Company: CRL
Filing Date: 2025-02-19
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001100682-25-000011
Chunk: 26

Company: CHARLES RIVER LABORATORIES INTERNATIONAL, INC.
Filing Date: 2025-02-19
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1
Chunk 26
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 our total headcount by approximately 8% since the end of 2023. It is imperative in this environment to keep our staff well utilized in order to protect operating income margin, which is our goal.

Our employees are not unionized in the U.S. Employees at some of our European facilities are represented by works councils, employee representative groups and/or unions, which is consistent with local customs for our industry. We collaborate with the works councils and believe we have good relationships with our employees.

Values

At Charles River, our values of Care, Lead, Own, and Collaborate guide our decisions and actions; they are standards we hold ourselves to each and every day and are critical to success in fulfilling our goals. In addition, our Charles River DNA are the behaviors based on these values that we use to make decisions, grow our future leaders, and pave the way for years ahead.

Talent Management, Belonging, and Engagement

Sustaining our company culture is a vital part of our strategy. Our culture is built on trust, belonging, accountability, respect, well-being, and safety. Our objective is to enable an environment where every colleague can connect with their work in a way that supports each other, our clients, and our communities. We strive to maintain an environment wherein every person has the ability to deliver on business commitments, while having purpose, being energized, continuously learning, and delivering quality outcomes that make a difference. As a global organization, our growth and development depend on hiring, engaging, and retaining a skilled and global workforce in a highly competitive marketplace. In fiscal 2024, we hired over 2,200 people and our voluntary turnover for all employees was approximately 11.1%.

We pride ourselves on supporting our people both professionally and personally throughout their employee experience with us. In order to attract the best candidate for each position, we prioritize widescale recruitment efforts to attract a larger pool of applicants from a variety of backgrounds. Our hiring process is designed to ensure fair and objective decisions lead to the most qualified candidate being hired. We strive to make our hiring practices accessible, including offering reasonable accommodations as appropriate. 

Beginning with our onboarding program, our talent management approach is structured to be highly collaborative, encourage ownership, and provide the opportunity to contribute and develop through regular performance conversations, annual goal setting, and ongoing feedback. Furthermore, we have created a global learning strategy that includes technical training, mentoring and coaching approaches, tuition reimbursement, sabbaticals, leadership development programs, and on-the-job training to ensure access