The happiness of the individuals who make up our big family is key for achieving an optimal level in our projects. Therefore, we carry out specific actions in order to guarantee the health and wellness of employees, improve the working environment, and attract and retain talent. Notable among these actions are meetings, family days, training and initiatives for encouraging dialogue. We must also mention the creation of a Work-Life Balance Guide which seeks to establish and implement policies to incentivise the balance of our team’s professional and personal lives.

Our commitment to the work-life balance and happiness of our Team has been recognised by the EFR certification, an accreditation promoted by the Fundación Másfamilia foundation and supported by the Ministry of Health, Consumption and Social Welfare. This certification demonstrates our effort in the generation of a new work culture, implementing a management model which allows balance between work and personal life, based on mutual flexibility, respect and commitment.

We want to move towards a fairer, more diverse society which does not take notice of race, beliefs or sex. Therefore, at Grupo Tejedor Lázaro we have people with different philosophies, cultures and concerns. We also work on specific actions for respecting diversity, promoting the equality of opportunities and promoting respect, dialogue and non-discrimination due to gender, age, disability or any other circumstance. Our work and effort has been recognised with the ÓPTIMA distinction of Castile and León, a recognition which certifies equality between men and women at a corporate level.

Our employees’ future is our future. We therefore allocate part of our resources to education. By doing so, we create specific actions and programmes for helping our employees and their families in their development, promoting their talent and helping them to achieve their personal and professional objectives. In addition, we welcome new employees with mentoring plans, focusing on their full integration and adaptation.

We can highlight initiatives such as the Plan Alborada Personas and the Dibaq Aprende school, created in order to fulfill these dreams.

Integrating new generations in the family business is a highly important task for its good governance and sustainability, which must begin by presenting the business from childhood. To do so, Grupo Tejedor Lázaro also has the Training Plan for relatives of members, which encompasses both technical and emotional skills. The objective is for successors to have very early knowledge of the origins, history, operations and team which make up the company and to feel the previous generations’ workplace as their own, through participation and effort in different departments. Our aim during this structured collaboration over an extended period is to build a feeling of pride, belonging and passion for the family business, and above all for the team of professionals who allow business growth with their talent and daily work.

We need top quality raw materials to manufacture our foods, but we are aware of the crisis situation of the planet we live on. We consider it an obligation to respect and protect our surroundings, and therefore we work with suppliers and collaborators which are certified by the Marine Stewardship Council, which obtain the raw materials we use in an optimal, environmentally responsible and sustainable way.

Additionally, respect for our surroundings has led us to commit to recycling. We distribute our products in recyclable packaging with at least 15% recycled plastic, we use recyclable boxes and stickers, we work with films with sustainable inks for printing, we reuse plastic pallets and reusable CHEP pallets, and create sustainable merchandising and marketing materials.

Our aim? To develop products and services which respect biodiversity in all phases of their life cycle, beginning with design and ending with their use and recycling.

When caring for the planet, it is also essential to be responsible for the impact that each of us has on our surroundings. We have therefore defined an Environmental Regulation for the progressive integration of environmental variables in product development and promoting eco-efficiency, as well as the management of direct impacts.

Thanks to this, at Grupo Tejedor Lázaro we have spent years optimising our production processes to achieve the following objectives:

• Maximum savings of electricity and energy consumption:

We seek to reduce our consumption to respect our planet more, investing in adequate facilities and seeking more sustainable alternatives. Among our initiatives are the progressive replacement of traditional lighting with LED technology at our centres, the installation of heating systems and machinery which helps to recycle heat, and the installation of self-consumption photovoltaic plates in many of our installations, among other measures.

• Reduction of CO2 emissions:

We also control our atmospheric emissions. To achieve this, we have chosen essential measures such as the use of Liquefied Natural Gas as a fuel source in all processes, investment in production lines which need less fuel, and the use of more sustainable vehicles.

Additionally, the study and design of our production centres is based on a holistic vision which includes the location of facilities, evaluating the distance from suppliers and the market to maximise the reduction of the CO2 footprint derived from transport.

• Better use of water

Water is a scare asset which must be cared for. Therefore, our centres, facilities and production processes are based on:

Reducing water consumption thanks to a system of filtering, recovery and reuse at our factories, centres and facilities.

Increasing the control of water we use, discharging water at authorised points for reuse prior to purification, and undertaking continuous controls to ensure that we comply with the parameters which are within permitted legal values.

Manufacturing products with technology which causes less degradation of the food in the water, leading to greater availability for fish and a lower risk of contamination in the water by dissolved food scraps.

• Proper management of waste:

We are also working to achieve zero waste, therefore recycling and reusing all materials which we can. We seek to minimise waste and reuse raw materials without reducing the quality of products, as well as using recyclable packaging, boxes, stickers and packing.

Thanks to our initiatives, we have obtained the TOWARD ZERO WASTE Certification granted by AENOR, following a system of validation carried out at our facilities.

• Finally, commitment to environmental recovery:

Since we began, we have invested in the preservation of the pine forests in our surroundings, and plant trees in our community as a way of recovering the nature around us.

Our sensitivity and concern for what is around is leads us to be present in social actions and programmes focused on education, entrepreneurship and knowledge. Our objective? To always seek to improve the situation of people at risk of exclusion. To do so, we collaborate with institutions which share our values, such as Hermanitas de los Pobres, Cocina Económica, the Buscando Sonrisas association and Asociación Neratov.

We also collaborate with several institutions to help and improve the lives of people with health problems.

For years Grupo Tejedor Lázaro has been a member of the Spanish Association Against Cancer (AECC). According to some studies, one in two men and one in three women will have cancer during their life, and our mission is to help fight against this issue and seek a solution.

Additionally, we also contribute to combatting multiple sclerosis, a neurodegenerative disease which affects 47,000 people in Spain, according to data from the Spanish Society of Neurology (SEN). To reduce its impact and improve the lives of those affected by it, for some time we have collaborated with the Viernes de 9 a 15 association, with which we organise a charity run in Fuentepelayo (Segovia) each year.

Education is one of the factors which has the greatest impact on the advancement and progress of individuals and societies. Therefore, at Grupo Tejedor Lázaro we are committed to participating in workshops, courses and training programmes for collaborators, distributors and various social groups. Not only do we seek to provide knowledge on our sector, we also promote sustainable values and encourage links between participants.

For this educational activity, we regularly collaborate with different institutions. We carry out courses and workshops with some of the business associations we form a part of, such as AEDIPE (Spanish Association for Management and Development of Individuals), APD (Association for the Progress of Management), CEOE-CEPYME and Chamber of Commerce.

We also collaborate with prestigious educational institutions such as IE Business School, San Telmo Business School, IME Business School, Cesine, Ecoi and Vaughan.

Of everything we do related with education, we are especially interested in the future of young people, therefore contributing to their development through participation in initiatives such as START INNOVA and by signing collaboration agreements with different universities. By doing so, we seek to improve the opportunities, training and future prospects of our young people, helping them step by step.

We consider culture to be essential for education and social development. We are therefore committed to improving the cultural network of the area where we work, cooperating first hand with institutions such as the Esteban Vicente Museum of Contemporary Art (Segovia) and the Centro Botín (Santander).

Although Mozambique is rich in energy, mineral, forest and maritime resources, today it is still considered one of the poorest countries in Africa. Grupo Tejedor Lázaro wishes to contribute to changing this. Our idea? #RetoGaiato, a website for presenting sports challenges for a charity purpose: helping the Fundación Mozambique Sur foundation to combat poverty, hunger and the malnutrition of orphan children (gaiatos).