Blog
Our World: Taking action for environment and community
Our sights are set on realizing our vision — becoming the most trusted global technology, supply chain and manufacturing partner to improve the world. Earning and maintaining trust is rooted in transparency, ethical business practices, and responsible value chain partnerships that help advance broader social and environmental initiatives, including climate action.
We’ve built and continue to strengthen robust corporate governance and ethical management practices. We also strive to use our position in the value chain for good by partnering with a segment of our customers and suppliers and sharing our gathered learnings in measuring and disclosing emissions. By emphasizing partnership and collaboration, we all can take strides forward on our shared sustainability journeys.
Our commitments to transparent, ethical business practices, and supplier and customer partnerships encapsulate a key part of our sustainability strategy and framework: our approach. Our approach extends doing the right thing always across our operations and value chain engagements to nurture an ethical culture, reinforcing confidence in our accountability, and ability to mitigate risk.
Driving sustainable practices throughout the value chain with suppliers and customers
Taking an ecosystem approach to helping tackle value chain emissions, we partner with a set of customers based on top emissions and our preferred suppliers to share and scale best practices around navigating the complexities of setting emission reduction targets. In 2022, we announced our commitment to reach net zero by 2040.
In 2021, 48% of specified customers had science-based targets, and 29% of our preferred suppliers had GHG reduction targets.
Reaching this ambitious goal requires deeper value chain partnerships and exploring ways to help address complex challenges, like scope 3, together.
Flex partners with leading brands to help meet business objectives while progressing sustainability. One way that we empower customers to reduce their environmental impact is by bringing our circular economy expertise and services, spanning returns, repair, refurbishment, parts harvesting, and recycling, to develop and integrate tailored solutions that reduce waste and emissions.
Taking a similar collaborative approach with suppliers, we have created an award-winning supplier greenhouse gas emissions reduction program. We provide our preferred suppliers guidance through rounds of webinars in partnership with CDP (formerly the Climate Disclosure Project) and one-on-one meetings to walk through the program’s objective, tools available to measure operational emissions and CDP’s climate change questionnaire, a critical step to managing and setting measurable reduction goals.
Within the program’s first year:
- 60% of our preferred suppliers disclosed operational emissions
- 29% of our preferred suppliers disclosed GHG emissions reduction targets
- 7% of our preferred suppliers had a renewable energy target
Leading with integrity through ethical business practices
Our ongoing commitment to ethics and compliance is foundational to earning the trust and business of our stakeholders. Operating with integrity, mutual respect and accountability serve as guiding principles in our business decisions and engagement with partners.
We’re proud to hold ourselves to the highest ethical standards. Through our Code of Business Conduct and Ethics (CoBCE), we align with the RBA’s Code of Conduct. Our corporate compliance program also helps integrate our principles into the day-to-day operations of 100 sites globally.
For example, our integrated compliance scorecard program, launched in 2021, analyzes key data sources such as ethics hotline reports, employee engagement surveys, and more to provide leaders with site assessments that help them identify risks, improve their own operations, and take action to develop solutions.
Our goal is to have a world class ethics and compliance program and we work to consistently improve our program including investing in enhanced systems and tools, policies, communications, and training. We maintain a 24/7 ethics hotline and provide regular dashboards and reports to leadership to promote a healthy “speak up” culture.
In 2021, we implemented an integrated compliance scorecard program and completed 50 scorecards, ensuring the highest standards in our manufacturing operations and corporate functions.
Further building sustainability-focused governance practices and processes
Achieving meaningful progress and managing responsible business practices requires a demonstrated commitment to transparency and sustainability-focused governance practices. We are committed to maintaining our high (top quartile) governance standards as measured by investors, proxy advisory firms, and governance best practices.
We maintain strong oversight through annual review of committee composition. Our Board of Directors engages in an annual review of Flex’s sustainability program, which includes updates on our Sustainability/ESG efforts, and participates in an annual ESG director education session.
During 2021, Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) consistently awarded Flex its highest overall governance quality score rating.
As part of our dedication to transparency and in the spirit of contributing to global progress for a sustainable future, we align our sustainability efforts with globally recognized organizations, frameworks and initiatives, including the United Nations Global Compact. In 2021, we joined the Science Based Targets initiative, adopting greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets necessary to meet the Paris Agreement’s goals of limiting global warming to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels.
For more about our stories, stats, and sustainable insights around our accountable, ethical approach to doing business and partnerships with suppliers and customers, explore our 2022 sustainability report.
