Case study: How Hemtex fights corruption and bribery

What are the material issues the company has identified?

In its 2017 Sustainability Report Hemtex identified a range of material issues, such as customer health and safety, emissions, diversity and equal opportunity, occupational health and safety, effluents and waste, freedom of association and collective bargaining. Among these, fighting corruption and bribery stands out as a key material issue for Hemtex.

Stakeholder engagement in accordance with the GRI Standards

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) defines the Principle of Stakeholder Inclusiveness when identifying material issues (or a company’s most important impacts) as follows:

“The organization should identify its stakeholders, and explain how it has responded to their reasonable expectations.”

Stakeholders must be consulted in the process s of identifying a company’s most important impacts and their reasonable expectations and interests must be taken into account. This is an important cornerstone for CSR / sustainability reporting done responsibly.

Key stakeholder groups Hemtex engages with:

How stakeholder engagement was made to identify material issues

To identify and prioritise material topics Hemtex conducted, in 2017, a new materiality analysis, with contributions from both internal employees and representatives of several stakeholders.

What actions were taken by Hemtex to fight corruption and bribery?

In its 2017 Sustainability Report Hemtex reports that it took the following actions for fighting corruption and bribery:

• Implementing an ethics policy
• Hemtex applies an ethics policy to both its employees and external contracts, providing clear guidance on how to react to situations where gifts, samples, trips, discounts or other benefits occur. Additionally, Hemtex’s suppliers also have to comply, by contract, with Hemtex’s ethics policy. Moreover, Hemtex makes sure it does not provide grants or donations, directly or indirectly, to politicians, political parties or organisations acting in the political sphere.

• Providing ethics training
• Since the autumn of 2015, Hemtex is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the ICA Group and, by collaborating with ICA Global Sourcing (IGS), Hemtex has several purchasing offices in Asia. Accordingly, especially in high-risk countries – determined according to the BSCI (Business Social Compliance Initiative) definition –, all staff at IGS participate in regular training on ICA’s Good Business Ethics. In addition, when recruited, staff are informed that IGS in Asia shows zero tolerance to receiving gifts. Suppliers also receive information about the IGS policy and IGS is additionally certified in accordance with the ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 standards. In 2017, Hemtex was not subject to any legal action nor convicted of fines, at any time.

• Protecting customer and employee privacy
• In 2017, Hemtex carried out work to protect the privacy of both customers and employees, through new policies and measures that restricted eligibility for access to the personal data Hemtex deals with. Moreover, new and stricter personal data agreements were sent to partners with access to personal data and a Data Protection Officer (DPO) has been appointed. In addition, a management organisation, with designated roles and responsibilities, has been established.

Which GRI Standards have been addressed?

The GRI Standards addressed in this case are:

1) Disclosure 102-16 Values, principles, standards, and norms of behavior

2) Disclosure 205-1 Operations assessed for risks related to corruption

3) Disclosure 205-2 Communication and training about anti-corruption policies and procedures

4) Disclosure 205-3 Confirmed incidents of corruption and actions taken

5) Disclosure 418-1 Substantiated complaints concerning breaches of customer privacy and losses of customer data

78% of the world’s 250 largest companies report in accordance with the GRI Standards

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References:

1) This case study is based on published information by Hemtex, located at the link below. For the sake of readability, we did not use brackets or ellipses. However, we made sure that the extra or missing words did not change the report’s meaning. If you would like to quote these written sources from the original, please revert to the original on the Global Reporting Initiative’s Sustainability Disclosure Database at the link:

http://database.globalreporting.org/

2) http://www.fbrh.co.uk/en/global-reporting-initiative-gri-g4-guidelines-download-page

3) https://g4.globalreporting.org/Pages/default.aspx

4) https://www.globalreporting.org/standards/gri-standards-download-center/

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