As an international, family-owned, and long-established company, the Festo Group enjoys an excellent reputation among its business partners and employees, places an emphasis on integrity, and has high standards when it comes to ethical and lawful conduct. We recognize that we have a responsibility to our business environment and society at large, as well as to our employees around the world.
Compliance with applicable laws, specifications, standards, and internal guidelines serves as the basis for how we do business. Our Festo Code of Conduct is a binding standard that governs the business activities of all Festo employees and reflects our understanding of the law and our values.
Festo expects its business partners to also uphold this standard. In addition to our Festo Code of Conduct, the minimum standards for business partners defined in the Code of Conduct for Business Partners set out the principles of conduct that we consider appropriate and essential for all types of business activity.
Our Compliance Office supports the global implementation of our Codes of Conduct and is the point of contact for any questions our customers and employees may have within this context.
Compliance is intended to protect against inappropriate and illegal behavior (prevention), and to systematically clarify, evaluate, and sanction such behavior (response). Festo has a zero-tolerance policy and sanctions all violations.
This protection encompasses our most valuable assets and our business activities, including our interactions with each other. This includes the traditional compliance areas of corruption, damage to assets, cartels/collusion, and organizational culture. Other areas relevant to compliance include tax law, export/customs, quality and the environment, privacy, and labor law. The relevant departments bear the responsibility for these other areas, including the respective risk management activities (e.g. the Corporate Tax department is responsible for compliance with tax law).
Therefore, Festo has implemented a Compliance Management System (CMS) that includes all necessary principles, processes and measures to ensure compliance with the requirements and laws in the above-mentioned classic compliance areas. The Festo CMS was audited by external auditors in accordance with the German standard IDW PS 980 and has been confirmed as appropriate and effective.