Sustainability strategy

At Sonova, it has always been our mission to have a positive effect on our consumers’ lives. We aspire just as much to have a positive effect on our society and the environment. Therefore, we consider environmental, social, and governance (ESG) principles as integral to the way we do business.

Stakeholder engagement

Sonova strives to engage in open and transparent dialog with its stakeholders. We actively initiate this through a broad range of channels to promote participative and integrated decision-making. Sonova understands how stakeholder involvement supports our long-term success: by enhancing transparency, broadening knowledge, and generating innovative solutions. We regularly interact with our stakeholders to identify their specific interests in our business activities, products and services, and clarify their influence over our decisions. We have defined five key groups of stakeholders:

• Customers and consumers
• Employees
• Shareholders
• Suppliers
• Academia and opinion leaders

Further stakeholder groups that are important to Sonova include: the financial community, media, regulators, insurers, competitors, and industry bodies.

Materiality assessment

In 2019/20 Sonova conducted a materiality assessment and visualized the result in the materiality matrix. The assessment helps us understand the issues that are most relevant to our stakeholders; how our environmental, social and governmental impacts are perceived along our value chain; and how they translate into associated risks and opportunities for Sonova. The material topics in the top right are of highest relevance for our Stakeholder and have the highest impact, positive and negative.

This assessment particularly forms the basis for our ESG strategy as we clustered the 21 ESG topics identified in the materiality assessment into the four strategic areas of IntACT, our ESG strategy. Throughout 2023, Sonova is conducting an update of the ESG materiality assessment.

IntACT - Sonova's ESG Strategy

With our hearing solutions we improve the lives of millions of people. Beyond serving our consumers, we aspire to create benefits for the economy, the environment, and society as a whole. Sonova’s ESG commitments are formalized within IntACT – our ESG strategy. It builds on four key areas: protecting the planet, serving society, advancing our people, and acting with integrity. The name IntACT emphasizes the ultimate goal – keeping our planet and people intact – and underlines the urgent need to ACT.

• Protecting the planet: We drive the transition to a resource-efficient and low-carbon future of our operations throughout the life cycle of our products and services.
• Serving society: We constantly innovate in hearing health care, improve access for people in under-served areas, and engage actively with our communities.
• Advancing our people: We foster our employees’ development, wellbeing and engagement in an inclusive work environment that embraces diversity.
• Acting with integrity: We behave ethically and apply the highest quality and safety standards to everything we do.

Our ESG Report 2022/23 is organized according to these areas.

ESG Governance

Sonova has a defined governance structure to manage, improve, and report on our ESG performance. The ESG governance structure involves our highest governance body – the Board of Directors –, the Management Board and ESG Council, the Corporate Sustainability team, ESG topic owners and experts at Group level, as well as local Group company representatives. The ESG Council oversees and further develop the Group’s ESG strategy, including its commitments and targets. The Council also monitors progress on key performance indicators and initiatives. It meets at least quarterly and consists of the Group CEO, selected members of the Management Board, the Group General Counsel & Compliance Officer, and the Director Corporate Sustainability. Progress on ESG targets is also regularly reviewed by the full Management Board and are an element of each member’s variable compensation. The Board of Directors approves the ESG strategy, initiatives, and targets and receives monthly updates.