ESG at Young Innovations
A MINDSET OF CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT
Young is committed to operating with integrity, supporting our employees, and helping our customers meet their goals. Our commitment is summed up by our corporate purpose statement: Creating Smiles, Creating Possibilities™. We support the dental community with safe and reliable products that enable them to deliver the highest quality of care to patients. Our approach to Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) initiatives is rooted in a mindset of continuous improvement that ensures we take care of our employees and the communities in which we operate. We are proud to share our accomplishments to date, and continue to recognize that we can do better.
Environmental Impact
SUSTAINABLE SOLUTIONS AND ENERGY EFFICIENCY
At Young, we’re committed to reducing our impact on the environment. Wherever we can, we recycle scrap materials from our manufacturing processes and look for opportunities to reduce waste to-land across our facilities. Young has achieved approximately 50% LED lighting upgrades, which not only reduces our energy use, but provides bright, safe working environments for our teammates. We have also worked to consolidate our use of shipping containers and air freight, improving the carbon footprint of our supply chain. Finally, a corporate initiative to evaluate and reduce SKUs has created the benefit of eliminating waste in the manufacturing process from start-ups/changeovers and short-cycle runs. This helps improve the efficiency of our equipment and throughput.
Reducing our Packaging Footprint
OPTIMIZING PACKAGING TO REDUCE WASTE AND BOOST EFFICIENCY
Our operations, engineering and product teams have completed a number of projects to reduce packaging materials and improve the efficiency of our shipments. We have implemented strategies like case quantity shipments to eliminate corrugate usage. In addition, these teams have consolidated our packaging options to increase product density and reduce waste. For example, by updating the master shipper carton configurations to improve stacking, we have increased parts per pallet 35% on our largest product line with our top distributor.
Social Responsibility
OUR COMMITMENT TO CARING
Community engagement has always been an important priority for us. Every year, we organize holiday gift-giving and donations for families in need in the communities near our manufacturing facilities. We also support numerous organizations whose missions we believe in through monetary and product donations which total more than $85,000 per year.
Young Innovations has been engaged with TeamSmile for multiple years as a corporate sponsor in addition to providing product donations and employee volunteers. We are proud to partner with TeamSmile to support its mission of providing critical dental care to children in under-served communities. We believe professional oral healthcare should be accessible to everyone, especially children. We are honored to help TeamSmile bring their mission of connecting children to life-changing dental care to life.
Proudly Partnering With
Clinical Training and Education for the Dental Community
EMPOWERING PRACTITIONERS THROUGH EDUCATION
In addition to our philanthropic involvement, Young supports the dental hygiene community by creating and presenting a variety of training programs and professional development opportunities. In 2022, Young offered nearly 250 training presentations which were attended by 17,000+ participants. All courses which provide CE credits are offered for free and are reviewed by Clinical Affairs team to ensure they contain balanced and fair opinions.
Corporate Governance
Strong corporate governance is serious business for Young Innovations. We operate in a highly regulated industry and understand the importance of upholding the highest standards for product safety and corporate ethics. Young complies with all applicable laws, regulations, and industry standards relevant for the promotion of medical device products. Product labels, advertising and marketing literature are reviewed by corporate regulatory affairs to ensure all claims are validated and supported by validated and defensible data. We also uphold a supplier monitoring process where our vendors and suppliers are monitored by Young Employees working out of local offices.
EMPLOYEE HOURS
of anti-harassment or anti-discrimination training
OF EMPLOYEES
completed anti-harrassment or anti-discrimination training
EMPLOYEE HOURS
of cybersecurity training
OF EMPLOYEES
completed cybersecurity compliance training
Our employee code of conduct and handbook explicitly detail the expectations we have of our employees on topics such as equal employment opportunity, anti-bullying, avoiding conflicts of interest and preserving confidentiality. Within our organization, we have a zero-tolerance culture for harassment, discrimination and retaliation. All employees are trained on anti-harassment and anti-discrimination at their onboarding and annually thereafter. We also uphold a whistleblower protection policy with an anonymous hotline for employees to report concerns.
Cybersecurity has emerged as another key area for robust policies and practices. We have built robust cybersecurity protections to keep our employee and customer data secure. Our employees are a key line of defense from cyber threats and we implemented regular training and consistent testing and reminders on the importance of cyber vigilance. Beyond securing our own employee and customer data, our IT team regularly supports employees in understanding how to manage their personal information and cybersecurity risks outside of work.