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.

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, HR professionals and Internal Auditors, and procurement professionals.

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

Country human rights risk mapping

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.

Based on four international indices, namely the Freedom House Index, the Internet Freedom Status Index, the Global Slavery Index, the Children’s Rights in the Workplace Index and the International Trade Union Confederation Global Rights Index, supplemented by country reports, we have developed a human rights country risk mapping. This country risk mapping is aimed at identifying, across the countries where Capgemini is present, the countries most at risk in terms of impact on human rights. This will help us to prioritize our actions in terms of implementation of our human rights policy, by focusing first on the countries most at risk.

Human rights assessment questionnaire for all countries

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 value chain, 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. It also assesses Capgemini’s supply chain and client interactions in the specific 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.

The human rights assessment questionnaire is currently being deployed, with a pilot test in India – India being one of Capgemini’s most at risk countries in terms of human rights negative impact.

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.