Around the world, we collaborate with tens of thousands of suppliers. These business partners provide ingredients, packaging and logistics for our products, as well as other goods and services that keep our operations running. We seek suppliers who share our values and responsible approach to business. To work with us, they must meet the standards set out in our Supplier and Licensee Code of Conduct and accompanying technical standards, and commit to extending these standards to their own suppliers.
The standards include requirements on business ethics, labour and human rights, quality, health and safety, and environmental sustainability. We also drive action by suppliers in our other Together Towards ZERO and Beyond focus areas. For example, many of our suppliers have large carbon and water footprints, and we require them to commit to reducing carbon emissions and manage water risk; this in turn helps us cut our own value chain footprint.
For Carlsberg DE&I is a business priority, not a compliance necessity. We will hold ourselves accountable for progress and measure our maturity through a number of initiatives, such as continuation of our DE&I survey and a triennial DE&I Maturity Assessment which are set out in our roadmap.
We believe that getting the gender balance right will pave the way for more diverse representation, and we set time-bound targets for the share of women in senior leadership roles. Our target is to reach a share of 30% women in senior leadership roles overall by the end of 2024, and a minimum of 40% over time. We require diversity in all recruitments and promotions, in both the shortlisting and offer stages.
A diverse and inclusive environment creates a sense of belonging among employees and a trust in our culture. The actions we take in connection with equity are important and send strong signals of our genuine commitment to DE&I. This means creating consistent, fair, and transparent policies and practices, and a zero tolerance for harassment and any form of discrimination, with a clear set of consequences for incompliance.
Leaders are at the core of our culture – driving and role modelling inclusive behavior. We are embedding inclusive leadership as a core trait in our Leadership Capability programme, and building inclusive leadership through dedicated training for our people leaders.
At Carlsberg Group, respect for people is an essential part of how we do business. As a signatory of the UN Global Compact, we are committed to its 10 principles, which include human rights, and we are also committed to the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGP) and conduct continuous due diligence against its criteria.
Our commitment to respect human rights applies to all our activities, relationships, and throughout the value chain, and it refers to internationally recognised human rights as described in the International Bill of Human Rights (including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and its two Optional Protocols), the International Labour Organization’s Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work and additional ILO conventions on labour standards on working hours, wages and benefits, and health and safety.
Live By Our Compass. Live by our Compass is our approach to create a winning culture by defining common ethical behaviour that applies to all our employees.
In order to achieve our ambition, we strive to maintain a high-integrity culture through a world-class compliance programme. The backbone of the programme consists of our Code of Ethics & Conduct, which guides the daily decisions made by our employees and contract workers, and reinforces our compliance culture. It covers a wide range of issues, including anti-bribery and corruption, competition law, data protection and privacy, conflicts of interest, political activities, discrimination and harassment. Further guidance is provided in corporate policies and manuals that provide additional detail and examples to support our day-to-day decisions.