive Award in the category of Change Agent and named a Best of the Best Employer by Black EOE Journal, Hispanic Network magazine, and Professional Woman’s magazine.
    • TJX has scored 100 on the Corporate Equality Index of the U.S.-based Human Rights Campaign in nine of the past 12 years. In 2020, we scored 90.
    • TJX has been named a Top Entry-Level Employer by CollegeGrad.com every year since 2014 and was also named a Top Intern Employer in 2019.
    • Since 2014, TJX Canada has been named as one of the Best Workplaces in Canada by Great Place to Work.
    • For the fifth consecutive year, TJX Europe was recognized by TheJobCrowd, receiving first place for Top Graduate and Apprenticeship Programmes in Retail in 2019. We also ranked as a Top 50 Retail Company for Apprentices, Top 50 Company for Apprentices - Career Progression, and Top 50 Company for Apprentices – Management in 2019.

1Managerial positions are defined as Assistant Store Manager (or equivalent level) and above across the Company.
2Statistics cited in this section are for TJX's Fiscal Year 2020, which ended February 1, 2020.
3Data on ethnic and racial diversity not available outside the U.S. Statistics for U.S. Associates are based on racial/ethnic designations used by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.