Howwe strengthen our core business through sustainability We see the following three areas of sustainability as the most important for running and developing our business:
An independent and transparent marketplace
Hemnet’s business model implies a responsibility to ensure that home buyers, sellers and estate agents alike have equal access to the part of the residential property market that Hemnet represents. Content on Hemnet must be accurate, credible and of high quality, with common ground rules for the estate agents who place property advertisements on the platform. Through our customer service function, we continuously follow up published listings on Hemnet that don’t comply with our publication rules through an email sent to the responsible real estate agent. The most common issues include incorrect information in the listing or that the listing has been categorised in the wrong property category. Repeated errors that are not corrected can lead to suspension from Hemnet’s platforms, but mistakes are almost always immediately corrected and suspension is an extreme measure that we rarely have had reason to use. We are to be a marketplace where our visitors and customers feel confident that we take their privacy seriously and that the use of their
personal data is transparent. We carry out structured and continuous data protection efforts, and respect for privacy is a natural part of our Code of Conduct. It is clear from Hemnet’s Policy for Information and Data that the use of personal data must comply with applicable laws and regulations and take the individual’s interest in personal privacy into account. The proportion of visitors who accept Hemnet’s processing of data in the parts where we ask for consent is high and during the year no complaints have been filed with the Swedish Authority for Privacy Protection, which should be seen in the light of the millions of people who visit Hemnet’s platforms every week. This indicates that the personal data processing that visitors agree to meets their expectations and that there is a high level of trust in Hemnet.
Being one of Sweden’s best workplaces
Diversity and inclusion We have taken important steps within gender equality, diversity and inclusion during the year, areas we see as prerequisites for innovation and creativity. Hemnet is actively working to recruit more women to developer roles where we have been particularly successful in the managerial ranks. Today we have more female than male development managers.To raise awareness of the need for more female developers, Hemnet has, for the third year running, supported the Women in Tech initiative and event, which aims to encourage more women to enter the industry. Our employees come frommany different backgrounds and today there are people from around fifteen different countries working at Hemnet. In 2021, for the first time, we hired someone living outside of Sweden, where we supported the new employee and family in the processes required for such a move. Our work on gender equality and diversity has also attracted attention outside the company, which we describe on page 15 of the Annual Report.
Our employees are our most important asset. For us, this means being one of Sweden’s best employers and a safe workplace where people thrive and develop. We will actively work to improve gender equality and diversity, and we will safeguard the health and work-life-balance of our employees. Hemnet as an employer Hemnet carries out weekly surveys in order to always be aware of how our employees feel and get on in their workplace. We also offer a range of health benefits, such as wellbeing allowances and various forms of exercise paid for by the company. For those who wish, we offer an external counselling service that includes psychologist, economist, lawyer, health coach or HR consultant counselling to help employees deal with any possible problems and issues in these areas. In 2022, our already advantageous employee benefits will be further enhanced by increasing the number of holiday days from 28 to 30. To ensure that we have competitive pension terms that are easy to compare with the rest of the labour market, we will also move into an ITP1 (collectively agreed pension) pension plan as of 1 of January 2022.
An open corporate culture and strong ethics
During the year, Hemnet launched new corporate values that more clearly reflect our corporate culture and our approach to the world around us and to each other. We have also continued our efforts to train employees in our ethical framework, which is closely intertwined with our culture and sum- marised in our Code of Conduct. Hemnet’s ethical grounds Hemnet’s business is run on the basis of principles of ethics and responsibility that permeate all aspects of our operations and are summarised in our Code of Conduct. The Code of Conduct sets out the company’s zero tolerance of bullying, harassment and intimidation, as well as zero tolerance of bribery and corruption. Violations of our ethical
guidelines are reported to the company’s managers, general counsel or HRmanager, or anonymously through our whistleblower function which is available through our website hemnetgroup.com and through our intranet. Demands on suppliers As Hemnet’s services are developed and built within the company, our purchases are limited. However, we expect the suppliers we work with to live up to the human rights, legal, ethical and moral demands that we as a company impose on ourselves. We manage these expectations through our Supplier Code of Conduct, which is part of our contracting process for negotiated agreements with suppliers.
20 · HEMNET GROUP | ANNUAL AND SUSTAINABILITY REPORT 2021
SUSTAINABILITY REPORT
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