Our human rights commitment

Our human rights framework

Our human rights policy sets out our firm commitment on key human rights issues, providing a clear framework so that we continue to protect and uphold human rights.

Our human rights policy states our commitments, program, and governance, and covers all Capgemini activities. It is endorsed by our Group Chief Executive Officer.

The responsibility for implementing our policy lies with the operational and functional leaders across the Group, supported by an implementation program driven by the Chief Ethics Officer and country Ethics & Compliance Officers.

The progress of our human rights initiatives is monitored by the Ethics & Governance Committee of Capgemini’s Board of Directors.

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Raising awareness on human rights at Capgemini

In order to protect and promote the respect of human rights across our Group, the first step is to ensure that our 10 human rights commitments are known and understood by all Capgemini’s employees. To this end, our CEO sent a message to all our Vice Presidents (VPs) on December 10, 2021, introducing our human rights policy and asking VPs to “role model behaviors that express our commitment, and spread awareness among their teams and throughout our ecosystem, therefore honoring our commitment to fundamental human rights by fulfilling this special responsibility”.

Our human rights policy is published on the Capgemini intranet, which is accessible by all employees, and is available here on Capgemini’s external website.

A roll‑out campaign has been formalized, which will include from 2022 onwards an e‑learning for all employees, with dedicated training for certain key positions such as Ethics & Compliance Officers and Internal Auditors.

Also, as part of our mandatory e‑learning courses on our Code of Business Ethics, we have developed three micro modules on: “Prevention of workplace harassment”, “Prevention of sexual harassment”, and “Speaking up and non-retaliation”.

Identification of our potential human rights impacts

In defining our human rights policy, we identified our 10 human rights commitments.

Eight of our commitments concern the Group’s salient issues, meaning the human rights most at risk of severe negative impacts through the Group’s operations:

• Equal opportunity and fair treatment
• Freedom of expression
• Freedom of association and collective bargaining
• Harassment-free work
• Safe and healthy workplace
• Protection against child labor, forced labor and human trafficking
• Data privacy
• Protection of human rights through our ethical approach on artificial intelligence solutions.

Two of our commitments represent positive actions from the Group toward those rights:

• Right to education
• Digital inclusion.

Human rights assessment and due diligence:

In our operations: Following the publication of the Human Rights Policy, we developed a country human rights assessment questionnaire, to look per country at all aspects of our business and assess where there is more exposure to human rights impacts. This country human rights assessment questionnaire is divided into different sections focusing on the potential human rights risk factor for the country. Finally, there is a set of questions directly linked to each human rights commitment of our human rights policy. The aim of this assessment questionnaire is to provide a broad understanding of the actions that are already in place, but also to identify gaps and areas of progress in terms of the promotion and protection of human rights.

In our supply chain: Capgemini’s Supplier Standards of Conduct applies to all contractors/suppliers/service providers and is available on Capgemini’s corporate website. It is critical to Capgemini that its suppliers – including their employees – are committed to maintaining the highest ethical standards and adhering to applicable human rights standards.

In our clients’ interactions: To implement our human rights commitments along our full value chain, we need to identify our human rights risks linked to our clients’ practices and in the impact of our services. Based on specific country risks, Capgemini has also started, on a case-by-case basis, assessing countries and potential clients on human rights practices, supported by an analysis conducted by an external partner.

Human rights mitigation and remediation

We communicate extensively across the Group on existing grievance mechanisms and processes, to empower our employees, suppliers, and clients to raise concerns or queries about unethical conduct. We protect all who report in good faith, so concerns can be raised without fear of retaliation. We ensure that all necessary confidentiality measures are taken.

Our ethics helpline, SpeakUp, is a natural extension of our values-based culture and high ethical standards. It is a web and phone-based ethics reporting, incident management and advisory tool, hosted by an independent service provider, managed by the Group Ethics function and supported by our global network of Ethics & Compliance Officers and HR investigators. It is made available for our team members, customers, suppliers, and business partners to report any violation of human rights.