We respect human rights and treat all individuals equally whether we are dealing with our personnel or other stakeholders. We do not allow any form of discrimination, harassment or bullying. Everyone is responsible for acting fairly and creating a pleasant, inspiring work atmosphere. We want to ensure the psychological and physical safety of our employees. Everyone must have an equal opportunity and nobody is treated differently or discriminated against because of their personal characteristics.
We embrace diversity and accept, respect and value that each individual is unique. For us, embracing diversity means taking into account the differences between people and groups of people and placing a positive value on those differences.
We advance an inclusive and equal working culture and empower our people to be active members in our organization. Everyone has the freedom of expression. Active participation at different levels of the organization and respecting every employee’s right of participation are parts of our working culture.
These principles are presented in our Board-approved Code of Conduct. Every employee has to adhere to the Code, and Nokian Tyres provides an online training on the Code for all personnel. The training is included in the induction for new employees. At the end of 2022, 76% of the personnel had completed the course.
Human rights assessment
In 2017, Nokian Tyres Sustainability Workgroup members conducted a human rights assessment. The assessment covered 32 internationally recognized human rights, included in the Bill of Human Rights. The following document, Relationship between businesses and human rights published by the UN Guiding Principles Reporting Framework, was used as support and normative through the assessment.
The assessment was done in three parts: own employees, supply chain, and customers & end-users.
Own employees
We recognized four human rights most at risk when it comes to our own employees:
- Right to health
- Right to privacy
- Right to life
- Right to enjoy just and favorable conditions of work
An action plan has been created for these risks. Developing Safety Culture is a continuous project lead by Head of Global Safety.
Nokian Tyres has a Group wide risk assessment tool to identify work related hazards. It compiles all the risk assessments in a single database and thus enables to assess the possible problems in a centralized way. Nokian Tyres will continue to have updated risk assessments in place for all of our workplaces and tasks. We encourage our employees to make safety observations and carry out safety actions.
In order to avoid hazardous situations, we emphasize preventing occupational accidents. We have identified diverse safety cultures, meaning that the ownership of safety varies according to operating countries. That is why we have invested in communicating our safety thinking globally. We have trained our own managers to train their own teams in safe working. We have found this approach to be more efficient than having employees trained by separate trainers. Developing a safe working culture is a continuous project.
The procedural and documentation requirements introduced by the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation have been implemented at Nokian Tyres in 2018. The privacy work continues by specifying and further developing the required documentation and processes, and further increasing the awareness within the company.