Responsibility & Ethics at the core of our strategy
“At Schneider Electric, one of our cornerstone values is the commitment to ensure that our company operates in an ethical, sustainable and responsible manner worldwide. As a global company, our responsibility goes beyond fulfilling regulatory and legal requirements, especially in the fields of business integrity and human rights.
As CEO of Schneider Electric and President of the United Nations Global Compact France, I want to reaffirm my unwavering commitment to act with the highest standards of ethics.”

Jean-Pascal Tricoire,
CEO and Chairman Schneider Electric
Focus on Human Rights and Business Integrity
Human Rights
In 2011, the United Nations issued the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, that precisely defined the roles and responsibilities of States and businesses on that matter. As a business leader, Schneider Electric intends to follow and promote these principles. Sustainability is at the heart of our company’s strategy, and we are convinced that energy access is a basic human right.
With a new Human Rights policy, approved by CEO Jean-Pascal Tricoire, we confirm our engagement to strive for the respect of all internationally recognized Human Rights, along our value chain.
Business Integrity
At Schneider Electric, we encourage our employees to conduct business ethically by adopting a zero-tolerance policy towards corruption and other unethical practices. To promote and develop integrity in business activities, various anti-corruption initiatives have been created or reinforced in the last years, both in terms of prevention and control.
Schneider Electric became a member of Transparency International in 2014 to promote and strengthen integrity in business. TI is a leading NGO which aims to stop corruption and promote transparency, responsibility and integrity at all levels and across all sectors. The Group participates in intercompany exchanges organized by the NGO.
Our alert escalation process

We have designed an alert process to guide employees towards the right bodies, ranked in order of priorities:
- Contacting the manager
- Using existing in-house outlets (legal, financial, RH, environment, etc.), or
- Contacting the Group Fraud Committee via the professional alert system accessible via Internet or multilingual telephone line
A professional alert system: the R&ED Line
When an employee is a victim or witness of an event that touches on ethical issues, a professional alert system has been available since 2012 to report information on such events. This system ensures the confidentiality of the exchanges and protects the anonymity of the whistleblower (unless there is legislation to the contrary).
In compliance with local legislation, this system is provided by an independent company and proposes alert categories, a questionnaire, and information exchange protocol between the person issuing the alert and the person responsible for investigating it. Each alert is reviewed by the Group’s Fraud Committee, which appoints a two-person team to take charge of the investigation, consisting of a Compliance Officer and an investigator from the Schneider Electric Bureau of Investigation.
Unless there are legal provisions to the contrary, the system can be used to send alerts in the following areas in every country in which the Group operates: discrimination, harassment, safety, environmental harm, unfair competition, corruption, conflicts of interest, accounting manipulation, document forgery, insider trading, theft, fraud and embezzlement.
113 ethical alerts have been escalated in the R&ED line system in 2014: 3/4 of them were related to potential financial frauds/conflict of interest; the remaining 1/4 were related to allegations of discrimination/harassment/unfair treatment of employees.
