British American Tobacco South Africa - Corporate behaviour
We are committed to operating to the highest standards of corporate conduct and transparency.
Raising standards, leading the industry
Acting responsibly and with integrity wherever we operate underpins our whole approach and forms the foundation of our culture and values as a company. Corporate governance is key to ensuring the sustainable, long-term growth of our business.
We’ve been focusing on corporate behaviour issues for a long time and this is reflected through the many good practices embedded across our business. For example, our approach to social and environmental reporting both achieved 100% scores in the 2022 Dow Jones Sustainability Indices. BAT has been included in the DJSI for 21 consecutive years and in 2022 was again included in the prestigious World Index.
Our Standards of Business Conduct 2022 (9.2 mb) is our core policy document covering areas such as speaking up (whistleblowing), anti-bribery and corruption, anti-money laundering and tax evasion, anti-illicit trade, lobbying and engagement, respect in the workplace, human rights, and political and charitable contributions among others. This is complemented by our Supplier Code of Conduct, which clearly defines the minimum standards we expect of all our suppliers, our International Marketing Principles as well as supporting procedures, including our Third-Party Anti-Bribery and Corruption (ABAC) Procedure.
We’re always working to remain at the forefront of best practice and build upon our approach to meet new challenges and opportunities. For example, we continue to make good progress in strengthening our management of human rights, such as through the updates to our Supplier Code of Conduct 2022 (2.7 mb) , to include additional human rights provisions.
Our approach
Conducting our affairs with honesty, integrity and transparency is key if we are to continue to develop as a responsible, successful and sustainable business. Our corporate behaviour approach is built on:
- Delivery with integrity: We’re committed to sustaining a culture of integrity. Our business standards should never be compromised for the sake of results.
- Protecting human rights: We respect the rights of people across our entire supply chain and our own operations. We have an integrated approach to protecting human rights.
- Marketing responsibly: We are committed to marketing all our tobacco and nicotine products responsibly and only to adult consumers.
- Engaging responsibly: We are committed to conducting all our engagement activities with external stakeholders with transparency, openness, and integrity.