Beautiful Governance

We have developed our approach to creating beautiful governance structures in a multi-stakeholder process that constantly involves our group management team. This approach is driven by and aligned with the Board and all relevant functions such as the legal, HR and purchasing department. Our executive board management team has actively propelled our efforts to make DOUGLAS a more beautiful place for people to work and shop at every step of the process.

Responsible business practices

 At DOUGLAS, we view fair competition and a commitment to ethical and lawful business practices as essential to our long-term success. We have therefore put in place an effective compliance management system based on the IDW PS 980 auditing standard[1]. This system contains standards and processes to ensure we adhere to applicable laws and internal policies, along with a regularly updated regulation radar.

To make sure that our employees have an awareness and understanding of compliance topics and policies, we provide regular communication and training. At DOUGLAS, we also support whistle-blowers by operating safe, anonymous and confidential internal channels for potential breaches of compliance.

Our DOUGLAS code of conduct outlines our commitment to responsible business practices for our staff and our business partners. The code addresses key compliance matters that shape our culture at DOUGLAS, such as respect and responsibility, diversity and equal opportunities, health and safety, conflicts of interest, anti-corruption and anti-bribery, fair competition, anti-money laundering, business partners and data privacy.

We place great importance on integrity when selecting our business partners and expect them to adhere to applicable laws and adequate compliance standards. What’s more, we perform business partner due diligence for certain compliance-relevant risks by sending out the DOUGLAS supplier code of conduct and business partner due-diligence questionnaire.

IT and data security

At DOUGLAS, we know that data protection and IT security issues affect us all. We actively educate and train our employees on these issues..

Data privacy

DOUGLAS has set up a comprehensive data protection management system to implement the requirements of the relevant data protection laws, in particular the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This includes a company-wide policy on the protection of personal data or other information and protection against unauthorised access to or use of such information or group systems. In addition, technical and organisational measures have been implemented throughout the company to protect personal data, including ensuring the availability of data.

Board ownership

At DOUGLAS, we want our management structure to reflect the importance of ESG to our company. To this end, we aim to enshrine dedicated responsibility for ESG at the highest levels of DOUGLAS. At the current time, CEO Sander van der Laan has primary responsibility for ESG, while the General Counsel, Chief Human Resources Officer and Chief Compliance Officer oversees compliance and governance topics.

[1] The IDW PS 980 auditing standard supports compliance with legal and regulatory requirements for companies in Germany. PS 980 provides a framework for the content and structural requirements of a compliance management system.