Human Rights Day: The Role of Business in Respecting People and Their Rights - Seite 2

Q: What kind of gaps? Could you share one or two examples?

SR: One example is our grievance mechanism. We collaborated across teams to expand the existing "Speak Out at SAP" tool to cover human rights and environment-related complaints from anyone, be it internal or external. We defined clear rules of procedure of how incoming complaints are processed and followed up on in a confidential and, if desired, anonymous way.

DS: Another example coming to my mind is related to living wages. As a founding member of the Value Balancing Alliance (VBA), we applied the living wage methodology co-developed within the VBA. This helped us find few employees in SAP Brazil in 2022 whose compensation had to be adjusted to meet our ambition of ensuring a decent living wage for our own workforce as measured through the VBA methodology. We are now working toward regular reassessments to avoid future deviations.

SR: I would like to add a third example related to our supply chain. As we proceed with integrating human rights due diligence into our supplier code of conduct and procurement processes, we increasingly notice how important it is to get not just colleagues from SAP's procurement organization onboard, but also all other employees involved with supplier selection. All of us need to consider human rights and environmental criteria in our buying decisions. The earlier this happens, the better. The point at which contract negotiations with suppliers start may be too late.

Q: Coinciding with Human Rights Day 2023, SAP just recently updated and expanded its Global Human Rights Commitment Statement. What's the reasoning and what's new?

DS: When looking back at our sustainability journey that started in 2009, I remember human rights being embedded in SAP's holistic understanding of sustainability from the beginning. It has been part of our objective to create positive economic, social, and environmental impact all along. We therefore also established our first Global Human Rights Commitment Statement in 2011.

SR: That's right. SAP's commitment to respect human rights is not new. But it evolved during the past years beyond our operations to also encompass our extended supply chain and product lifecycle.

In the latest update of our Global Human Rights Commitment Statement, we have expanded the description of our downstream action areas and how we aim to avoid negative impacts that can result from the use or abuse of SAP's products and services. We added an entirely new chapter on the implementation of human rights due diligence at SAP, elaborating in detail on our procedures, including governance, risk analysis and prioritized risks, preventive measures, complaints process and remediation, monitoring and reporting, and stakeholder dialog. It makes transparent the results of our human rights due diligence project and helps us better meet the requirements by the UN GPs as well as the German Supply Chain Act.