Corporate Responsibility governance

In the reporting year, we reviewed Corporate Responsibility (CR) governance, compared it with industry practice and developed it further. The investigation showed that the existing management is professional, and that responsibilities and reporting are institutionalised. The adapted CR governance builds on the previous CR governance, eliminates evaluated vulnerabilities and takes into account legal and social de­vel­op­ments.

The existing roles of sponsors (rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Group Executive Board), SPOCs (contact persons from the sustainability team per business unit and subsidiary) and CR champions (rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the line units) were stan­dard­ised and consistently updated.

The Board of Directors assumes overall responsibility for ESG (en­vi­ron­mental, social, governance). The Audit Committee is given a leading role in the area of reporting and is renamed the ‘Audit & ESG Reporting Committee’. Likewise, ESG issues are more consistently embedded through­out the entire organisation.

The CR governance was endorsed by the Group Executive Board on 24 September and approved by the Board of Directors on 27 October 2021. It enters into force on 1 January 2022.

The following sections describe the amended CR Governance (In­for­ma­tion) on the previous CR Governance can be seen in last year’s report.