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.

Our strong collaboration with suppliers enables us to consistently deliver quality products in scale and thus ensure timely delivery throughout our value chain. In our Hearing Aids business area, we have deepened this collaboration by integrating sustainability into our partnerships through our supplier engagement programme. The programme’s objective is to collaborate more closely with suppliers on decarbonisation and address human rights impacts in our supply chain.

We continuously take steps to gain insight into the perspectives of the impacts of our operations on workers in our value chain. Currently, supplier engagement does not involve direct engagement with workers in the value chain.