Social Stewardship
Social Priorities
We’re proud of our focus on social stewardship at Guardian Glass. We believe that every person is born with unique gifts, strengths, and potential that should be celebrated.
Our deep appreciation for the dignity and rights of each individual is at the heart of social stewardship, as well as our bottom-up approach to helping people improve their lives.
This is exemplified by our commitment to health and safety, rewarding careers, philanthropy, and community outreach. All of which empower our employees to develop, contribute, self-actualize and create value for others – while supporting the communities in which we live and work.
Each individual is encouraged to unleash their unique talents and achieve their full potential, where they can have the most impact for themselves, for the company, and for the community.
Community Involvement & Philanthropy
Through business and our philanthropic initiatives, we strive for results that lead to mutual benefit. We provide employee engagement opportunities that foster relationships, create meaningful experiences, and enable actions to make a positive difference in our communities. Our focus is uplifting communities by:
- supporting vulnerable youth education
- aiding victims of violence
- improving food security.
A few examples of our actions around the world:
Fighting food insecurity
Based in Detroit, Forgotten Harvest is an organization dedicated to fighting food insecurity by rescuing food and operating a private farm. In September 2023, Guardian employees volunteered again at the farm, helping to gather crops. Together, they harvested the equivalent of more than 15.000 meals.
School renovation in Ukraine
Our Lithuanian customer, Bodesa, invited us to participate in a charitable initiative in Ukraine to renovate a school. Our contribution of glass for the windows - standard float glass and Guardian ClimaGuard™ thermal insulation glass - will help reopen the school, allowing children to attend in-person classes.
Helping to unlock skills and talents
We’re donating to Teach for Mexico to support the launch of programs in Queretaro and Guanajuato. The organization helps talented children with limited resources reach their potential. After COVID, 63% of Mexican children from low- and middle-income families suffer from learning poverty.
Health & Safety
The safety and well-being of our employees and communities is our first priority. We build capability through our employees and resilience in our systems to prevent serious outcomes when the unexpected happens.
We strive for a principle-based, bottom-up approach to safety, involving front-line employees and supervisors in the identification of hazards and implementation of solutions all around the world.
For example, our initiative on the Control of Hazardous Energies focuses on teaching our employees to recognize hazards in the workplace, encourages them to report and address risks, while prioritizing elimination and management/mitigation of critical risks. We believe this creates a safer work environment, where employees are respected and empowered to drive innovation and transformation.
In Thailand, our employees can sign up for a yearly health check that helps detect cancer at an earlier stage and enables them to seek the right treatment. In our Tudela plant, in Spain, a thermal stress study supported by health care professional teaches our furnace workers to recognize the early signs of fatigue in this hot and challenging work environment, encouraging them to take breaks when they feel the need, instead of at set times.
Our commitment to individual growth and well-being is also exemplified by our Global Employee Assistance Program – available to all our employees and their families at no cost. This offers professional and confidential counseling, with further resources to help employees manage their lives outside of work.
Employee Experience
As a truly global company, we celebrate individuality. Bringing together different perspectives enables us to identify opportunities, solve complex challenges, create greater value for others and share the benefits.
This is why we see a supervisor’s primary role as supporting employee development by designing roles that fit the employee – and we place great emphasis on coaching and mentoring to help our people thrive. We also seek out and value their knowledge and ideas, remove barriers to participation and encourage role changes to realize potential.
Guardian also supports second chance hiring, the practice of hiring individuals with a criminal record. Treating people as individuals and looking beyond their past – focusing instead on a person’s motivations and potential – can change lives. It can also lead to mutually beneficial outcomes for Guardian Glass and Koch companies by allowing hiring managers to tap into a significant source of talent.
Loic Didillon. Supporting environmental management and compliance
Loic is a great example of how we support employee development. He helps our manufacturing plants manage compliance with their air, water and solid waste permits – a role tailored to his strengths as a communicator and motivator.
For him, understanding different people and cultures helps us all see the bigger picture between environmental stewardship, industry and economics. It’s about owning the realities of the situation and working to solve the challenge of how to make important products that people need, while using fewer resources and producing less waste.
