Contributing to sustainable development involves showing respect for people. This is about standards in working life, dialogue between employees and employer, the way performance is rewarded and how work on health and safety is pursued.
These important issues are covered on the next 16 pages under the heading “employees and the group.”
But we also take this opportunity to write about the way we want to develop management, organisation and expertise into a competitive advantage. And we discuss what must underpin all practical work – values and ethics.
Our values and leadership principles were revised in the autumn of 2004. We regard them as fundamentally important for us. Sophia Mbakwe, one of our Nigerian employees, has the following to say about corporate values in an interview on page 10: “They’re the very core of a company because they create an identity and reveal who it is and what it stands for.”