Internal Guidelines
Internal guidelines govern our business conduct
As a global company, we believe that profitability has to go hand in hand with compliance with laws and regulations, and a sense of responsibility toward our employees and the environment. For this reason, we have established clear guidelines for employee conduct in these areas.
Integrity in business: Our Business Conduct Guidelines
Our strategic planning and day-to-day business practices comply with strict ethical and legal standards. Our Business Conduct Guidelines, which govern internal cooperation as well as behavior vis-à-vis external partners, are binding for all Siemens employees as well as the Managing and Supervisory Boards and require compliance with the law, mutual respect, honesty and integrity. As a uniform code of behavior, our Business Conduct Guidelines are the core of our Compliance Program. In January 2009, we revised and expanded our Guidelines from the ground up. For example, we considerably broadened the rules for dealing with business partners.
Code of Ethics for Financial Matters
Siemens’ Code of Ethics for Financial Matters was introduced in 2002 as a consequence of Section 406 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The Code combines Siemens’ regulations regarding the proper handling of financial matters – for example, Siemens’ traditional “four eyes principle” – into one document. It applies not only to the company’s CEO and CFO but also to every Siemens employee involved in business administration.
Principles for Diversity
The men and women who work at Siemens come from many different nations and age groups. They differ in skin color, culture, religion and ethnic and social background. Working in multinational and multicultural teams, they leverage a wide variety of perspectives to increase the wealth of ideas in our company. The Guiding Principles for Promoting and Managing Diversity have been binding for Siemens worldwide since 2001.
Our Environmental Mission Statement
Environmental protection is a key component of our business policies and processes. It is anchored in our Business Conduct Guideline.
Our Environmental Mission Statement reflects the emphasis we place on protecting the environment and underscores our commitment to conserving natural resources, minimizing our impact on the environment and reducing environmental burdens wherever possible.
Protecting employees: Occupational health and safety guidelines
We have developed a set of comprehensive health and safety guidelines to help ensure the wellbeing of our employees worldwide. These guidelines establish general principles and strategies, which define, for example, the responsibilities of managers and employees, the ways in which work processes are to be designed and procedures for systematically determining the causes of accidents. The guidelines are also flexible enough to accommodate country-specific regulations based on local statutory requirements and standards.