Climate Risk Assessment
In the course of the risk management process, it is important to identify and analyze material risks as they emerge. Responsibility for this process is anchored in a wide variety of functions within the Group.
While assessing EU taxonomy alignment during the reporting period, we refined and standardized how we report on climate risks. We took a closer look at the short-, medium- and long-term risks posed to our various business operations and to individual sites by climate change and identified potential impacts at an early stage. We assessed climate-related risks in accordance with predefined standards (including IPCC scenarios) and, where necessary, adopted countermeasures. We intend to further expand this approach and update it at regular intervals.
Data Protection
We gather and process personal data of our employees and all external parties with whom we are in contact in compliance with data protection regulations and with the sole aim of meeting the intended purposes.
The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) provides a uniform basis for implementing privacy law throughout the EU and is directly applicable in all member states. The role of privacy law is to protect personal data, which includes any information about natural persons, such as name, contact data, date of birth, religion, gender, but also simply their email address. The GDPR regulates the use and processing of personal data and obligates every company that collects personal data to do so only within narrow constraints and with due regard to a large number of protection mechanisms.
WACKER employees who collect, use or process personal data must always ask themselves whether this data is actually needed and has to be stored and, if so, for how long. All employees must ensure that no infringements of privacy law occur. Even before the GDPR took effect, we had introduced mechanisms to ensure compliance with existing data protection legislation.
Our employees undergo mandatory online training on data protection. We provide additional individual training in departments that are particularly affected. Our Compliance Regulation now contains a supplement that describes the main aspects of the GDPR.
Information about the GDPR is available on our website and intranet. We use a film, which can be viewed on our intranet, to sensitize employees groupwide about the proper conduct to adopt when dealing with internal or external inquiries related to data protection.
In addition to that, we have linked the topic of data protection to our whistleblower hotline. Employees as well as people from outside the company can address any questions or complaints they have in this regard directly to the responsible officers at WACKER.
There were no justified complaints relating to the violation of customers’ privacy or the loss of customer data during the reporting period.
