Our commitment to respect human rights, including labour rights, and protect value chain workers is outlined in our 'Global human rights policy', 'Stakeholder engagement policy', 'Just transition policy', and 'Code of conduct for business partners'. Our 'Global human rights policy' explicitly highlights our dedication to ensuring freedom of association, the right to collective bargaining, the elimination of forced, trafficked, or compulsory labour, the effective abolition of child labour, and the elimination of discrimination in employment and occupation, among other critical issues. In addition, our 'Code of conduct for business partners' is an integrated part of our agreements with our suppliers and contractors. It is further integrated in the evaluation process for our joint venture partners and other strategic partners.

As part of our ongoing commitment to transparency and accountability, we assess whether value chain workers are aware of and trust the grievance mechanisms available to them during our onsite supplier assessments where we conduct interviews with workers. However, our assessments in this area are still a work in progress. While we can evaluate workers’ awareness during these interviews, we do not yet have sufficient comprehensive assessments to fully assess their trust in these channels. We are actively working to strengthen our approach to ensure greater transparency regarding value chain workers’ grievances.

Further to this, it is our aim to ensure that our Whistleblower Hotline is widely available to value chain workers, although we cannot be certain that all value chain workers are aware of the channel and know how to access it. However, we ensure individuals who use these grievance mechanisms are protected from retaliation, and that all whistleblower reports are handled confidentially, in line with our 'Good business conduct policy' and 'Whistleblower policy'. For more information on how we protect whistleblowers against retaliation, see ESRS 'G1 Business conduct'.