Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Practices
Last updated: May 2025
We view Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) considerations as part of our broader business strategy, ensuring alignment with regulatory requirements and value creation. Our ESG initiatives will be considered in light of our business strategy and the expectations of our stakeholders, partners, employees and local communities.
Our Board of Directors oversees the building of our ESG strategy, and the Board’s Nominating, Governance and Sustainability Committee (NGSC) was nominated to monitor and guide our management as we explore relevant initiatives. Our ESG executive committee (that was established by the NGSC and comprising senior management) continued to operate under the direction of the NGSC, to lead the development and execution of our ESG workplan in collaboration with key departments across the company.
In the course of our ongoing Board of Directors and NGSC meetings, we continue to hold sessions on ESG, presenting our activities and key topics for the year in connection with our business operations and our workplan. Special focus was given to cybersecurity, where we reviewed and reaffirmed existing cybersecurity policies, developed and implemented a cybersecurity risk management program, and established framework for evaluating the materiality of cybersecurity incidents, along with additional initiatives that we believe can enhance cybersecurity governance and risk mitigation.
We remain committed to our long term target to explore ways to embed ESG considerations into our operations, which could contribute to fostering a culture of responsible growth.
In 2024, we continued to review climate change impacts. We also remained committed to creating an inclusive workplace where all employees feel valued and empowered.
Following our 2022 engagement with the ESG advisory team of Nasdaq Corporate Solutions, LLC, that conducted our first ESG materiality assessment based on what we believe were and still are our stakeholders’ values and our internal leadership views and attitude on ESG, in light of our missions and business strategy, in 2024 we continued to advance our ESG initiative explorations, integrating the assessment’s findings while adapting to evolving regulatory requirements and business needs.
Sustainability
Recognizing the impact of our activities on the environment, we remain committed to explore measures that could reduce carbon footprint associated with our operations.
We remain committed to considering energy efficiencies within our office spaces. Reducing waste generation, use of paper and consumption of electricity and water are the focus of our continued efforts under our facility management policy. Principles such as must-have only printing policy, minimal use of disposables including paper cups (mostly in our largest office location in Israel and the US), implementation of recycling practices (for example, in our London office, which is our second largest office facility and in our U.S. offices, where we provide separate bins for recycling and trash to encourage proper waste segregation), donation of unused electrical appliances to non-profit organizations and schools, and preferring wired computer accessories to limit the use of battery – all remain keys in our long term endeavors.
We will continue to explore ways, in collaboration with our carrier network, to extract relevant data related to the measuring of carbon footprint associated with transportation and logistics. The ability to extract such data in a meaningful manner could help us to shape future strategies for emissions reduction within relevant supply chain. We remain pleased with our carrier network for the carbon-reduction goals their own programs and initiatives seem to exhibit, however the scope or success of such programs and initiatives remain outside of our direct influence. We believe that having our lion-share shipments carried through such network could potentially have a meaningful contribution to any carbon-reduction goals.
In collaboration with some of our carriers, a rate card that incorporates optional offsetting fees for GHG emissions is made available, with a view to encourage and facilitate carbon-neutral shipping options for our merchants. We are, and likely will remain, unable to control or impact our merchants’ choice or the actual offering made by such carriers, but we remain committed to making such rate cards available as part of our proposition as long the carriers make it available on their end. We believe that such offering echoes the importance of emissions reduction along the supply chain.
Sustainability is an ongoing and long-distance journey, and we are still in our early-stage phase that involves mostly planning, exploration and gradual implementation and adoption. Global-e remains optimistic that these steps could eventually contribute to the environment and support sustainability.
Employee Recruitment, Retention and Engagement
Our workforce has grown significantly in recent periods, and that has, and continues to require us to seek to build and maintain a working environment that caters for employees motivation, talent, wellbeing and safety, while promoting personal and professional development.
We continued to recruit relevant talent to strengthen our team capabilities in our offices worldwide. As we continue to grow our workforce and to expand geographically, including qualified individuals from a wide variety of backgrounds will continue to be important to who we are, allowing us to better serve our customers in a local culture fashion yet with a global expertise earned through cross-organizational collaboration.
We remain committed to creating an inclusive workplace where all employees feel valued and empowered. We acknowledge the importance of inclusion and belonging (I&B) in driving innovation, fostering creativity, and promoting long-term sustainability. Based on our previously established long term workplan, we continued our exploration of ways to address I&B gaps, I&B data measuring and promoting a culture of equality. The ESG executive committee is responsible for the governance of our roadmap planning and execution on I&B matters, in consultation with its member, our VP of Human Resources. We call out the following items for the past few periods:
• Gap Assessment: in 2023, with the support of the PWC Israel, Risk and Forensic Services, ESG group, we conducted preliminary assessment to identify areas of improvement and opportunities for enhancing inclusion and belonging across various facets of the organization, including but not limited to hiring, promotion, and professional development. We believe that the outcomes of such assessment remained valid throughout 2024 and will remain valid during future periods.
• Policy: we finalized a high-level policy, which was presented and approved by the NGSC. We believe that the policy, developed in light of the gap assessment discussed above, our management’s guidelines and spirit and industry standards, will assist in prioritizing our efforts and serve as a guide to the human resources (HR) team.
• Internal Engagement: we held roundtable discussions with founders and executives, conducted “train the trainer” workshops for the Israeli HR team, and organized volunteer activities across key locations (IL, US, and UK) to reinforce a culture of inclusion and professional collaboration.
Despite the steps that were made in recent periods, it is important to note that our forward plan on such issues is still evolving and under constant development, balancing our business challenges and objectives. Our commitment nonetheless remains as it has always been, continuing to prioritize I&B in our long-term strategy, all based on measurable data and in conformity to our management’s visions and spirit, aligned with industry best practices, recognized reporting standards, and applicable law.
Human Capital Development, Compensation and Evaluation
We value the uniqueness of each of our employees. We appreciate the talent and the caring they put into their work in making us a better organization, which in turn defines our culture, and eventually will make our business strategy, our solutions and our services better. We therefore always aim to encourage and promote our employees’ talent, ambition and sense of devotion.
We seek to provide and constantly develop compensation and equity incentive plans that will remain attractive and rewarding. As such, we offer both stock-based and cash-based compensation awards (in each case subject to eligibility criteria) that are designed to commensurate individual performance and meeting objectives.
Our recruitment spans through students, junior professionals through senior seasoned executives. None of our employees is represented by a labor organization or is a party to a collective bargaining arrangement or expansion orders of such arrangements, with the exception of a small number of employees in France, Spain, Australia and Israel who are covered by mandatory industry-wide collective bargaining agreements in accordance with local law.
We are extremely proud of our employees. In 2024, 198 employees (approximately 18.0% of our global workforce) were promoted or assumed new roles within the organization. We believe that such continued vote of confidence is the result of our culture.
During 2024 our hybrid remote work policies remained in place, enabling our employees to work remotely for parts of the work-week, while still fully operating all our office facilities, and maintaining health and safety measures.
Offering our employees opportunities to acquire new skills, and to develop through exploration, experience and learning, by providing them learning and development programs, remains a priority. We have dedicated personnel within our Human Resources team, supervised by our executive leadership, who focus, and will continue to focus, on developing learning, training and growth policies and plans, through internal and external platforms, to be made available for our people worldwide. Juno Journey, the online learning platform we implemented in 2022, continues to be valued by our employees, with tens of thousands of external learning resources. The platform was recently adopted for onboarding new employees, and professional growth of existing employees. We are proud at the employees’ high engagement with over 77% of employees actively engage with the platform, an increase from previous year. Each employee receives an annual learning budget allowing them to attend, on average, 2-3 courses of their choice. We continued to enhance the platform with professional content, by creating in-house courses and professional sessions covering our products, technology and offering, while also building a competency development program to expand knowledge of our solutions across all teams.
In addition to company-wide learning initiatives, we also provided professional development training for key departments, including engineering, sales, and product teams. These programs focus on enhancing functional expertise, strengthening industry-related skills, and supporting technical and strategic growth within these specialized areas.
We believe that managers of all levels, across all professional verticals, are key to our success. In an effort to support our managers’ growth and skills, and to further develop their leadership and management effectiveness, we launched a managerial training program in 2024, aimed at equipping managers with the skills needed to lead effectively, support the growth of their employees, and drive team success. Over 40% of eligible managers from across the organization have already successfully completed the first training cycles, which remains ongoing for the remaining managers as part of our continued investment in leadership development and workplace culture. Further supporting managerial excellence, we conducted specialized training sessions focused on providing constructive feedback and conducting effective interviews, helping managers refine their ability to evaluate talent, foster employee growth, and enhance overall team performance.
In an effort to promote candid and effective dialog between employees and their managers with a view to contribute to career development and personal accomplishments, we carried on with our annual review processes for all employees across the world, making the process streamlined and efficient. Any annual performance and goals review is based on personal individual work and development plan with specific objectives and, if applicable, resource requirements, always attempting to balance between business needs and personal aspirations and targets.
Governance, Compliance and Business Ethics
Our unique position as an e-commerce enabler comes with great responsibility to the value chain stakeholders – our merchants (brands and retailers), our consumer shoppers and the vendors we work with or collaborate when we perform our services. We aim to hold ourselves to the highest standard of business and professional ethics, and expect our stakeholders to do the same. We are committed to making fair and unbiased selection of partners, honor our promises and commitments, and stay accountable to our actions and choices towards our stakeholders.
Being a founder-led organization, operating under the oversight of our Board of Directors and its committees, we are committed to the values and standards of behavior set forth in our Code of Conduct. We will keep our employees appraised of the code through annual training, and by making it available to all, including by reference in our service contracts with our merchants. The Company maintains strong social responsibility practices through mandatory annual training programs for all employees, contractors, and part-time workers, covering crucial areas such as preventing sexual harassment and ensuring ethical business conduct.
We have established a Code of Conduct and Ethics that guides our operations and relationships with stakeholders. As we did in past periods, our Board of Directors, with the support of our management, has recently conducted a review of the Code of Conduct to reaffirm our commitment to maintaining the highest standards of integrity, transparency, and ethical behavior in all aspects of our operation. No material changes were made in the course of such recent review of the Code of Conduct. We intend to carry out such review periodically to ensure alignment with regulatory requirements, industry standards, and stakeholder expectations.
The Company maintains what we believe to be a comprehensive compliance program that demonstrates our commitment to strong corporate governance and social responsibility. Our Board of Directors, directly and by empowering the Audit Committee and the management team, actively oversee the Company’s compliance framework, which includes policies and procedures covering critical areas such as anti-corruption, ethical business conduct, data protection and cybersecurity, as well as international trade laws and sanctions compliance.
As part of our ongoing commitment to excellence in compliance and governance, during 2024, our compliance framework was reviewed by our internal audit team (Deloitte). That review identified opportunities to further enhance our program, including plans to formalize our risk assessment methodology, strengthen merchant and vendor due diligence processes, and enhance documentation procedures. These planned improvements, which are part of our compliance roadmap for coming periods, include the implementation of a risk management framework, enhancement of merchant documentation controls, and the introduction of cross-organizational unified vendor onboarding process. The Company’s governance structure includes Entity-Level Controls (ELCs) and a multi-layered protection methodology comprising operational compliance checks, front-line monitoring, internal reviews, and independent assurance mechanisms. Our current bottom-up approach to risk assessment continues to serve us well, and we remain committed to continuously evaluating and enhancing our compliance processes to meet evolving business needs and regulatory requirements.
Board Composition
We are privileged to have experienced industry-relevant leaders as our members of the Board of Directors. The members of our Board of Directors bring years of leadership experience, making it fit for overseeing our organization’s governance and compliance. We maintain a majority independent Board of Directors, with five independent directors. We believe our Board of Directors demonstrates balanced perspectives of relatively newly appointed directors and required industrial knowledge from the more tenured directors. Under the supervision of the NGSC, we conduct Board of Directors and Committee evaluations to facilitate an assessment of the performance of the Board of Directors and its Committee and assessing its strengths and weaknesses and laying a foundation for discussion and future improvement.
(*) These statements are based on information available to us as of the date they are made, and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, some of which are outside of our control. While we believe that our current information provides a reasonable basis for these statements, that information may be limited, incomplete or inaccurate. Our statements should not be read to indicate that we have conducted an exhaustive inquiry into, or review of, all relevant information. We may also provide information herein that is not “material” under the federal securities laws for SEC reporting purposes, including information that is informed by various ESG standards and frameworks and the interests of various stakeholders. Much of this information is subject to assumptions, estimates or third-party information that is still evolving and subject to change. For example, our disclosures based on any standards may change due to revisions in framework requirements, availability of information, changes in our business or applicable government policies, or other factors, some of which may be beyond our control.