The Kind Society: People

From store teams, to HQ, to our warehouse, suppliers and YOU – community is the heart of River Island. We’re helping fashion become a force for good, sprinkling extra kindness on the everyday. That means making sure we protect and support everyone in our network: creating a culture that’s fair, open and kind for all.

These commitments are a snapshot of what we’re working on, and there’s so much more going on behind the scenes. Want to get into the details? Download our reports for a deep dive into the Kind Society.

Sustainability update report 2022

Sustainability update report 2021

Fashion is for everyone. So, we’re working to make sure that RI is a diverse and inclusive place to work, across all areas of our business.

We love to celebrate and support the diversity of our Islanders. In 2022, we launched our Your ID action group, hosted diversity workshops and introduced a blind recruitment tool.

Looking ahead, we’ll continue to actively promote the recruitment of candidates from diverse social backgrounds and improve the representation of diverse groups at senior levels.

We’re building a culture centred on protecting wellbeing for everyone at RI.

Our Mental Health Allies project launched in 2021, offering support for all Islanders whenever they need it. We’ve also hosted training and workshops that help teams to place wellbeing at the heart of our day-to-day.

We're excited to take this further: leading more workshops and conducting a survey to assess the wellbeing of all our Islanders.

We’re continuously improving working standards for our own employees and those in our supply chains, underpinned by a commitment to eliminating Modern Slavery.

In 2022, we partnered with Slave Free Alliance for a full Modern Slavery assessment, to understand where we can improve and update processes to ensure a low risk of modern slavery. We’ve launched a Beyond Audit programme to help us work closely with long-standing, ethically sound suppliers: holding regular meetings to discuss issues they may be facing.

We have been proud members of the UK Fast Forward programme since 2015, helping ensure we work with ethical factories in the UK that create safe, secure and compliant workplaces.

We’ll continue this work into 2023, ensuring that our rigorous codes are followed and conditions in every area of the business meet our standards.

Community is everything to us: and we’re giving back to our network and beyond.

In 2022, over £1.5m was raised through our charity collaborations and donations. We love to support our Islanders and the causes close to their hearts, which is why we continued our Giver Island scheme matching individual charity donations.

We’re growing this even more in the future, creating a strategy for community investment – supporting initiatives in the UK, and throughout our international supplier network.