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Sustainability & CSR Overview

Sustainability, Health, and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

SAP acts as both an enabler and an exemplar

To create positive economic, social, and environmental impact within planetary boundaries, we act as both an enabler and an exemplar.

As an enabler, we provide products and services that meet the purpose and sustainability challenges and opportunities of our customers. We are also an exemplar, leading by example in our own sustainable business operations and practices.  

 

Our focus areas and initiatives include:

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Climate Action

SAP is taking action to combat climate change and its impacts and help reduce our customers’ and our own environmental footprint.

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Circular Economy

As the world faces an unprecedented resource crisis, the move to an interconnected, circular economy is key to protecting our planet, its species, and our collective prosperity. Learn how we aspire to a world with zero waste.

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Equality for All

SAP is committed to fostering a culture of inclusion and quality, eliminating the stigma around mental health disorders, and ensuring that all customers, partners, developers, and employees have the right skills to thrive digital world.

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Skilled and Inclusive Workforce

To ensure that everyone has the skills to thrive and secure meaningful work in a digital world, SAP created the Learning for Life initiative and other programs that promote inclusive learning, education, and development.

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Social and Inclusive Entrepreneurship

Social and inclusive entrepreneurship is the fabric of economic growth and the engine of humanitarian and environmental impact. SAP offers programs that range from inspiring early stage innovation to scaling mature social enterprises. 

SAP aims to build trust by sharing how we measure success both economically as well as through societal and environmental impact.  We also strive to achieve the highest standards of ethics and compliance. 

Holistic Steering and Reporting

To drive better business decisions and steering, we integrate economic, environmental, and social performance and promote the evolution of impact measurement and valuation.

Ethical Business Practices

We strive to respect and promote human rights and safeguard responsible business practices along the value chain.

€273 M

Savings through carbon reduction

 in the past three years

100 %

Renewable energy

powers our cloud

0

Net emissions by 2025

Our sustainability policies, codes and commitments

SAP Code of Business Conduct for Employees

The Code of Business Conduct expresses the high standard of integrity that we require from our employees in conducting the Company’s business, in terms transparent to employees and other stakeholders.

SAP Environmental Policy

We are committed to reducing our impact on the environment in our operations, throughout our value chain, and with our solutions.

The SAP Global Environmental Policy guides our efforts to minimize our ecological footprint, provide environmental performance transparency, and demonstrate leadership in sustainability through transformational strategies and offering solutions that enable customers to increase resource productivity.

SAP Global Anti-Discrimination Policy

The purpose of this Policy is to enforce SAP’s commitment to treating all employees with dignity and respect in a workplace free from discrimination and harassment. At SAP, our commitment goes beyond legal requirements; it is part of our culture and plays a vital role in our vision to help the world run better and improve people’s lives.

SAP Global Health and Safety Management Policy

We are committed to promoting health, safety, and mental and emotional well-being in order to become a role model for sustainable people management.

The SAP Global Health and Safety Management Policy supports business processes and leadership behavior by addressing, health, safety, well-being, and stress-management topics. Together with our managers and employees, we want to achieve – among others – the following objectives:

  • Promote and enable health, safety, well-being, and the ability to perform well
  • Support managers in their obligation to act responsibly in this regard
  • Engage with our suppliers, partners, and customers to promote the topic
  • Comply with and go beyond all the applicable statutory and legal regulations
  • Provide products that are safe for our customers and employees to use 
SAP Human Rights Commitment

As a signatory of the UN Global Compact since 2000, SAP believes companies have a responsibility to respect human rights throughout all business operations.

At SAP, we respect and support the values of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Labour Organization's (ILO) Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work by integrating human rights considerations into our standard business practices.

For this, we see three major areas of impact:

  • Our employees
  • Our ecosystem
  • Our solutions and services
SAP Partner Code of Conduct

This code is a statement of integrity that SAP expects from all its partners.

SAP regards our partner base as a critical and necessary extension of our operations and future success. SAP has created the SAP Partner Code of Conduct to help our partners understand what is expected of them. This code is a statement of integrity that SAP expects from its partners that comprise all partners, including technology, solution, service (e.g., consulting, implementation, system integration, hosting, education), channel (Value Added Reseller, distributor and other resellers) and all other partners that collaborate with SAP or are part of any partner program of SAP after having been offered a global or local partnership by SAP in any strategic business area or for any customer need in all market segments and then being nominated as Partner by SAP and all employees of the so-defined partners.

SAP has a strong commitment to integrity and sustainability. In line with this, we encourage our partners to:

  • Comply with all regional and federal laws, rules, and regulations 
  • Uphold the human rights of workers and treat them with dignity and respect 
  • Operate with sustainable business practices and mindful, responsible use of environmental resources 
  • Provide a safe and professional work environment that protects SAP's intellectual property 
  • Refrain from any action that may be considered a conflict of interest 

Partners doing business in the market as a nominated SAP Partner must be in full compliance with this SAP Partner Code of Conduct and all applicable laws, rules, regulations, and policies as non-compliance might be regarded as a violation of the partner agreement.

To learn more about the Code or to report potential violations, e-mail SAP at global-compliance-office@sap.com or call us at +1 877-587-8605 (toll-free in the U.S.) or +49 6227 7 40022 (Germany).

Please note that the SAP Global Compliance Office can answer questions with regards to the Partner Code of Conduct but cannot give legal advice.

SAP Supplier Code of Conduct

We encourage our suppliers to adopt sustainable business practices as set forth in the SAP Supplier Code of Conduct. 

We regard our supplier base as a critical and necessary extension of our operations and success. To help our suppliers, we created the SAP Supplier Code of Conduct, a statement of integrity that SAP expects from its contractors, consultants, suppliers, vendors, and all other third-party companies that comprise SAP's supply chain ("Suppliers"). All work performed for SAP must be in full compliance with this SAP Supplier Code of Conduct and all applicable laws, rules, regulations, and policies. 

We encourage our contractors, consultants, suppliers, and agents to: 

  • Comply with regional and federal laws, rules, and regulations 
  • Uphold the human rights of workers and treat them with dignity and respect 
  • Operate with sustainable business practices and mindful, responsible use of environmental resources 
  • Provide a safe and professional work environment that protects SAP's intellectual property 
  • Refrain from any action that may be considered a conflict of interest 

The following code of conduct is in place for SAP, the parent company of the SAP Group, and all its entities.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act requires companies listed in the United States to declare whether they have a code of ethics that, at minimum, applies to certain levels of management. The SAP Supplier Code of Conduct meets the standards set by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the regulations pursuant to the act.

To learn more about the Code or to report potential violations, e-mail SAP at global-compliance-office@sap.com or call us at +1 877-587-8605 (toll-free in the U.S.) or +49 6227 7 40022 (in Germany).

SAP’s Guiding Principles for Artificial Intelligence

Recognizing the significant impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on people, our customers, and society, SAP designed these guiding principles to steer the development and deployment of our AI software to help the world run better and improve people’s lives.

Frequently asked questions

What is SAP’s sustainability strategy?

We define sustainability as the creation of social, environmental, and economic value for long-term business success and responsible global development. In line with this definition, we aim to move from a separate sustainability strategy to a sustainable corporate strategy. This means we seek to embed sustainability in everything we do: our solutions, our operations, and our social investment.

What is SAP’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy?

Innovation belongs to all of us. Yet, according to The World Bank, more than half of global citizens are not included in the digital economy. SAP Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is tackling this issue head-on, powering opportunity for all people through digital inclusion initiatives.

Learn about SAP CSR

What is integrated reporting and what is SAP’s involvement in it?

The International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC, http://www.theiirc.org/) defines integrated reporting as "a process that results in communication, most visibly a periodic‚ integrated report, about value creation over time. An integrated report is a concise communication about how an organization’s strategy, governance, performance and prospects lead to the creation of value over the short, medium and long term." SAP published its first Integrated Report in 2013 (for the 2012 year). The current SAP Integrated Report may be found at www.sapintegratedreport.com

What are SAP’s carbon targets and strategy?

SAP aims to achieve a net-zero carbon footprint for SAP’s operations by 2025. This includes all direct (scope 1), indirect (scope 2), and selected categories of value chain (scope 3) greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) such as business flights, employee commuting, and co-locations of data centers. SAP will continue existing initiatives and programs to drive efficiency and innovation to avoid and reduce GHG emissions, following our approach “avoid – reduce – compensate.”

  • (1) Avoid: Whenever possible, SAP aims to avoid the creation of GHG. This is our priority (e.g., usage of virtual telecommunication instead of business flights).
  • (2) Reduce: If we cannot avoid GHG emissions, we aim to drive efficiency and reduce GHG emissions for all type of emissions (e.g., carpooling and car sharing, e-mobility).
  • (3) Compensate: Compensation / offsetting is only the last option. We extend our existing proven compensation models by enlarging our embedded internal carbon pricing model for CO2-free travel by train and airplane. Another example is the implementation of carbon neutral fuel cards for company cars. 
What is the employee engagement index?

We define employee engagement as a score for the level of employee commitment, pride, and loyalty, as well as our employees’ feeling of being an advocate of SAP. It is calculated based on the results of regular employee surveys. Employee engagement remains one of SAP’s four corporate strategic goals, along with growth, profitability, and customer loyalty. For 2020, we aim to reach an Employee Engagement Index between 84% and 86%. For more information, visit the SAP Integrated Report.

What are SAP's global policies that govern employee behavior and avoid corruption?

Our compliance management system details our policies and procedures for ensuring ethical business conduct. Our policies govern the conduct of our management, employees, suppliers and partners, as well as critical areas of our business such as sales, vendor selection, and payroll. In addition, we train employees on the SAP Code of Business Conduct for Employees, which includes guidelines on bribery, antitrust, and a host of other topics. In the case of any breaches of compliance, we take appropriate remedial action. You can find more information in the SAP Integrated Report.

How does SAP ensure data privacy and security?

We have implemented safeguards to help protect the fundamental rights of everyone whose data is processed by SAP, whether they are our customers, prospects, employees, or partners. In addition, we work towards compliance with all relevant legal requirements for data protection. Our secure software development lifecycle conforms to the ISO/IEC 27034 standard for application security and is closely embedded into our ISO 9001-certified process framework for developing standard software. Our secure operations strategy focuses on the security principles of “confidentiality, integrity, and availability” to support overall protection of our business, as well as our customers’ businesses.

You can find more information in the SAP Integrated Report.

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