Purity Life’s annual report on Corporate Responsibility is an opportunity for transparencytransparency in how our company conducts its business in a socially-responsible manner for the benefit of its employees and the communities they live in across Canada. This report covers a broad range of activities that Purity Life is involved in as an employer to make Canada a better place to live for its employees and all Canadians. To maximize the collective impact, Purity Life’s corporate responsibilities are designed to support all stakeholders of the business, which include shareholders, employees, and business partners (brokers, retailers, and vendors). We endeavour to have a positive impact on society beyond just the financial interests of our business alone. Our commitment to corporate responsibility comes from all the people that work at Purity Life and, therefore, the actions that we take to support corporate responsibility are determined by the employees of Purity Life.
MAKING A DIFFERENCE IN OUR EMPLOYEES’ LIVES & WELLBEING
At Purity Life we are committed to making a positive difference in our employee’s lives:
STAY SMOKE-FREE – Totally smoke-free environment and paid Smoking Cessation Program
STAY HEALTHY – Free supplements, daily fresh fruit and annual biometrics screenings
STAY WELL – Lifestyle Wellness Reimbursement Program
STAY STRESS-FREE – Purity Life offers subsidized massage therapy, Maple Virtual Health Care – doctor on call via smartphone within 5 minutes, 24/7/365 consultations, including referrals and prescriptions. Additionally, employees receive five free 1-hour session of virtual psychotherapy to support their mental health needs, along with paid time off, sick days and vacation
STAY SAFE – 100% paid First Aid, Forklift/Lift Truck and WHMIS certifications
STAY ELEVATED – Annualized leadership training for all frontline Managers & Supervisors
SOCIAL
DISTRIBUTING LOCAL AND CULTURALLY-DIVERSE BRANDS
Purity Life works hard to ensure its product mix is a combination of international, national, and local brands, and that the ownership of these brands represents a broad and diverse spectrum of the business community, both in ethnicity and ownership structure.
We want to ensure that we are supporting innovative new brands, and to do so we are partnering with incubator organizations that work with new local and Canadian brands to help get them ready to go to market.
GIVING BACK TO OUR EMPLOYEES - EMPLOYEE RELIEF FUND
Serious/critical illnesses or other emergencies can occur in any family, making it difficult for a fellow Purity Life team member to meet the financial needs of their family at home. The Employee Relief Fund is to support those that need short-term financial assistance.
Eligibility is once per employee per lifetime. Purity Life matches all employee donations of up to $2,500.
COMMUNITY GARDEN INITIATIVE
Purity Life is passionate about making a difference in the lives of our employees and fostering a strong sense of community! Our commitment to well being has resulted in the creation of our very own destress gardens to harvest and offer fresh vegetables to our employees. These gardens offer a peaceful space for employees to unwind while promoting teamwork. Many hands make for light work!
LOCAL DONATION PROGRAM FOR SHORT DATED PRODUCTS
As part of our commitment to community and sustainability, Purity Life launched a local donation program for products approaching Best Before Date. Rather than letting products go to waste, we donate them to local charities and food banks in need. This program aligns with our values of reducing waste while making a positive impact on the lives of those in our community. It’s another way for us to live out our belief that small actions can make a big difference.
MEASURING EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT
Purity Life is able to measure employee engagement through a system called OfficeVibe. This surveying system gives Purity Life a pulse on the engagement of its employees in real time through a weekly employee survey. With this system, Purity Life can measure both engagement and Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS), which is a measurement of how likely an employee is to recommend Purity Life as a great place to work.
Workleap OfficeVibe is playing a crucial role for Purity Life in enhancing employee engagement and operational effectiveness. Having clear metrics and actional insights from the dashboard helps our teams elevate excellence and focus on the right initiatives. The easy-to-understand engagement dashboard covers 10 key metrics that we act on to transform our business. This platform has been an integral part of Purity Life since 2015.
EMPLOYEE RECOGNITION
Good Vibes is a recognition engine that amplifies those digital thumbs-ups and pats on the back. Good Vibes provides managers and employees the ability to acknowledge peers and celebrate each other’s contributions, creating opportunities to better connect and support one another in the workplace.
ENVIRONMENTAL
SUSTAINABILITY & RECYCLING
Purity Life’s distribution business has a low impact on the environment. We make every effort to use recycled materials for our shipping packaging and focus on recycling packaging material to reduce the amount of packaging used as well understand its environmental impact. In 2023, Purity Life recycled: 170 metric tons of corrugate and 6,350 lbs of plastic across its 4 distribution facilities and head office.
EMPLOYEE WELL-BEING
Corporate sustainability also involves fostering employee well-being. At Purity Life we believe that investing in employee wellness programs (Maple, EAP, etc.) and supplying a safe and healthy work environment helps to promote employee satisfaction and productivity. Additionally, boosting a healthy work-life balance helps to reduce turnover rates, prevent chronic illnesses, and improves overall employee retention.
COMPLIANCE
Purity Life complies with all provincial stewardship programs to ensure the financial responsibility for the end-of-life management of the materials/packaging, used in products that Purity Life distributes, is passed on to those companies responsible for making these materials. Funds collected from the various vendors Purity Life distributes for is passed on to the various provincial governments to mange the blue box programs in each province.
CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT
Purity Life is focussed on a continuous improvement culture, so much so that we have a Director of Continuous Improvement who leads initiatives company-wide to continuously enhance our operations at Purity Life. The continuous improvement ideas come from our employees and focus on reducing waste, creating greater process efficiencies, and reducing the friction in the duties of our employees. This allows their time and energy to be focused on higher value tasks. Purity Life’s continuous improvement initiatives not only enhance the employee experience but also create a better customer experience for our business partners, helping to ensure a sustainable future for our business.
EMPLOYEE DEVELOPMENT & ENGAGEMENT
IT ALL STARTS AND ENDS WITH OUR EMPLOYEES
Invest in its business (people, process and systems)
Higher sales, profit and market share
Enhancing the employee experience
Energized and engaged employees
Happy business partners (retailers, vendors and brokers)
LEVEL UP- ELEVATING EMPLOYEES, ELEVATING PURITY LIFE
Our Mission is to mentor and develop Purity Life employees in all levels of the organization with a focus on women, to achieve their full potential while also contributing to the continued success of Purity Life. Our Vision is to promote women’s sense of
self worth through mentoring, learning, networking, and team building that will make a difference in their careers at Purity Life and beyond. While designed for women, Level UP is inclusive and supportive of all employees who wish to grow. Our Purpose is to empower women at all levels within Purity Life to develop their natural abilities to their fullest potential and equip them to grow and excel in their careers. Level Up provides opportunities for any employee to participate and benefit from this program.
PURITY LIFE LEARNING JOURNEY
Purity Life provides ongoing training and development training for employees in a wide range of topic areas through the online platform Atlas (the Citation Hub).
Orientation
• Compliance (Occupational Health & Safety Awareness, WHMIS, Workplace Diversity)
Leadership
PURITY LIFE EDUCATION REIMBURSEMENT PROGRAM
Purity Life offers an annual Education Reimbursement Program for academic courses, seminars and conferences that directly enhance job performance and career advancement.
RETIREMENT PROGRAM
At Purity Life, we believe that helping employees save for retirement is an important responsibility as an employer. We offer a matching Group Registered Retirement Savings Plan to help employees reach their retirement goals. Contributions made to their Plan, together with investment earnings on those contributions, will grow in a tax-sheltered environment, which should allow each employee to accumulate savings for retirement.
COMPENSATION PHILOSOPHY
As one of the leading employers in the natural health products industry, Purity Life is focused on offering a competitive compensation program to allow four company to attract and retain high-performing employees. To this end, Purity Life evaluates all jobs using a Pay Equity sustem from Gallagher McDowell Associates.
Every position within Purity Life is graded on a points system through the Pay Equity platform and has a Grading and Wage banding chart
Purity Life participates in a number of market surveys to ensure its compensation programs are competitive
Job Scorecards are used to recognize and reward employees based on performance, using an A, B, C grading system
At Purity Life, equity drives our hiring philosophy and is what creates diversity and inclusion in our workplace. Purity Life is looking to hire the best possible candidates regardless of race, ethnic background, sexual orientation, or religious affiliation. In addition, our policies regarding salary administration, promotion and transfers are based solely on job requirements, performance and related criteria.
PURITY LIFE’S COMPENSATION PROGRAM IS DESIGNED TO MEET THESE KEY OBJECTIVES:
TRANSPARENCY:
Provide managers and employees with access to job descriptions, scorecards, pay grading, and ranges
FLEXIBILITY: Support a diverse workforce to accommodate differences and changes in job requirements, job market and economy
EXTERNAL COMPETITIVENESS:
Provide pay rates that are comparable to relevant job markets
RECOGNITION:
Reward performance through salary increases, bonuses, and incentives aligned to the success of Purity Life. Our philosophy is that if Purity Life is winning, so should our employees through their compensation
INTERNAL COMPARABILITY:
Provide pay guidelines that ensure similar jobs are graded and paid equitably across the company
DIVERSITY, EQUITY, INCLUSION AND BELONGING
Purity Life operates business in two official languages: English and French.
At Purity Life, diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging matter, and every effort is made to ensure that our policies regarding hiring, salary administration, promotion, and transfer are based solely on job requirements, performance, and related criteria. We are committed to providing equal employment opportunities for training, compensation, transfer, promotion, and other aspects of employment for all qualified applicants, regardless of sex, race, colour, religion, national origin, age, disability, sexual orientation, or other bases prohibited by law. Purity Life recognizes the value of a workforce that represents the communities we operate in across Canada.
At Purity Life, we take great pride in the diversity of our workforce - a workforce that closely matches the diversity we see in Canada.
Purity Life conducts weekly surveys that measures how our employees feel about diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging, at work.
GOVERNANCE
Purity Life’s corporate governance covers three key areas of the business:
1. Regulatory
Purity Life complies with all regulations for the importation and distribution of natural health products in Canada, including holding the following licenses: Site Licenses, Medical Device License and Safe Food for Canadians license. Purity Life’s Regulatory Affairs and Quality Assurance teams ensures compliance with all of Health Canada’s regulations to ensure the safety of the products distributed by Purity Life.
In compliance with Bill S211, Purity Life confirms that as part of its supply chain sourcing of products, it is not involved in any forced labour or child labour. Additionally, it confirms that the supply of all products to Purity Life is free of these practices.
2. Audit
Purity Life conducts annual third-party financial and IT audits to validate the quality of earnings and robustness of the IT infrastructure, ensuring business continuity.
3. Oversight
Purity Life’s Board of Directors provides oversight and strategy for the business, ensuring it creates value for all of Purity Life’s shareholders.
CORE VALUES
Purity Life Corporate Responsibilities are guided by our Core Values. These values ensure that we are working within a framework that guides how we make decisions as individuals at Purity Life, both in how we work with each other and with our business partners (brokers, retailers, and vendors).
COLLABORATION
Working together through idea sharing and communication to accomplish a common goal
OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE
Continually improving our performance and striving to be the best in everything we do by leveraging technology and improved processes, all for the benefit of enhanced service levels for our business partners
MUTUAL RESPECT
Open, positive, and genuine approaches to communication between all employees at all levels of the organization
MAKING A DIFFERENCE
Make a difference in the lives of our employees and each other
INTEGRITY
Representing oneself truthfully at all times, conducting oneself ethically and professionally, acknowledging the work of others, and being accountable for one’s actions
TRANSPARENCY
Having honest and open communication
Why Purity Life Exists as a Company
Purity Life exists as a company as it believes natural health products can make a difference in people’s lives. To this end, all the work it does with its employees and business partners is based on this.
Our Mission and Vision
Purity Life’s vision is to be Canada’s most valued natural health product distributor by our business partners (brokers, retailers, and vendors).
Our mission is to improve the health of Canadians by delivering an unrivaled and innovative natural health product portfolio to our customers.
Our Stragegy
The strategy that we use to achieve our vision and mission is all about being #EasyToDoBusinessWith
Purity Life corporate responsibility goals continue to be focused on its employees, where it can have the greatest impact. These employees can then go out into their communities and serve as needed, based on the support they receive from Purity Life.
