Sustainability governance

Sustainability governance

Viaplay Group’s sustainability strategy is a central part of the company’s business and governance. It is integrated with the Group’s purpose, values, strategy, and culture, and includes its own policy framework, targets, roadmap and KPIs. All strategic business decisions consider sustainability issues. Responsibility for the overarching sustainability impact and strategy outcome rests with the Head of Sustainability and the Board of Directors. The Board monitors the progress and work through annual review sessions and continuous dialogue with the CEO and the Head of Sustainability. The General Executive Management (GEM) gets continues updates on progress and meets on a weekly basis. Certain key functions, as well as individual functions across the Group, have operational responsibility for implementing and performing on relevant goals and targets included in the sustainability strategy. Cross-functional working groups have been established to integrate sustainability in the business and drive improvement across the Group within several sustainability areas. Each year, Viaplay Group publishes its performance in a group-wide integrated Annual and Sustainability report as part of the annual reporting cycle. The sustainability report is reviewed and approved by the Board of Directors, and externally verified by independent auditor KPMG.

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Sustainability risk management

Sustainability is an integral part of Viaplay Group’s business with the aim to create impact while doing better business. The risk management system of Viaplay Group includes monitoring and evaluating overarching sustainability risks such as climate change, human and labour rights violations, and potential briberies and corruption in the value-chain. We are also evaluating strategic partners. To safeguard our expansion, we conduct thorough sustainability market assessment to mitigate ESG risks before taking any decision of entering markets. In addition, we are in the process of integrating the framework on Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) and publishing a report on our identified climate risks.

Viaplay Group’s sustainability team work closely with Viaplay Group’s risk team and ESG risks are monitored and evaluated in the Governance Risk Compliance (GRC) committee which meets on a monthly basis. We continuously monitor, identify and address risks in all sustainability areas and follow up on our actions through our governing framework.

Viaplay Group's Governing Framework

Employee & supplier conduct

Our Employee Code of Conduct combined with our Group policies and directives provide a framework that defines how we do business; keeps us aligned with all applicable regulations, and supports us in living our values of Bravery, Equality, Appreciation and Trust. The framework is based on accepted standards and principles, including those relating to human rights, and it is subject to regular review.

We believe in applying the same high standards we have set for our company on our suppliers and partners as well. Our Supplier Code of Conduct governs our expectations and is mandatorily signed by all suppliers. To make sure that the Supplier Code of Conduct is implemented and understood, as well as that we identify any ESG risks, we established an enhanced Supplier Due Diligence process to ensure the responsible management of both existing and new suppliers. This process focuses on topics such as business ethics, environmental safeguarding, fair working conditions and health & safety. Read more below.

Supply chain management

At Viaplay Group, we want to build strong long-term partnerships with best-performing suppliers. Our landscape includes few thousands of suppliers based around the world, such as Europe and the US. We have adopted a transparent sourcing process and we have robust requirements on our partners and suppliers. We expect them to maintain the same standards of operations as us. In our sourcing and buyer decisions we consider criteria such as price, quality and high ethical standards of business conduct. We will also start screening our main suppliers on their impact on our carbon emission reduction targets in 2022.

The top five priorities in our supply chain approach are:

• Quality and perceived value
• Compliant and sustainability proven partner
• Price/costs
• Supplier reliability/flexibility
• Market landscape (competition), incl. investigation and commercial rationale

To ensure our suppliers and partners commit to ethical standards equivalent to our Supplier Code of Conduct, we have an established group-wide process that ensures the following:

• Responsible management of new suppliers (responsible supplier selection and contracting)
• Responsible management of existing suppliers (identification of critical suppliers, supply chain monitoring and risk management focused on high-risk suppliers who can potentially cause adverse impacts to our business)

This helps us prioritise our risk management measures and adequately prevent and mitigate supply chain management risks. The process for identifying the level of risk a supplier constitutes for Viaplay Group is based on the following four criteria:

1. Annual contract turnover
2. Type of product
3. Dependency of the products/service
4. Geographical operations

Once Viaplay Group identifies all critical suppliers with a high level of risk, a Supplier Due Diligence questionnaire is sent out for further assessment on ESG and sustainability risks. The questionnaire covers topics such as business ethics, environmental work, fair working conditions, human rights and health & safety. A total of six suppliers have been screened and no resulting actions have been necessary. The aim is for all of our identified high-risk suppliers to have received the questionnaire by the end of 2021.

We do a second layer of screening in our content supply chain, focusing on ESG and particularly, people-related risks in our content productions. The productions that will be deemed to be of highest risk in this process, will be subject to an on-site audit.

Human Rights

Respecting human rights and freedom of expression is a topic of material importance to Viaplay Group and forms part of our sustainability strategy. We comply with both internationally recognised human rights principles and the laws of the countries in which we do business, and make sure our policies cover human rights issues that our industry is specifically exposed to. To meet our responsibilities, we have established a due diligence process in 2020 for proactive and systematic identification and review of potential human rights issues, and where they could occur. This process is based on our Governing Framework and covers our own operations and supply chain. In this process we are assessing different human rights issues such as; discrimination, rights to privacy, right to sexual freedom, freedom of speech and expression, anti-harassment & anti-sexual harassment, fair & safe working conditions and reporting concerns. And we are putting extra emphasis and focus on certain groups such as; employees, cast in our non-scripted productions, local communities, women, children and third-party contracted labour. Human Rights are also part of the ESG-due diligence in our Mergers & Acquisition process and when we assess our markets. This process will be further implemented in 2021 and the subject for systematic review and annual follow up.

Our Employee Code of Conduct e-learning also covers aspects relevant to human rights, and our whistle-blowing is a grievance mechanism that employees can use in case of suspected human rights violations. In our Employee Engagement survey, we also measure if our employees feel they have the same opportunities and duties regardless of gender, gender identity or expression, ethnicity, religion or other belief, disability, sexual orientation, or age; if they feel Viaplay Group is committed to equality; if diverse perspectives are valued in the team; if the culture in our workplace suits everybody (regardless of gender, gender identity or expression, ethnic affiliation, religion or other beliefs, disability, sexual orientation, age or other; if they feel that they can be themselves at work and, if in the last 12 months they have been free from any form of victimisation (bullying, discrimination or sexual harassment) at work. This allows us to monitor, remedy and correct any negative impacts related to human rights. In addition, we report on human rights violations in our Annual and Sustainability Reports.

For more information on our work and policies on human rights view our Human Rights Policy.