To our stakeholders:
I am pleased to confirm that Contraste Europe reaffirms its support of the Ten
Principles of the United Nations Global Compact in the areas of Human Rights,
Labour, Environment and Anti-Corruption.

In this annual Communication on Progress, we describe our actions to continually
improve the integration of the Global Compact and its principles into our business
strategy, culture and daily operations. We also commit to share this information
with our stakeholders using our primary channels of communication.

Sincerely yours,

Benoît Pirotte
Chief Executive Officer
Contraste Europe

As Contraste Europe is operating in Luxembourg, Belgium and France, we comply with the very high standards of human rights protection that are applicable in these three countries.
Our work is fully executed in office areas, at our own premises or at Customers’ premises. There is no work performed in industrial environments, or any potentially health-harming conditions.
Sanitary conditions are optimal, being mostly in modern, well-equipped buildings, as our Customers are themselves keen to give a positive image to their own clients. Our Customers are mostly financial institutions, insurance companies, public authorities (national, regional), Gas/Electricity Utilities, Telecom Providers, Education institutes etc.

All our employees are covered by:
- A decent salary, never under the minimum salaries defined by national laws
- Social security: health insurance, hospitalisation insurance
- Retirement compensation

We also employ subcontractors and freelancers. Per law and per our corporate commitments, we make sure that all these people are correctly covered by social security (e.g. in Belgium: LIMOSA procedure). We sign framework agreements with these resources, that define all the necessary conditions for proper collaboration.

Human rights are at the centre of our way of working: work must be stimulating and satisfactory, and not a forced chore. This is in line with the need in our business to employ people who bring added value and creativity to our Customers. This requires these people being generally satisfied with their working conditions, salary, health protection, human rights etc.

Our employees are eligible for participating in trade unions, and to use the services of those trade unions.

We maintain people in charge for health and well-being at work, harassment (sexual, moral), security (fire etc), GDPR-relating supervision (Data protection and privacy), and generally all law-required roles. The law framework in Luxembourg, Belgium and France is among the most advanced worldwide, and satisfies UN Global Compact expectations.

We foster diversity among our staff, and we effectively employ people of both genders, of a variety of origins, religious beliefs, people with physical weaknesses, people of all ages from young school-leavers up to retired people. We also give a chance to people without study record, to build a career within our group, by learning through work.

We strongly oppose harassment of any kind against our employees. To date, we have no report or complaint concerning harassment performed by some of our staff. It may happen that our employees perceive harassment at Customer’s site, in which case we always take action. We speak openly to our Customers about this, and they are always very keen to correct the situation in their own organization. It has happened though that we pull one of our employees from a Customer’s site if the employee continues to feel uncomfortable with the situation. We always give priority to our employee’s perception.

We are a very active company in terms of social events, organized and paid for by the company. There is on average 2 events per month, covering all possible professional areas of interest. These events hit several objectives:
- They allow for our staff to mix and meet in a friendly atmosphere, outside work pressure
- They provide interesting professional information, and potential for career upgrade to our employees: since our domain of activity is of a very high level of technicity, learning new concepts and technologies is key to making a career
- They allow our staff to be speaker and develop soft skills and recognition from their peers
Besides these corporate events, our staff is also organizing their own activities (week-end trips, participation to marathons, etc), and we actively foster and support these spontaneous initiatives, by providing logistics and funding.

Diversity:
- We employ men and women: in our business domain, which is IT, it is known that the proportion of men is higher than women, however, we strive for increasing the proportion of women, and encourage women to aim for more responsibilities.
- We employ people from all racial origins, with a variety of religious beliefs, and a variety of sexual preferences. We ask our employees to cooperate to a harmonious living-together, by holding their personal preferences for their private life, in such a way that they do not create conflicts with their colleagues.

We state that our company does not participate in any form of forced or bonded labour. This is anyway impossible in practice in countries where we operate (Luxembourg, Belgium and France), as it is illegal.

More than this, our type of business activities would make it counter-productive to use forced labour, as we basically need motivated, creative and open-minded people. Forced people would not present those characteristics.

Minimum wage standards are complied with, and this is confirmed by auditors. We have never undergone any kind of complaint or been condemned for anything like that.

Again, forcing irrelevant criteria would be damaging for our business, as this would cause frustration among our employees and make them less creative for their job.

We have always displayed a strict respect for laws and rules that protect individuals’ rights for choosing to leave our company for another employer. Our motto is : comply with applicable laws and rules. No pressure has ever been made on any of our employees for renouncing to their personal objectives (which must not be confused with our right to enforce commercial obligations resulting from contracts and agreements signed with Customers, Suppliers, or Business Partners).
Contraste is sponsoring various sport events, supporting initiatives from our personnel. For example, we have supported financially, logistically and by our encouragements the setup of a runners’ team for the Brussels 20km race (2019/05/19).
Our recruitment policy has always been fully open to all individuals, independently of their gender, race, philosophical beliefs or anything similar. Our sole purpose has always been to support individuals who either had strong skills or had the will and energy to develop them.
Thus not only will you find confirmed experts in our staff, with high school education tracks, but also profiles who started with us for a first job, learning from the start, and progressively evolving along their own career path.

Our staff is appraised on a regular basis, on objective criteria, on which both the employer and the employee agree. Objectives are identified in a joint session between the employer and the employee, and documented in such a way that if the manager changes, the defined objectives are accessible and understood by the following manager, thereby protecting the employee’s interests.

Absenteeism is definitely a good indicator of the happiness of employees at work. We strive to improve this indicator. For our employees working in our own premises, we are very successful.
However, for our employees working at Customer’s premises, this is less good, as they are confronting a more challenging environment. For those employees, we maintain a dialog with our Customers to try to reduce the pressure on our employees.

Our work environment consists in office space. There is no production plant or industrial environment.

At the level of office space, we do all we can, and all what is legally required, to provide for a safe environment. We foster the use of smaller, less polluting cars, with a move to electric drive. Air and water are regularly checked for compliance with health rules.

In the context of office space, there is no usage of dangerous products, such as chemicals.

We renew regularly the computer screens, so that the latest technology, less harming for the eyes, is applied.

For those employees suffering from back-ache or hand-ache, due to day-long sitting at a computer, we provide upon request special equipment, such as ergonomic chairs and adapted (“bumpy”) keyboards.

We apply and regularly test the emergency measures (fire etc). Procedures are documented and available to all.

As we are not operating factories producing goods, there is no big issue with material recycling. In our case, it is mostly about recycling old PCs, screens etc, and for this, we have a contract with a recycling company that we believe does a good job. We keep alert anyway on all possible ways to improve our ecological print.

Corruption is fully forbidden in our business practices, and it is equally forbidden by our Customers, who are keen to keep their image and reputation clean on the market.

Most of our Customers will not accept gifts, even small items for Christmas time. They suggest that we use any free budget for helping social or environmental associations. We do effectively act as a good corporate citizen, by supporting financially organizations such as WeForest, that plants thousands of trees in areas of Africa where desert is extending.

We do not deal with countries or business activities where corruption takes usually place. For example, we have no business with arms-producing companies.

Not applicable.