Juneteenth: Time to Act … Logitech's Action Plan

Recent events have brought to the forefront the Black experience in the United States. The Black Lives Matter movement has encouraged me to shine a bright light on Logitech’s commitment and investment in diversity and inclusionary practices.

We already look at our impact on employees and the community globally in a number of ways and, across multiple under-represented groups, including: inclusive culture and belonging, representation, supplier and partner relations, diversity and inclusion initiatives, community giveback and more. But we have so much to do to make our company free of systemic racism against black people and a level playing field for all within our company, and outside.

As a company, specific to addressing racism and bias, we are committed to taking action and expect to be held accountable for the following: 

1.We Will Speak Up, Speak Out: Be a voice for change, even as we change ourselves. Become an honest and authentic advocate for stopping racism. As a company we have too often been too quiet on social issues but will become a more consistently vocal advocate. As a CEO with a platform to encourage others, I have been too quiet as well. We and I are changing that. I will also be more transparent in public platforms whether it be social media or annual reports about where we have fallen short and how we can do better. 

We are a humble company so we usually ‘do and then tell’ rather than talk about things before we have good evidence we are actually doing them. Sustainability is a great example of this where we have spent years working hard to be much more sustainable before we just this year began to talk about our efforts.  

But in this case, we will ‘say and do’ at the same time. Silence can appear as apathy and we are highly engaged. More important, by sharing that we are acting but not there yet, I hope we can play a small role in encouraging others to do the same, and to be transparent and accountable. If it encourages others to act, then it’s worth it. If it does nothing more than make us another call for change, it’s still worth it.  

The whole key here is to actually eliminate racism (overt, subtle, and systemic racism) within Logitech and then speak for its elimination everywhere.

2. We Will Support Other Activists for this Change. This fiscal year, we announced a global Volunteer Time Off program which gives all employees four days of time to devote to non-profit volunteering. We expanded our employee donation matching program globally, but these were just a start. We will now do more. 

In addition to the recent donations to Equal Justice Initiative and Southern Poverty Law Center, we will make multi-year commitments to organizations that explicitly work to improve fairness, eradicate racism, and improve the lives of Black Americans who are so underrepresented in so many ways. We’re putting our money where our mouths are, but not one time. Every grant will be multi-year, starting with our Streamlabs’ ten year, $1,000,000 minimum commitment to address racial inequality.

We will expand our support of schools and nonprofits in under-supported communities with financial contributions, volunteering and product donations. We’ll expose the details later, amounts and locations.

3. We Will Support our Communities. We have a history of investing and mentoring entrepreneurs and will look at the makeup of our investment to ensure innovation and ideas are coming from a diverse set of voices. Specifically, how can we support Black founders as they create new businesses (Incubators, VC funds, Joint ventures, etc).   

We have partnered with Best Buy to fund and support a teen tech center for the Boys and Girls Club in California and will target opportunities to support other STEAM centers in underserved communities. And we are working on other long term initiatives now to help Black entrepreneurs and designers. We need to support this with our investments, our teams, and our voice. I will share specifics soon.

4. We Will Support Suppliers and Partners That Are Black, Women, and Minority Owned. With 1000’s of suppliers, we are actively working on a supplier diversity program and are conducting an analysis of our supplier base, which we will begin to report on as a corporate metric. Looking at where we are in terms of minority and female-owned businesses as a percentage of our suppliers is critical to improving diversity and rooting out any systemic bias. I don’t have a specific goal yet, but we will. Bottom line: we lack Black and other minority representation in our supply base. We will share that and our progress soon.

5. We Will Transparently Measure and Report Our Improvement. Most importantly, I have looked at how we evolve from the inside out. We actively review and invest in diverse representation and pay equity at Logitech. We will accelerate our plans for sharing our numbers publicly and increase our investment in recruiting, developing and promoting Black leaders throughout the organization (other underrepresented communities as well). We will listen to the experiences of our Black employees at Logitech in order to do better. We will report our numbers publicly.

Ultimately, this is about accountability and action for Logitech. As CEO, I know our hearts are in the right place, but that isn’t enough. Actions and results are what matter here. We pledge to make diversity a priority and be transparent and accountable for where we succeed and fall short. 

6. We Will Support Education at Every Level. Starting with our own company, we will educate our leaders and all employees on anti-racism, continually. We will also support education in schools to free the next generations from this injustice.

7. We Will Never Stop. We Will Make Mistakes. And We Will Learn. This job isn’t done until the playing field is level for all, including black people, other people of color, LGBTQ2S+, women, and all other minorities.

We will not be afraid to act for fear of reprisal or provocation. When we err, we will apologize, correct, and work to be better.