Taking responsibility for everyone working for the Group

Electrolux Group strives to always respect and promote human rights — not only for its employees, but also for the people working for the Group’s suppliers and partners.

The Group has approximately 45,000 employees and hundreds of thousands of people involved in its direct and indirect supply chains all around the world. This makes safeguarding the human rights of the people who contribute to the company extremely important.

Assessing and mitigating local impact

Electrolux Group aims to conduct local impact assessments in all high-risk countries where it has manufacturing operations.

In recent years, the Group has conducted impact assessments on its operations in Egypt, Thailand, Ukraine, Romania, South Africa, China and Germany. These assessments identified issues such as safety, working hours, wages, labor relations, corruption training and supply chain risks.

“Electrolux Group has a duty of care as we are expected to take responsibility not only for our own employees, but for anyone impacted directly by our operations, or indirectly in our broader value chain,” says Malin Ekefalk, Director of Social Responsibility and Community Investment. “This involves understanding the current and potential impacts on people throughout our value chain and taking action on these — wherever we operate in the world and by going beyond local regulations.”

Promoting a strong culture of ethics and integrity

The Group’s Code of Conduct contains a Human Rights Policy statement and the Group’s Workplace Policy defines minimum acceptable standards for labor and human rights, health and safety and the environment — in all countries, wherever it operates. The policy is based on internationally recognized treaties and standards.

The Employee Voice survey in 2023 indicated a high level of Code of Conduct awareness among employees. Employees rated their understanding of what the Code of Conduct means for them at 87 (average score on a scale of 1–100).

“Our work with human rights is based on the Group’s strong culture of ethics and integrity. This is vital to create trust among our stakeholders and for long-term business success,” adds Ekefalk. “This is because employees prefer to work for a company with values that match their own and consumers are increasingly making purchasing choices based on whether a company is perceived as being trust-worthy and how it contributes to society.”

Working to promote responsible sourcing

In its supply chain, the Group focuses on auditing and improving the performance of suppliers that are assessed as having higher risks related to their operations. Electrolux Group is also exploring ways to identify and address risks in its supply chain beyond first-tier suppliers.

“A fundamental part of our strategy is constantly raising the bar when it comes to labor, human rights, and health and safety standards in our value chain together with our suppliers and partners,” says Ewerton Gruba, Director Global Responsible Sourcing. “We place the same high expectations on our suppliers as on our own operations — to ensure all our products are manufactured with the same high standards.”

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