GN has taken several actions in response to potential negative impacts on a case-by-case basis. Depending on the nature of the impact, actions are determined based on international and local standards and regulations, internal policies, and input from employee engagement processes. GN ensures adequate resource allocation for addressing each material impact with clearly defined roles and responsibilities. Execution of actions is anchored in GN’s existing governance structures, which defines roles and responsibilities, and ensures sufficient resource allocation. To evaluate effectiveness of actions implemented, GN conducts assessment and collects the necessary data for analysis. The results are reviewed by senior management to identify areas that require attention, allowing for necessary amendments to be made where needed. For longer term initiatives, GN performs continuous assessments to address any emerging issues promptly.

We have identified six negative, potential impacts related to our own workforce, defined as all GN employees. Overall, these impacts reflect our business model, which depends on human input as a vital resource for all our key activities in our own operations: hearing aid component assembly in Denmark, manufacturing of hearing aids in China and Malaysia, final assembly of hearing aids in regional operational centers, R&D and product testing, sales and external collaboration, and white-collar back-office functions. Within this assessment, we established that the most helpful grouping principle for the sake of applying impacts to specific employee categories to be blue-collar employees at major manufacturing sites on the one hand and white-collar and all other blue-collar employees on the other. Given that all white-collar-related potential impacts also apply to blue-collar employees, in this report, we report on the management of impacts either for blue-collar workers at major manufacturing sites or all GN employees.