We act fairly in our dealings with fellow employees, customers, suppliers and business partners. Our global Code of Conduct applies to all Group employees and our external business partners. It aims to ensure that Luceco maintains consistently high ethical standards across the globe, while recognising that our businesses operate in markets and countries with cultural differences and practices.

The Code of Conduct is available on our intranet and all new employees are made aware of it during their induction.

Health and safety

Our Health and Safety Policy sets out our approach to providing attractive working conditions for our people. We aim to prevent harm to, and promote the health of, all employees, by applying health and safety programmes, rules and regulations at all of our sites.

All employees are responsible for complying with health and safety regulations and we have a health and safety champion in each operating unit, who is responsible for ensuring compliance with best practice and all local regulations.

Our Health and Safety Policy is made available in local languages and all new starters must confirm that they have read and understood it. The policy is reviewed in full at least annually and more regularly if required.

We continually monitor our health and safety performance to ensure compliance and to enable us to take any corrective action if issues are identified. During the year, there were 15 non-reportable and two reportable accidents in our Telford facility (2022: 19 non-reportable and nil reportable) and, in China, three minor accidents were reported (2022: two minor accidents).

Human rights

One of our business principles is that we will support fundamental human rights, in line with the legitimate role of business. Our Code of Conduct sets out our policies in respect of a range of human rights and related issues, including child labour, forced labour, the right to organise, collective bargaining and participation in political life.

The Group’s operations in high-risk countries must perform self-assessments, to make sure they are aware of the human rights impact of their operations. If a negative impact seems possible or likely, they are encouraged to take precautions or find solutions that are beneficial for employees and the communities in which they operate.

Among our international operations, China is the location where people’s rights could be most at risk. By owning the facility in China, we can directly control the environment and conditions in which our employees live and work, to ensure they are treated fairly and in accordance with our policies. Until the introduction of pandemic travel restrictions, the Directors and senior leadership regularly visited China and routinely invited customers to the facility, so they could witness the working and living conditions of our employees. We are pleased to say this resumed in 2023. This helps our customers to fulfil their own responsibility agendas.

The UK Modern Slavery Act 2015 requires us to outline the steps we take to identify and prevent modern slavery within our organisation and supply chain. The latest statement is available here.

Communities

We are committed to contributing to the communities we operate in and our Code of Conduct encourages our people to actively participate and to propose projects to site management or site committees.

In Jiaxing, China, we are heavily involved with the local university, establishing a “Luceco class” where students were selected to receive weekly lectures for three terms. These are led by our managers or technical experts and aim to provide students with greater business sense and awareness, career advice and preparation for entering the work environment, with exposure to marketing, management, product knowledge and development and project management.