Fairness and Belonging at Icebug

People wading in a shallow, rocky river surrounded by lush greenery on a sunny day. One person holds a toy boat.

The purpose of Icebug is to be a changemaker for a society where people can thrive, on a planet in balance.

Sunlight filters through dense trees in a moss-covered forest, creating long shadows on the vibrant green ground.

Our commitment to equity and inclusion

Icebug's purpose is locked in by our owners' directives and bylaws, which spells out that nature and society are prioritized stakeholders ahead of the shareholders.

In plain language: Icebug is not for maximizing profit, it’s for maximizing positive impact. So how can we contribute to a society where people can thrive?

We want Icebug to be people friendly and thereby contributing to making the World more people friendly. For all people. Not discriminating based on sex, transgender identity or expression, ethnicity, religion or other belief, disability, sexual orientation and age is a starting point. But it’s not enough. We need to have the mindset and find ways to do more to meet people where they are and understand what is needed to make them feel included and respected. Fairness and belonging are not a separate programme we run alongside the business. They are part of what the business is supposed to be. We have the biggest direct influence on people who work here, our customers, the communities we operate in, and the people who make our shoes.

Inside Icebug

Our north star is to go beyond the transactional to a mutual relationship where Icebug cares for the wellbeing and development of the employees, and the employees care for Icebug’s wellbeing and development.

We invest time in wellness hours and inner development – equal for all employees. There are no talent programs at Icebug, as we believe that all employees can develop and that the workplace should be a place where you can come as your full human being and that it should be beneficial for you moving towards your full potential.

We don’t expect anybody to be perfect or know everything, we encourage learning and we all have things to learn. Top management participates in growth reflections groups and development on the same terms as everybody else. For this to be a positive experience, a high level of trust and psychological safety is needed. We measure psychological safety yearly.

We have also started to measure flourishing at work.

Some numbers to share: We are roughly 60% women and 40% men across the company. When we resume our board work from the summer of 2026, our board will be 50/50 — three women and three men, bringing expertise in sustainability, technology, community building, operations, and finance.

We are required by Swedish law to audit our pay equity annually. This is a good practice to verify that we pay fairly.

Not everything can be measured though. As a company, we’re also open about where we still have things to learn. One such area during the past 18 months has been around hormonal cycle change and how to accomodate the effects of those. Menstruation, perimenopause, and menopause affect energy, focus, and capacity for work — sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. We want this to be a topic that can be on the table, not one people have to hide. People should feel safe raising it with their manager, and we adjust working patterns and workload when it helps. It is not a separate program or a special category. It is part of treating people as whole human beings, throughout working life.

Apart from gender, except for age, where we don’t see an issue, we don’t keep records for our staff for any of the other group belongings in the discrimination criteria.

Lastly, it’s almost impossible not to mention tech and AI when talking about striving to be people friendly. We’re still in early phases of adaptation but can clearly see that AI-enhancement will lead to a huge productivity increase.

We commit not to use these productivity gains to make any employee redundant. Once we are exceeding our profit level target of 10-15% we will use further productivity gains to reduce working hours.

With our customers and community

We’re proud to have users that range all the way from world champion athletes to people who don’t leave the house without a walker. One of the biggest rewards we get in our work is when we get to hear from people for whom a slip and fall accident would be a disaster, and they tell us about how our traction technology gives them freedom to go outside during the winter.

We also partner up with the local municipality and the organization Hej Främling to do senior walks in the forest every Wednesday, starting from our office.

With Hej Främling we also support their program of making people of different backgrounds feel welcome to outdoor activities.

For our main event “Icebug Xperience – West coast trail” we have three different starting groups ranging from running to hiking, to make participation more inclusive for people of different fitness levels.

We invest 1% of our turnover every year in environmental and social causes, why we helped organise the Nordic B Corp Month in Stockholm, and why we co-signed the collective letter calling on Nordic businesses to stop waiting for politicians and start acting. Biodiversity, climate, inequality, and overconsumption are not separate problems. They are the same problem.

On the tech side linked to behavioural knowledge, we design sales processes to support considered purchasing decisions – saying no to the standard marketing and ecom playbook of fabricating feelings of insufficiency, fabricating scarcity and urgency, to trigger consumption.
We commit not to use tech and AI to explore human weakness.

Runners traverse rocky terrain near a coastal landscape at sunset, reflecting in a small puddle.

In our supply chain

We see the companies where our products are produced as value chain partners that deserve a fair share of the value that we have created – this share should exceed what is needed to keep good working conditions and pay fairly, meaning a wage that you can live on. This is something we expect from our supply chain partners and have specified in our Responsible Business Conduct Policy. We have long standing collaborations with our supply chain partners, but to increase transparency and ensure human rights due diligence and fair treatment of all workers, we are also a Fair Wear member and work according to that methodology.

If done right, without exploring people, we do believe that international trade can be helpful in lifting countries out of poverty.

In the World

We commit to continuing to use our voice and our resources to push for fairness beyond our own walls — in the communities we operate in and in the industry that we are part of. Being transparent about where we succeed and where we fall short. We will not pretend to be perfect, but if we find something that works, we won’t keep it for ourselves.

This commitment applies across Icebug AB, Icebug USA SPC, and Icebug Norway Sales AS. It is approved by the Icebug executive team and board.