Arla Foods Annual Report 2020
Management Review Our Strategy
Our Brands and Commercial Segments Our Responsibility Our Governance
Our Performance Review Our Consolidated Financial Statements
Our Consolidated Environmental, Social and Governance Data
RISK AND COMPLIANCE
MANAGEMENT (CONTINUED)
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50 ARLA FOODS ANNUAL REPORT 2020
Education and awareness
Our Code of Conduct and internal policies are
communicated to all employees supported by a
range of activities combining mandatory training
programmes and awareness campaigns. All
internal principles for business conduct are
available to our employees in a central Policy
Portal on Arla's intranet, which is also accessible on
mobile devices. We offer a combined scheme of
training, including e-learning on major compliance
matters (e.g. competition law and information
security) and classroom training as appropriate.
In 2020, we saw a significant improvement in
identification of potentially fraudulent e-mails after
conducting cyber threat tests and subsequently
assigning targeted training to employees who
failed to recognise the risk.
Investigations
Openness and trust are among our core values
and incorporated into our Code of Conduct. If
employees believe that the Code of Conduct has
been violated, we encourage them to report
these violations. Concerns can be raised by
reporting to relevant management, HR or our
Risk Controls and Compliance department.
We also offer anonymous reporting through our
whistle-blower system, applying strict principles
of confidentiality and ensuring that no retaliatory
action will be taken against the person who
reports the violation. In 2020, we decreased the
number of reported fraud allegations compared
to 2019. None of these investigations resulted in
material financial losses to the group, but they
provided us with valuable knowledge about the
state of our control environment, which has
proven to be strong.
Reporting
We report on our compliance at various organisational
levels throughout the year. Compliance scores are
reported quarterly to the Executive Management
Team, country-specific risks are reported to middle
management on a frequent basis, and compliance
concerns are reported annually to the Board of
Directors. Final observations from all compliance
activities and investigations in the year are reported
in the Annual Compliance Report to the Board of
Directors. In 2020, we improved our internal controls
and compliance processes, driven by the power of
compliance KPIs reporting and regular dialogue
within the business.
Go to our corporate webpage to read our
Code of Conduct.
Key changes in Arla's
risk position in 2020
The impacts of Covid-19 caused
confusion, concern and uncertainty
for people and economies across the
world, which was also reflected in Arla's
risk position. We continuously address
the adverse consequences, while
trying to capture the opportunities and
continue with our operations.
■■During Covid-19, we experienced a
disruptive pace of change as more
consumers turned to e-commerce
and changed their shopping habits.
Due to our diverse and resilient
business we quickly adapted to the
new demand and continuously work
to strengthen our online presence.
■The societal push for sustainable
production with low climate impact
increases at a steady pace.
Sustainability continues to be a key
priority for Arla, and we have set
ambitious targets for reducing our
environmental impacts and
implementing tools enabling us to
collect one of the world's largest
sets of externally verified climate
data from dairy farming.View entire presentation