Jan 11, 2023| ESG, JD Health, JD Logistics

JD Takes Action to Ease Medicine Shortages in Rural Areas

Yuchuan Wang

by Tong Shen

JD Logistics helped deliver a first batch of 30,000 oximeters from Danyang, Jiangsu province to Lanzhou, capital of Gansu province, on January 6, to secure sufficient medical product supply in rural area. The oximeters were provided by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

After it was announced that there was an urgent need for transportation of medical supplies, JD Logistics exerted its supply chain advantages immediately, dispatched human and transportation resources on call, and delivered the medical supplies to rural areas. The 30,000 sets of oximeters will be distributed to 86 counties in Gansu province.

JD Logistics has activated a prioritized mechanism for the delivery of medical products, and extended the working hours for last-mile delivery to enable smooth rural logistics and distribution.

JD Health is also dedicated to ease the medicine shortages in rural areas with its own specialty offerings. The “JD Health Emergency Medicine Box” public welfare project has been launched recently, as a joint initiative of JD Health and China Social Assistance Foundation to support rural areas. With the support of 1,810 merchants on JD Health, the first batch antipyretic medicine will be donated to 37,000 rural people in Henan, Guizhou, Gansu, Shaanxi and Guangxi provinces.

(press@jd.com)

Feb 2, 2023| ESG

JD.com Included in 2023 Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index

Vivian Yang

by Vivian Yang

Leading supply chain-based technology and service provider JD.com is included in the 2023 Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index (GEI), which was announced on January 31. It is the first time the company has been listed in the index.

Pang Zhang, Chief Human Resources Officer of JD.com, said, “We are pleased to be included in the 2023 GEI, which is a welcomed recognition of JD.com’s progress in building diversity and inclusion. We deeply believe that employees’ development should not be limited by gender and that their growth should take precedence over business success.”

“By offering an equal, diverse, inclusive environment with long-term development opportunities that help employees gain a sense of belonging and happiness, a company is bound to generate greater value for the whole society,” she added.

The GEI brings transparency to gender-related practices and policies at listed companies, increasing the breadth of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data available to investors. The reference index evaluates companies across five pillars: leadership & talent pipeline, equal pay & gender pay parity, inclusive culture, anti-sexual harassment policies, and external brand. JD.com scored high in particular on the second and fourth pillars in this year’s evaluation.

JD.com’s 2021 ESG Report stated that the company adheres to the principles of openness, fairness, impartiality and equal recruitment; actively provides employment opportunities for disabled groups; guarantees the rights of female employees; ensures that male and female employee enjoy equal pay for equal work, and more. One such example is JD Retail’s special program known as the “Sunshine Angels,” which aims to provide physically challenged people with online customer service job opportunities. The program currently employs women in 70 percent of core roles, and was recognized by APEC Women Leadership Forum as one of the best innovation practices in women’s empowerment in 2013.

A member of JD “Sunshine Angles” team takes a customer’s call

JD.com highly values female talent and commits to their safety, health and growth. According to JD’s ESG Report in 2021, more than 10,000 female employees received various kinds of trainings on self-development, management skills, technological briefings and more. Meanwhile, the company also provides lactation rooms, parking space and other care facilities for pregnant women, as well as nursery and kindergarten services for employees at its headquarters which have benefited thousands of employees.

A playground for employees’ children inside JD.com’s headquarters in Beijing

Last November, JD.com announced that it would add RMB 10 billion yuan to its employee housing fund, and also expand its relief fund for employees’ children. JD.com has promised its employees that if, for whatever reason, they encounter misfortune that leads to incapacity or loss of life, the company’s fund will support their children’s living and education up to 22 years old, the age they would graduate from college.

The 2023 GEI reaches globally to represent 45 countries and regions and included 484 companies that scored at or above a global threshold established by Bloomberg to reflect disclosure and the achievement or adoption of best-in-class statistics and policies.

(vivian.yang@jd.com)

Jan 19, 2023| ESG, JD Retail

JD.com and APEC Women Leadership Forum Co-Launch Report on Women’s Contributions to Sustainable Consumption and Production

Vivian Yang

by Vivian Yang

APEC Women Leadership Forum, the premier platform on fostering women’s economic empowerment among the 21 economies of the Asia -Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), and JD.com co-launched the “APEC Report: Observation of Women’s Value in Sustainable Consumption and Production,” on January 14 in Sanya Hainan province, which adopted extensive surveys and consumption data to examine the role of women as both producers and consumers in advancing sustainability.

The report found that women instinctively lead the green consumption path with their actions, and their shopping choices often determine the consumption patterns of each household. Meanwhile, women demonstrate prominent leadership in driving the “Sustainability/ SDG / CSR” fields in the corporate world.

Shopping greener “before you know it”

Based on the results of a survey conducted by JD.com’s Consumption and Industry Development Institute on over 2,000 respondents on the topic of responsible consumption, women weigh “environmentally friendly” as a much higher consideration than men when considering products. In fact, it is the only factor on which they outscored men, whereas the latter showed comparatively more concerns for other factors such as brand, culture, and price.

Interestingly, when being asked about the concept and their understanding of sustainable consumption, female respondents gave themselves more moderate ratings than male did, with only 49.75 percent choosing “understand very well” and “understand,” while 31.19 percent opted for “not sure.” However, their feedback on actual shopping choices unveiled a stronger tendency towards energy-saving, trade-in, replaceable and recyclable products, especially in the categories of home appliances, furnishing and decorations, office supplies, car accessories, footwear, health products and more. These results demonstrate that women may have a deeper understanding about the concept of sustainable consumption than they give themselves credit for, as they are more likely to choose sustainable products instinctively.

When asked, “Which player is more important in promoting sustainable consumption?” Forty-four percent of female respondents chose “consumers” over “product makers” （30 percent）, and “circulators” (27 percent). Female respondents also showed higher approval of producers for behavior categories including offering job opportunities, supporting disadvantaged groups, proper waste handling and more.

Shaping sustainable producers with “SHE Power”

With more and more enterprises setting up the dedicated function of “Sustainability/ SDG /CSR,” the role to implement these initiatives is mainly led by women, accounting for over 60 percent in surveyed companies that have set up such dedicated departments, and 82 percent in other companies that have relevant positions, according to APEC Women Leadership Forum’s research on women business leaders, in a new attempt to study women’s role as producers in sustainable consumption.

According to the surveys on which the report is based, women leaders demonstrate stronger focus on long-term value and innovation for sustainable solutions, with respondents expressing that they started formulating relevant thinking 6 to 10 years ago (30 percent). A majority are driven by the factors of “enterprise development need” (76 percent), “inspired by global trends” (73 percent), and “guided by domestic policies” (73 percent).

The report also noted that it is urgent for the whole society to enhance awareness of responsible consumption and production amid global uncertainties in order to continue making progress toward the Sustainable Development Goal. Meanwhile, how to strike a balance between the Goal and enterprise ROI, and the lack of unified ESG standards, talents and corporate capacities, all pose threats to this course.

As a leading supply chain-based technology and service provider, JD.com is committed to collaborating with upstream and downstream partners and the whole society to collectively build a more productive and sustainable world. JD.com’s green supply chain efforts, known as the “Green Stream Initiative,” have so far engaged more than 300,000 enterprises in carbon reduction activities ranging from packaging, warehousing, transportation, product recycling and more. On the demand side, the company introduced the “Green Impact Initiative” in May 2022, which made nearly a million kinds of products on its platform more identifiable with environmentally-friendly labels, in order to raise awareness among its hundreds of millions users.

(vivian.yang@jd.com)