As described in its charter, the Board of Directors’ Audit Committee holds overall responsibility for overseeing the management of ESG-related impacts, risks, and opportunities (IROs), reporting into the Board for related decision-making. ESG is a quarterly recurring agenda topic in the Audit Committee. To ensure oversight of governance issues, business conduct cases reported through GN’s whistleblower hotline, as well as any other governance-related topic that requires Board oversight, are also presented to the Audit Committee on a quarterly basis.

As part of the review and approval of GN’s double materiality assessment, the Audit Committee was informed about all identified material IROs as part of approving their materiality, as well as the approach to implementation of due diligence, and results and effectiveness of policies, actions, metrics, and targets that form the basis of the reporting scope of this report.

The leaders of GN’s business divisions and functions of scale together with the CEO and the CFO constitute the Executive Leadership Team (ELT). The ELT is responsible for monitoring, managing, and overseeing the implementation of policies, actions, and targets related to effective management of IROs. Group Sustainability, reporting directly to the CFO, holds overall responsibility for supporting the business in IRO management, sustainability strategy development, and ESG reporting.

To ensure required progress on an operational level, ESG is discussed on at least a quarterly basis in the management teams of all divisions and functions of scale.

In terms of ESG-related target setting, long-term strategic targets such as climate targets, are developed by management with support from key functions and approved by the Board through existing decision-making mechanisms.

Our double materiality assessment identified 29 material IROs across seven topical standards. Our IROs consist of 21 impacts and 6 risks, as well as 2 additional IROs with both an impact and a risk attached. The IROs are spread across 19 ESG topics depicted in the infographic on the next page (see topical chapters for information on IROs per ESG topic). All IROs are covered by ESRS disclosure requirements, except for the positive impact related to helping people with hearing loss, which is entity specific. As this is our first year reporting based on IROs, there are no changes compared to previous reporting periods.

Unless a specific element of IRO management requires a separate project or program governance to drive progress, all decisions related to ESG are taken within the existing governance and decision-making bodies. This reflects that ESG is integrated into existing business processes where possible, rather than treating it as a separate topic. Accordingly, GN does not have a separate ESG or sustainability committee.

As stipulated in our Remuneration Policy, ESG-related performance is part of (annual) short-term incentive (bonus) objectives for all members of the Executive Leadership Team. This supports progress on policies, targets, and actions in mitigating our material IROs across several environmental and social topics.