Local natural, affordable personal care, cosmetics and home-care products manufacturer
Human Nature has proven that a business can thrive by implementing policies that are not the standard norms in most business enterprises.
These include the no-firing policy for all regular employees, strong implementation of an anti-endo (end of contract) stance, providing full benefits to regularized employees and allowing their employees to honor the Sabbath.
Citing the Sundays off policy as integral to changing labor practices, Human Nature Cofounder and Chairman Dylan Wilk stressed, “The only chance we have of actually building a new middle class in the Philippines is if we can improve the workplace so people who are poor can actually move up. Being middle class is not only about earning a decent income, but about having genuine quality of life, including proper family time and rest.”
Interestingly, Wilk said it took them nine years to open in a major mall because of the requirement to open on Sundays. Human Nature recently opened a stand-alone store in SM North Edsa.
Meanwhile, Human Nature Cofounder Anna Meloto-Wilk explained that a “Sundays off” policy aims to give employees an opportunity to spend their weekends with family. “We often take for granted that while we are on break, many people in the retail and service industry are hard at work to allow us the enjoyment of our time with our family. In believing that rest should not be a privilege reserved only for the rich, every Human Nature employee is entitled to Sundays off and another day of rest every week,” she said at a recent news briefing.
Ecel Luzon, a former promo girl and merchandiser, and now an employee at Human Nature, recalled that working on Sundays became a regular norm for her. Luzon narrated that she felt sad—and envious—seeing families in their neighborhood bonding together during Sundays.
Luzon shared that much of her personal life revolved around her job. Her husband also works in a supermarket and there were weeks when the only time they would see each other was on the selling floor. Working on weekends with one weekday off took a toll on her family.
“Taking Sundays off was not allowed because many people shop on Sundays. I didn’t have quality time with my kids,” Luzon explained.
Luzon’s plight is the norm in the Philippines. Data from the Philippine Statistics Authority shows that 19.2 percent, or almost 800,000 workers, are in the retail sector. For retail workers, demand often peaks during the weekends, with Sundays seen as peak days for sales. The International Labour Organization recently reported that over 400 million employed people work 49 or more hours per week.
“We all talk about wanting to build a new middle class in the Philippines. We all want the Philippines to be a more prosperous country. But where is that middle class going to come from? We’re not going to fly them in from the US. The middle class will come from the people who are poor today. And where are those poor? They’re in the workplace,” Wilk said.
By intentionally hiring people from marginalized sectors to promote economic inclusivity, Wilk said Gandang Kalikasan Inc. (GKI) is able to provide dignified jobs, fair living wages and opportunities especially to the marginalized. While the worldwide trend is to add more working hours, Human Nature is working on reducing the work hours of employees. Some teams and departments are currently on a seven-hour workday, and the goal is to eventually bring it down to six productive hours.
Currently, 58 percent of employees come from the low-skilled working poor from communities in surrounding areas in Quezon City and Laguna where its main operations are based. GKI’s minimum living wage for its rank-and-file workers ranges from over 60 percent to as high as twice the minimum legal wage.
The 560-strong company continues to enforce a strict no-firing policy for all regular employees, maintains a firm anti-endo stance and gives all regularized employees full benefits. A variety of interventions are put in place for the bottom-of-the-pyramid employees’ holistic well-being covering transformation (both tangible and intangible) in terms of their family life, work life and community life with the end goal of getting them and their families out of poverty.
Through a combination of different policies and programs never before invested in workers, GKI envisions itself to be the most compassionate employer in the Philippines.
“We started Human Nature with only two things: faith in God and faith in the Filipino. So since the beginning, Human Nature has always tried to do business based on our values and not compromise when it comes to living according to our faith,” stated Wilk. “We wanted to help change employment practices not just for our people but for the millions of Filipinos who wake up every day with no job security, minimum wage and no chance at a better future.”