Sopra Steria’s action falls within a framework of strong ethical principles and compliance with the entirety of the rules governing its business.
This commitment forms the bedrock of the relationship of trust between the company and its stakeholders.
The Group is a signatory of the United Nations Global Compact (GC Advanced) and it abides by the fundamental principles and rights in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.
The Group also reaffirms its fundamental principles and its values in its Code of Ethics. With the support of Management, which ensures compliance with the rules as laid down, this Code applies to all the Group’s employees in order to guarantee the proper conduct of its activities.
The compliance system in the Group is also founded on a common core of rules and procedures, including a new Supplier Code of conduct.
Sopra Steria has put in place in all its entities a programme for preventing and fighting corruption and influence peddling, which is underpinned by:
- An undertaking by the Group’s Management recalling the importance of prevention and the policy of zero tolerance where corruption is concerned.
- Horizontal governance under the authority of the Internal Control and Risk Management Department, which is reliant upon a network of Internal Control Managers charged with compliance and risk management in each of its entities.
- A Code of Conduct for the prevention of corruption, illustrated by concrete examples and issued in ten languages, covering all Group entities.
- A training programme comprising an e-learning module intended to raise the awareness of all employees and classroom-based sessions for employee categories deemed to be more exposed to risks of corruption.
- Strengthened procedures and controls for the whole of the programme.
- An internal whistleblowing system available to all Group employees in local languages that takes into account the requirements of the Sapin II law and the law on the duty of vigilance (confidentiality, whistleblowers protection etc.).
Furthermore, the Code of Ethics has been supplemented by Insider Trading Rules relating to securities transactions and the prevention of insider trading compliant with the EU market abuse regulation.
And lastly, the Group’s commitment and performance in the area of Corporate Responsibility have been recognised with the award of the advanced CSR Gold Medal by Ecovadis, a global rating platform applying 21 social, ethical, environmental and supply-chain criteria.