We are constantly transforming Falabella, where we are guided by our purpose of simplifying and enjoying life. People are the most important aspect of this journey. Therefore, we care for our people, we encourage continuous learning and create opportunities to empower them and help them to discover their purpose.
By caring for our people, we also protect how we do business. Check out the many ways we create value for our people!
An organization based on respect and opportunities
We believe that everyone has the right to education and work. Therefore, we are taking great strides to equip our people and others for the future.
Check out our main initiatives
+ Declaration of principles
Falabella is aware of the social impact of its business on people’s quality of life in each country. Accordingly, we participate in initiatives that foster respect for Human Rights, we support the principles enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Sodimac S.A., Mall Plaza S.A. and Falabella Retail S.A. have adopted the United Nations Global Compact and they communicate and comply with its principles, as these relate to human rights, labor relations, the environment and anti-corruption.
+ Falabella Salary
At Falabella we constantly work to raise the living standards of our employees. That is why we make sure to comply with local regulations in terms of payment of remuneration and we work to grant better conditions day by day.
In this sense, we have standardized systems and practices that allow us to ensure a salary in line with the growing costs of living in each country where we have operations. Our corporate methodology aims to analyze annually that our salaries are competitive, that they are in accordance with the levels of responsibility and relative weight of each position within the company, as well as that they adjust to the local reality and cost of living of the markets in that we operate Thus, our methodology is based on a combination of studies and recognized methodologies, which include an annual study of market wages and the cost of living in each country where we operate. For the former, we have a global job evaluation tool called IPE (International Position Evaluation) and a salary study TRS (Total Remuneration Survey), both delivered by the consulting firm Mercer. Additionally, we rely on various specialized studies to estimate the cost of living in each country, following the guidelines of the Ancker methodology to contemplate the standardized basket of products and services that includes food, housing, clothing, health, transportation and personal care items. . Combining the analysis of the aforementioned studies, we review each year the salary position of our collaborators, plan corrective actions and update our standards.
+ A fairer and socially inclusive company
A fundamental aspect of our purpose is to make life more enjoyable for people. This includes everyone, whether they are customers, suppliers or employees. It includes every individual, regardless of their personal characteristics. This purpose is achieved by creating more than 100,000 jobs around the world, which challenges us to produce opportunities for a wide range of people that contribute to the economic and social development of each country. This commitment is reflected in our corporate people strategy, where a key component is promoting diversity, equity and inclusion, and this is reflected in the following specific initiatives:
- Firstly, we have a Diversity and Inclusion Policy that focuses on gender equality, sexual diversity and people with disabilities. These initiatives are led by employees, such as the Connected Women Network and the LGBT+ and Aliad@s community, which raise awareness and arrange specific initiatives that improve inclusion for these groups, such as mentoring, webinars, training in reducing bias, and other initiatives. We have also developed alliances with the Con Trabajo Foundation and the Pride Connection network.
Further details of our D&I initiatives can be found here
- Secondly, we established a Digital College in 2021. This is a labor retraining program that helps our employees to participate in digital transformation, by providing them with the skills to learn, develop and subsequently reposition themselves in a digital role. At Falabella we are aware that digitalization and automation can affect the employment opportunities for significant groups of people, so we have been proactively preparing our employees to meet our future skills requirements, which increases their employability not only within Falabella, but in any organization. Some 300 people from Colombia, Peru and Chile have participated in the first two courses, and we hope that the third course will triple this number.
Further details of this initiative can be found within this section in "Building opportunities and a high-growth culture"
- Thirdly, Falabella supports the employability of underprivileged groups within the workforce. We are fiercely committed to the future of Latin America, and we support individual development that begins with their education. For more than 50 years, Falabella's “Haciendo Escuela” Program has provided a better future for vulnerable children and their families by providing them with access to high quality education and socio-emotional development activities. The program receives corporate support, together with voluntary support from Falabella's own employees. Currently, the Haciendo Escuela program impacts the lives of more than 80,000 children in 99 schools near our stores in Chile, Peru and Colombia.
Further details of our programs can be found in the "Social Impact" section.
- Finally, each Falabella business has their own practices that aim to achieve this purpose. The most important of these programs are those that foster inclusion for people with disabilities, which include alliances with specialized organizations, such as Best Buddies in Falabella Retail for people with cognitive disabilities, and “Inclúyeme en FIF” that builds social and labor inclusion for people with disabilities. We also have programs that support people in vulnerable situations, including Sodimac's alliances with the Forge Foundation in Uruguay that hires vulnerable students, Senac and CIEE in Brazil that provides professional development for adolescents, and the “Soy Más” Foundation in Chile that finds jobs for vulnerable single mothers.
At Falabella we respect people's dignity, promote equal opportunities, treat our employees equally, and we discourage conduct that results in arbitrary discrimination. We prohibit the violation of human rights among our employees or third parties involved in our business, and any breaches are sanctioned by our internal regulations. We are also committed to developing alliances with suppliers who share our dedication to conducting our business in a legal, ethical and socially responsible manner.
Check out our Business and Human Rights Policy by clicking here
We evolve in response to changes in people’s requirements
We focus on improving the well-being, health and confidence of the people within our organization. We are committed to providing high quality employment in each country.
Check out our main initiatives!
+ Enjoying life
At Falabella we are committed to the well-being of our employees, because we know that attracting and retaining the best talent requires providing them with a working climate that meets modern expectations, where a healthy balance between work and personal life is assured. We have several initiatives and programs that aim to achieve this purpose
We ensure that we comply with the regulations in each country, but we also implement additional measures that protect our employees, in accordance with their working circumstances:
- We monitor the overtime worked by employees on a fixed schedule, in order to raise the alarm when it significantly increases for one or more people. We recruit people on fixed-term contracts for periods when retail demand is high, in order to avoid increasing the working hours of employees with indefinite contracts.
- We promote labor flexibility for professionals and executives in corporate functions and focus on meeting objectives. We encourage all our businesses to autonomously set their remote and on-site working schedules, while ensuring that there is sufficient common working time for collaboration, and always complying with the labor regulations in each country. We have arranged campaigns to protect rest periods and encouraged respect for lunch and departure times. We motivate leaders to set an example and avoid contacting employees outside working hours.
This all takes place in a multicultural context, with multiple time zones and lifestyles. We are committed to achieving an adequate balance for all our employees, by finding creative ways of working that allow us to collaborate and rest, even when there are time differences of up to 12 hours between countries.
“I just got out of our weekly HR meeting and for a moment while listening to Antonella, who is from Argentina and lives in Uruguay, I started thinking about how the way we work and with whom we work has changed. There was also Jaxa, who is English but who works in our office in India, a destination that at another time I would have thought was far away, and that I now feel so close to. Then Luis Carlos, who is Colombian, and I remembered that he had gone on a trip to the United States with his family from where he was teleworking for a couple of weeks. And the rest of the team was in Chile, but not all in the same office and some not even in Santiago. At that moment, I realized that the "future of work" arrived a long time ago and I felt more than ever that we have been creating a culture where there are no limits or borders, and that it does not matter where you open your computer from, the important thing is that we are a team and we are united by the passion to simplify and enjoy life more”.
Francisca Prieto, Chief People Officer, Falabella SA.
+ Listening channels
Our teams use various listening and communication mechanisms to help us understand what really matters to our employees and third parties. There are three main channels:
- Unions
At Falabella we have 214 unions as of June 30, 2021, who represent approximately 35,000 employees. We strive to continually communicate with them through regular meetings and collective bargaining. We adapt these processes to the legislation and context that applies to each country. We ensure that we are constantly aware of our employees’ needs using various internal procedures, for example:
- We have departments that specialize in Labor Relations and we use a Collective Bargaining Model that regularly involves various factions to represent the company.
- We use several communication channels to maintain a continual dialog with union leaders, such as instant messaging, e-mail and telephone calls.
- We have invited our employees to form Joint Health and Safety Committees, so they can become representatives and organizational agents for hygiene and occupational health and safety issues, sexual harassment prevention, and other issues.
- We integrate union presentations into our induction programs.
We have continuous listening mechanisms that not only apply to unionized employees. For example, we have working climate and similar surveys, which continually assess employees' perceptions of their experience at work. We designed a corporate listening strategy during 2021, which integrates this approach and aims to foster excellent work experience across all our businesses. A fundamental part of the corporate people strategy is promoting a good quality of life.
- Integrity Channel
We have an Integrity Channel that is managed by the Corporate Ethics department in each country. This is a powerful and useful mechanism for employees and third parties to clarify doubts or report behavior that does not comply with Falabella's Integrity Code. This channel is anonymous, confidential and non-retaliatory, which gives users security and peace of mind. We also have integrity counselors, who are employees selected from our business units that have been specially trained to deal with complaints, advise employees and resolve doubts.
+ Occupational health and safety
In Falabella we are committed to the mental and physical health and safety of our people, our visitors and others who work for us and with us, and we have accordingly introduced various measures that make our facilities safe and healthy places.
Our proactive strategies are aimed at enhancing the health and wellbeing of our people and will contribute to improved safety outcomes. For all our operations and subsidiaries , we commit to:
- Continue providing, maintaining and improving a safety-first workplace culture and environment where we take care of each other, supported by an integrated work health and safety management system.
- Ensure compliance and alignment with relevant international OHS regulations and standards, such as ISO 18001, which establishes legal compliance requirements and minimizes the risk of accidents and illnesses. These legal requirements apply to all our employees, contractors and customers, and are audited by internal entities.
- Taking all reasonably practicable measures to eliminate or, where that is not possible, minimize risks and impact to the physical and mental health , safety and wellbeing of our people and others using the hierarchy of controls and encouraging effective early intervention practices
- Fostering a collaborative and cooperative relationship with our people and other stakeholders through effective consultation regarding health, safety and wellbeing activities at work
- Providing effective information, wellbeing programs and training for our people
- Monitoring and evaluating work health and safety performance as part of a continual improvement process to assess the effectiveness of our work health and safety management system. Based on this monitoring, we establish internal priorities and action plans, supported by goals which help to improve OHS performance.
The Corporate Risk Committee is the highest decision-making body within the company, endorsing this commitment.
Following these commitments, each of our subsidiaries have implemented health and safety measures, which involve risk prevention programs and include the following procedures:
- OHS risk and hazard assessments to identify what could cause harm in the workplace: We have risk prevention experts and Health and Safety Committees at our stores and distribution centers, whose findings are reported directly by each business unit, in order to identify the main risks and subsequently integrate them into our continuous improvement processes. We have risk matrices that identify and verify risks, which are then weighted, prioritized and managed through an action plan that is regularly audited by internal audit teams. These action plans also include quantified targets, aimed at improving our performance on OHS indicators and risks.
- Response plans that prepare employees for incidents or emergency situations that may occur in operations
- Definition of internal objectives and KPIs in terms of accident rate, occupational injury and disease, and other relevant indicators, with proper procedures to investigate causes of such incidents.
- Establishment of roles and responsibilities throughout the company, including roles on an executive level for the supervising and correct implementation of these guidelines as part of the Operational Risk Management System, as well as periodic meetings between the areas involved.
- Implementation of a regular mandatory training in the company to install a culture of care in the face of OHS risks, such as instructing employees how to correctly use protective equipment, and ensure that all employees fully comply with prevention, hygiene and safety measures.
- Inclusion of clauses in supplier contracts and procurement processes , regarding OHS compliance with regulation.
Building opportunities and a high-growth culture
We focus on improving employees’ skills through agility and digital transformation, and we develop our employees using continuous learning.
Check out our main initiatives
+ Continuous learning
We now belong to a digital world, which requires us to continually adapt our processes and make them increasingly agile, efficient, innovative, flexible and collaborative for our customers.
Meeting these challenges requires developing both universal and specific skills within our teams. Therefore, Falabella is introducing measures that impart knowledge and promote continuous learning, which involves theoretical and practical training using both classroom and distance learning techniques. At Falabella we want our people to drive their own development by selecting their own training and participating in its design and implementation. This process contributes to a learning culture that impacts the professional development of each person, the objectives of the business, and collaboration throughout the organization.
We have specific local training programs at each business unit that aim to meet their specific skills requirements. These include training in culture, leadership, customers, technical skills, office automation, languages, diversity and inclusion, risk prevention, compliance, sustainability and technology.
We also have the following universal programs that are suitable for all business units:
- Ecosystem Leaders Program
The Falabella Academy runs this program and its objective is to develop the skills required to manage change and promote a shared value culture, which will contribute to the ecosystem, create training opportunities, transmit best practice and improve skills. It has three main aspects:
The course uses a learning platform that allows each user to select the skills required, in order to receive personalized suggestions associated with their interests. The content includes various training resources such as courses, lectures, asynchronous itineraries, articles, podcasts, videos and practical workshops.
- Digital Conversion Programs
The objective of the Digital College at the Falabella Academy is to help our employees to participate in transformation, by providing them with the skills to learn, develop and subsequently reposition themselves in a digital role.
- Front End Developer Bootcamps
- UX/UI Designer Bootcamp
Check out the testimonials here!!
- Sponsorship
This is financial support to educate executives at the best universities in the world in strategically important topics that will affect Falabella's future, in order to develop our employees. It targets MBA and Master's programs abroad.
Describe your experience under the Sponsorship program?
"Living in another country, sharing and making friends with people from all over the world, and learning from leading professors about current business, finance and economic issues was an incredible experience that gave me useful skills for both my professional and personal life." , Pamela Valdivieso, Banco Falabella Chile, MBA from the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago.
"When I returned to Chile, I could appreciate the advantages offered to Falabella’s employees, as the breadth of the ecosystem allows us to explore many roles and areas, such as technology, finance, strategy, commerce and e-commerce.” Joaquín de la Maza, Falabella.com, MBA from Harvard Business School.
"Graduate school has given me a completely different perspective of the business. Today I am leading a proposal on how to take the company to the next phase." Edna Pizón, Sodimac Colombia, Master in Business Analytics with Information Technology Concentration at the University of Michigan.
"They pay your tuition fees and suspend your employment contract, which gives you peace of mind that you're coming back. Furthermore, returning is quite comfortable, because the company evaluates your best options.” María Fernanda Vargas, Falabella.com, Master in Marketing Business Analysis at the University of Edinburgh.
- Talentum
This is a networking program between companies that accelerates the development or implementation of high criticality projects directly related to the ecosystem strategy. Each employee has a 6-week internship in another business, to work with different teams and learn new skills.
Check out the testimonials here!
We advertise responsibly
In Falabella we have a Policy for the Preparation of Advertising and Promotional Material.
The policy establishes the general principles to which all advertising and promotional material prepared by Falabella and its subsidiaries must adhere, to ensure compliance with the law and the values to which the organization adheres in this matter.
Some of the guiding principles established in the policy are, among others:
- Legality, which in turn includes:
- non-discrimination: can never communicate a discount sale or promotion arbitrarily discriminating for reasons of age, illness or disability, religion or beliefs, nationality, socioeconomic status, ideology or political opinion, ethnicity or origin, sex, gender identity or sexual orientation.
- non-exploitation: an advertising message aimed at commercially exploiting any person and, especially, children and/or adolescents, must never be communicated.
- respect for the competition; Falabella's advertising activity must always be respectful towards the competition and its products or services, the use of advertising resources that could mean the denigration or disparagement of a competitor being prohibited.
- Truthfulness: The information contained in Falabella's Advertising Communications must be real, true, and timely, and must include the conditions and other relevant and essential characteristics of the service or product in question.
- Transparency: All Advertising Communication must deliver a clear, understandable, and complete message, without omitting information that may be considered relevant or essential for the client.
We also established specific guidelines on language which is commonly used in advertising materials, such as “green”, “recyclable”, “sustainable”, “environmentally friendly”, etc. According to the precautions set, there must be adequate background information that proves the predicate attributes in relation to the specific product or service to which they refer.
Our Policy for the preparation of Advertising and Promotional Material can be found here.
We talk while looking you in the eye
At Banco Falabella we firmly believe that what is important is not what we do, but how and why we do it. Therefore, we provide continuous employee training to identify improvement opportunities in our services and keep them all aligned with the company's policies, under the motto "We talk while looking you in the eye".
How do we do it?
+ Responsible financing
Consumer loan sales at Banco Falabella are focused on people and on maintaining long-term relationships based on trust. We not only adapt to the particular requirements of each customer, but also to their current payment capabilities, so we can provide them with the best opportunities. We offer our customers three loan options, which are providing new loans, refinancing their current loans (with or without draw-downs), or consolidating their loans with other entities.
Our customers have various requirements and they can request a loan using the channel that best suits them. This can be a fully digital channel, such as our App or website, in person at any of our Banco Falabella or CMR branches, or by calling our call center.
+ Correct training and incentives
We have a consumer loan sales protocol that standardizes how we sell financial products, in order to provide our customers with good advice and information on how to use these products, which highlights their benefits, convenience and main features.
Accordingly, the steps are as follows:
- Understand the customer's requirements and offer the right kind of loan
- Explain the repayment installments, the Annual Percentage Rate (APR), the interest rate and the total cost of the loan. The customer should be advised that different loans for the same amount and term can be compared by examining the repayment installments or the APR.
- Explain the insurance policies associated with the loan, mention the benefits and costs of these insurance policies and indicate that all insurance is voluntary.
- Request the customer's contact information and their consent to processing that data, in strict compliance with current regulations.
- Explain the loan repayment methods.
- Explain the importance of paying installments on time, recommend that the customer always pays on time and describe the costs of delaying repayment installments, the late payment interest and collection costs. Specifically mention that late payment interest is charged on a daily basis and collection costs accrue from the 15th day.
The incentive policy for executives includes bonuses for meeting sales goals, but more importantly, rewards for achieving outstanding customer satisfaction, which reinforces good practices and discourages behavior that deviates from the Bank standards.
+ Financial literacy
Banco Falabella has an exhaustive communication plan that begins when the customer shows interest in requesting a loan, in order to build a relationship of trust with them. We start by asking for contact information, to keep the customer constantly informed about the status of their loan, our after-sales services and any opportunities to improve their loan conditions.
Nevertheless, we clearly publish on our website the terms and conditions that apply each of our financial products. When a customer expresses an interest in requesting a loan from us, we promptly and efficiently provide them with all the information required by the regulations for each stage in the contractual process.
We provide our customers with useful, accurate and timely information, in accordance with the features of each customer service channel, but with a special focus on presenting it in a clear, simple and transparent manner.
+ Focus on vulnerable segments
Consumer loan sales at Banco Falabella are focused on offering opportunities to individuals that meet their requirements, while always adapting this to their current repayment capabilities. We know that there are associated risks and that it is our responsibility to ensure that the customer has sufficient information and is fully aware of the financial consequences of these financial products.
Banco Falabella has a risk strategy based on rules and models developed using Machine Learning methods. This strategy can identify vulnerable segments with low repayment capabilities, in order to protect them from an increase in borrowing that they may not be able to afford. Therefore, the Bank evaluates our entire portfolio every month and protects it by limiting the expenses our customers can incur, to ensure that they do not exceed their current and future repayment capabilities.
A specific example of addressing and avoiding negative consequences for our customers is our Loan Sales Protocol. It sets out the obligation to always recommend that the customer pays on time. Otherwise within a set period of time this situation has to be reported to the commercial reporting bulletin DICOM, which negatively affects the customers credit rating in Chile. Other negative effects of late payments must be mentioned, including the associated costs for the customer, such as late payment interest and collection costs and their frequency.
Furthermore, the Eddu Financial Literacy program at Banco Falabella, CMR Falabella and Seguros Falabella helps people to make informed and responsible financial decisions.
Eddu is a program designed for everyone, and we use it to design specific measures for each segment of society. A focus of this program is financial literacy for vulnerable colleges, which covers both students and their parents, and aims to provide them with the skills they need to manage their money and make better financial decisions.
Further information can be found in the Social Impact section.
We are concerned about good nutrition
At Tottus we want to provide unique, high quality products at reasonable prices through our Own Brands as leaders. Our teams are dedicated to capturing and developing current consumer trends and bringing them to our customers. We have created new product lines and strengthened the synergies between Chile and Peru in recent years, to become a significant brand and win our customers’ preference.
Accordingly, our strategy is focused on becoming the Own Brand with the best and widest health food proposal in modern channels within the Chilean and Peruvian markets.
+ Healthiest range of products
We have developed a proposal based on a robust brand map that is focused on product development, where we compete with versatility in several categories. We had several significant launches, such as:
We expanded the range of our healthy line, by adding organic, vegetarian and vegan products, and others free or low in gluten, sugars, allergens, fats and sodium.
We developed innovations at Tottus Premium with gourmet fish and seafood.
We added new products within groceries and food for the Tottus Baby and Tottus Kids lines.
We have a research and development team of 14 people in the Quality department at Tottus Peru, who are responsible for making healthy products, such as high protein quinoa bread, together with a range of Own Brand products that promote healthy eating and serve a population segment that would welcome this proposal. This research team operates from the Food Production Plant within the Huachipa Logistics Complex. It coordinates with the Commercial department and the Corporate department for Own Brands.
We also made progress by reformulating close to 300 Own Brand products in Peru, in order to provide healthier products, while working closely with our suppliers to achieve the same objective.
+ Social education program addressing eating habits
The “Crecer Sano con Tottus” program aims to improve the eating habits of thousands of children and their families. We are committed to our sponsored schools and in recent years we have freely delivered material to them using a single platform that is accessible by all interested parties. We use the crecersano.cl website to strengthen our three objectives, which are healthy eating education, physical activity and healthy habits. Each week, we add content to the site with new learning materials for children, which includes educational videos that improve their reading and interaction. We also developed webinars on nutrition for the community and invited children to participate in contests that recognize the importance of good nutrition at home.
+ We avoid using chemicals
We will develop a universal Own Brand proposal for food at Tottus Chile, through a strategic alliance with the supplier The Live Green Co. Its principal attribute will be the absence of chemical ingredients. We plan to launch labeled food in 2022 containing 100% plant-based products using a familiar and easy communication campaign for the consumer.
These plans strengthen our commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals.
+ Our quality control systems
We have rigorous control, certification and monitoring systems for products and food, which comply with the highest quality standards. We audit the preparation of our own and third party products, which includes tracing the source of the ingredients, and we support our suppliers as they manage and develop their processes.