governance
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From the policies that keep us on track day- to-day, to the mechanisms that maintain proper oversight of our practices, to the goals we set to keep us accountable long-term, we believe governance is critical to the credibility of our impact strategy and our ability to drive progress in our industry.
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How is this better for all?
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OUR PEOPLE
Cross-functional collaboration empowers our associates to bring impact to life in everyday business operations – and we’ve seen evidence that they are working.
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OUR COMMUNITIES
Our policies, oversight mechanisms, and goals put people first, and allow us to make informed decisions that invest intentionally in our communities and planet.
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OUR WORLD
By making sure we are growing in responsible ways along with the expansion of the global food chain and rapid speed of delivery, we use our impact strategy to drive systemic change.
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Governance comes in a lot of forms – from our Code of Conduct, to our Board and governing committees, to our public reporting. The more we can integrate Better for All into the way our whole organization operates, the more we become the company we want to be.
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Mission & Values
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Business Ethics & Compliance
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Associate Involvement
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We have a strong heritage of helping our customers unlock their full potential and transform their businesses for the better. This internal compass guides us to live our values and establish policies and procedures that promote integrity. We seek to lead by example on social and environmental issues of critical importance to society and strive to be a force for positive change in the food system and beyond. As we continuously adapt to a changing world, we will always come back to our mission and stay true to the core values we’ve had for nearly half a century. Our governance systems help to remind us of who we are and what we stand for when faced with difficult choices.
Mission:
We strive to make our customers stronger, our supply chain better, and our food solutions more inspired.
Values:
We do the right thing.
We courageously embrace what’s next.
We deliver better together.
We believe in Better for All.
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Our internal and external processes are in place to hold us accountable from top to bottom. The Nominating and Governance Committee, which includes four members from our Board of Directors, develops and recommends adjustments to our corporate governance practices and has ultimate oversight of our ESG strategy. This committee annually reviews and enhances our charters and policies, and regularly engages with the full Board and leadership team to share environmental, social, and governance trends that are critical to the Company’s overall business strategy.
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We continue to find ways to increase cross-functional collaboration and add new perspectives to the decision-making process around key priorities, including impact. Our Senior Leadership Team and ESG Executive Committee oversee our impact strategy to accelerate progress and create shared value for our stakeholders.
We believe we are now more effective than ever when managing company-wide, cross-functional objectives, and are able to further increase collaboration and collective problem solving, reduce data collection hurdles and reporting fatigue, increase visibility and accountability around challenges, more deeply integrate impact into cross-functional business goals, and think big-picture about how Better for All enables connection points between suppliers and customers.
These principles guide our decisions:
Accountability: Monitoring performance against goals
Transparency: Being authentic and a model in our story
Leadership: Collaborating for greater impact
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Our leadership team and Board help put strong policies and governance structures in place, but our associates are key to leading the charge. Each of our associates is responsible for cultivating and upholding a culture of compliance and integrity in everything we do, and that’s non-negotiable. Since launching the Better for All strategy just a few years ago, we’ve made steady progress to help our associates better understand how the strategy connects with their daily lives at home and at work. More importantly, our associates are telling us what they believe in and holding us accountable to walk the talk.
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We’re constantly listening to associates on the types of engagement opportunities that feel the best for them. Overall, we’ve seen engagement increase between volunteerism opportunities, cross-functional working groups, and participation in our Belonging and Innovation Groups. That said, we still have work to do to make impact feel more actionable on a daily basis – not just as an extracurricular. We also recognize that it can be difficult to stay focused on engagement opportunities amidst ongoing transformation, so, in 2023, we created the Strategic Change Enablement Office to increase support for associates, prioritize well-being, and minimize the uncertainty inherent in organizational change.
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These governance structures aren’t about just checking the box on legal compliance. They are about establishing credibility, reflecting on where we can do even better, and making sure we’re integrating our mission and values into the decisions we make every day. We find ways to strengthen these structures every year.
A Unified Voice on Pressing Issues
Our newly formed Government Affairs team supports UNFI in addressing our industry’s pressing issues with a unified voice and position. In partnership with industry trade associations, various UNFI teams visited Capitol Hill to advocate on public policy issues related to farmer resources for climate-smart agriculture, the maintenance of land conservation programs, food safety and food traceability, and access to fresh produce for those supported by the Supplemental Nutrition Access Program (SNAP).
Supplier & Vendor Code of Conduct
We want to encourage our supply chain partners to actively contribute to our ambitions and are in the process of strengthening our supplier policies, agreements, and expectations for partners to help to facilitate their action. We also published an enhanced Supplier & Vendor Code of Conduct to more closely align with our Better for All strategy.
Listening to Our Stakeholders
In 2023, we formalized our methods of stakeholder engagement and systematized how their inputs help inform our plans. In addition to our annual associate, customer, and supplier experience surveys, we launched customer- and supplier-facing councils designed to collect ongoing feedback from these stakeholder groups respectively.
Social and Environmental Policy
This policy was created in 2021 and summarizes the responsibilities we have, the actions we aim to achieve, and the outcomes for which we are striving as a socially and environmentally responsible organization.
ESG Executive Steering Committee
In 2021, we created an Executive Steering Committee to oversee the programs and practices that guide how we show up as a socially and environmentally responsible organization. The members of the committee help us align our impact strategy with our business objectives, mission, and values – and serve as ambassadors to proactively promote our impact strategy.
Progressive Grocer Impact Award
We are honored that our efforts in recent years are being recognized by the industry - in 2022, UNFI was selected as a winner of the first-of-its-kind Progressive Grocer Impact Award in the Sustainability & Resource Conservation category.