Sustainability report

Maintaining high ethical standards is a top priority for AAK. We want to foster a corporate climate that supports ethically correct behavior from all our employees, suppliers and business partners. The AAK Group Code of Conduct The AAK Group Code of Conduct is a set of rules for our employees that protects the business and makes sure everyone is fully aware of AAK’s ethical expec- tations. These rules and expectations are cascaded to our suppliers, agents and distributors in separate Codes. Human and labor rights due diligence AAK’s commitment to respect and support human rights is defined in our Group Code of Conduct. AAK adheres to the United Nations Guiding principles on Business and Human Rights and the ILO Core Conventions. We shall, as a minimum, comply with local and international standards concerning fair employment conditions. We are committed to conduct human rights due diligence on an ongoing basis to ensure that we have a workplace that promotes and supports diversity, trust, equal opportunities and that is free from discrimination. To adequately address this we need to understand our impact and prevent any risk of human rights violations. Therefore, we have set an ambition to have all countries of origin in our supply chain, our production sites and agents and distributors human rights risk assessed by 2021. This will provide valuable information on our most salient issues across our business and measures that may help to mitigate risks and establish a solid human rights due diligence process. Ethical awareness and “blowing the whistle” on misconduct During 2020, we conducted an ethical behavior survey among AAK leaders and we will use the outcome to progress on ethical behavior training programs. We also provide a third-party whistleblower function, giving everyone a chance to anonymously report suspicions of corruption or irregularities involving AAK. Zero tolerance towards corruption AAK has a zero tolerance approach to bribery and corruption. Anti-corruption is addressed in our Group Code of Conduct, the Supplier Code of Conduct, the Code of Conduct for Suppliers of Raw Materials, and the Code of Conduct for Agents and Distributors. Anti-corruption measures We have controls in place related to bribes and corruption via our supplier assessment process, including assessment of suppliers based on Trans­ parency International, audits and risk analyses/ ratings. All relevant employees are requested to take e-learning courses in anti-corruption and competition law. During 2020, we extended the target group that now includes people from Sales, Product Management, Purchasing, Sourcing & Trading and relevant people with leadership positions. 53 percent had completed the e-learning on anti-corruption and 44 percent had completed the competition law course in 2020. Fighting corruption in prioritized areas West Africa has been identified as an area with high risk of corruption. AAK is therefore putting in extra efforts in this region to implement the Code of Conduct for Suppliers of Raw Materials and carry out anti-corruption training in ways that surmount any linguistic and cultural challenges. During 2020, we started to offer digital e-learning in French. 67 percent of the French-speaking employees were trained during 2020 and efforts will continue in 2021, including our extension officers within our women’s groups program Kolo Nafaso. Upholding high ethical standards AAK Sustainability Report 2020 40 Contributes to: