Over 350 participants attended the Swiss Forum Business and Human Rights to learn from each other on how to identify the human rights risks arising from their business activities, and later joined interactive workshops to discover and discuss solutions to address them. In addition, the Forum provided information on current legal requirements and the expectations of the Swiss Federal Council.

As a company with global supply chains, dormakaba is exposed to increased risks of being directly or indirectly linked with human rights violations. Therefore, dormakaba not only assesses its suppliers on this topic, but also raises awareness among them, for example through stakeholder dialogues related to cobalt. Stephanie Ossenbach, Group Sustainability Officer at dormakaba, spoke about the company’s motivation, the challenges, and opportunities in implementing due diligence practices and highlighted the importance of strong collaboration with key functions within the company itself, such as Procurement, Human Resources and Internal Audit, amongst others.

“It was a unique opportunity to exchange good practices among companies and a real honor to share the stage with leading experts on the topic. I was able to highlight how – by beginning work well ahead of the now-imposed mandatory regulatory requirements – dormakaba has established a leading human rights program. There is still much work to do but we can definitely be proud of the impact that we are having.” - says Stephanie Ossenbach.

The Forum is part of the Swiss National Action Plan on Business and Human Rights 2020-2023 and was organised by the UN Global Compact Network Switzerland & Liechtenstein, of which dormakaba is a member.

More about dormakaba’s approach and actions on Human Rights topics: Human Rights - Annual Report 2022/23.