Companies must be aware of the effects of their operations on human rights, both near and far. Our operations have an impact, in particular, on the human rights of customers, employees and the employees of the providers of products and services within the supply chain.
Our human rights principles describe how we identify and assess the impact of our activities on human rights. In addition, they indicate the practices we have to minimise and eliminate any adverse impact. Read more about the principles here.
From our customers’ perspective, the most essential human rights are non-discrimination, the right to health and children’s right to special protection. Above all, non-discrimination means the equal treatment of customers.
We play special attention to making our locations and services as safe and accessible as possible. We ensure product safety through careful self-monitoring, such as the monitoring of the cold chain. In addition to ensuring product safety, we safeguard children’s rights by enforcing age limits, for example.
From our employees’ perspective, the most essential human rights include occupational safety, equality and non-discrimination. We also respect employees’ right to join trade unions and do not tolerate any kind of discrimination or harassment.
In addition, our operations have an indirect impact on the human rights of the employees in the supply chains of products and services. We use third-party audits to monitor occupational safety and the implementation of employees’ freedom of association and other labour rights, particularly in countries that are high-risk in terms of social responsibility.
To supplement traditional audits, we introduced the Radical Transparency model in 2018. This is a new type of research model that examines the root causes of human rights issues. It enables us to address current issues related to products and production countries in more detail and seek new types of effective solutions in cooperation with our partners. We publish the results of these studies.
The first Radical Transparency study was carried out by Oxfam, an independent non-governmental organisation, in the Foggia region in southern Italy. You can download the report The people behind the prices here.