Demant engages with suppliers that operate in countries and industries where there is a risk of negatively impacting workers' rights. This is especially the case in the electronic components manufacturing sector where impacts can be severe, e.g. poor health and safety standards, suboptimal working conditions and unfair labour practices. These negative conditions impact the individual workers and their families and take place in the short term. These impacts may be linked to our operations, products or services through our business relationships.

Our Third Party Compliance Code outlines our expectations toward suppliers and business partners regarding working conditions for workers in the value chain. This includes the core International Labour Organization (ILO) standards on working conditions, workplace health and safety, freedom of association, forced/child labour and non-discrimination. We expect all our direct suppliers to comply with this Code, which is included as an appendix in all new contracts with suppliers.

We have many suppliers in our Hearing Aids and Diagnostics business areas. We therefore take a risk-based approach to identifying and managing the interests, views and rights of value chain workers. The large number of suppliers calls for prioritisation of resources to identify and mitigate the most significant negative impacts first. If a negative impact is reported to or identified by Demant, we engage directly with the supplier in question to urge them to prevent and mitigate the impact, while clearly communicating our expectation that the supplier provides remedies towards the affected value chain workers.

In 2024, we established an updated and more extensive sustainability supplier risk assessment process to identify and document the potential impacts that workers in our supply chain are exposed to, based on the countries and sectors in which the workers or our suppliers operate. The risk assessment process is based on a quantitative and qualitative analysis, using recognised databases, indices and reports. Continuous risk assessment of existing and new suppliers helps us gain an overview of how the interests, views and rights of value chain workers could be materially impacted by Demant, including respect for their human rights. These efforts are embedded in the supplier management process, and dedicated sustainability specialists lead this work in our procurement functions.