Corporate Governance at Škoda Auto Volkswagen India Private Limited
Corporate Governance is a system to manage and supervise the company. It defines how rights and duties are distributed among company stakeholders, including shareholders, executive management, governing bodies, employees, and customers. The governance at Škoda Auto Volkswagen India Private Limited (SAVWIPL) is a set of legal and executive methods, and procedures committing us to maintain a balanced relationship between the company and its workforce.
The aim is to engage in responsible, qualified, and transparent business management focused on the company’s long-term success and the protection of stakeholder interests.
SAVWIPL attaches great story by the fact that it is perceived as a successful, transparent and open company by employees, business partners, all customers and the public at large.
At the same time, corporate policy rests on principles enshrined in the “Code of Conduct” at SAVWIPL. The Code of Conduct in place is based on the application of generally accepted social values.
Integrity
We believe that only with lasting, dependable integrity and compliant behavior our Company will gain and strengthen the trust of its staff, customers, shareholders, business partners, and the general public. Our aim is to become a role model when it comes to integrity and compliance. This way, we want to strengthen our trust and to maintain the integrity of our company in the future.
Acting with integrity is an essential part of the Volkswagen Group strategy TOGETHER 2025+ and is thus on par with the quality of our products, our financial KPIs, and the satisfaction of our customers. By implementing our ambitious Integrity program and the Group Essentials, which provide orientation for the daily value-oriented actions of all employees, we are ready to face future challenges.
The key initiative “integrity program” is also a part of the Together4Integrity Program. It has the goal of increasing understanding of integrity and its importance as a basis of doing business among all the Volkswagen Group’s employees and managers and of creating a culture in which acting with integrity is not only consistently possible but also seen as a matter of course. It is associated with encouraging the constructive handling of mistakes, increasing the transparency of reasons for decisions, and strengthening courage to also address potential risks and issues with managers.
Integrity is a core element of professional conduct for us and this is the only thing we aim for to do the right thing in a given situation.
Compliance
SAVWIPL as a company and the Volkswagen Group as a whole are rigorous in their duty of adherence to legislation, internal regulations, ethical principles, and other voluntary commitments. Compliance reaches beyond business relations to embrace activities both within and outside the group. This is the Volkswagen Group’s way of signaling loudly and clearly that its conduct will echo the requirements of legal and ethical rules on competition, finances and taxes, environmental protection, and employee relations, including the safeguarding of equal opportunities.
SAVWIPL has a Governance, Risk & Compliance Department to oversee the pursuit of these values. This department’s work includes the provision of consulting on all compliance-related issues and the implementation of appropriate measures to raise awareness of the intrinsic value of compliance among the workforce and third parties. For the purpose of the above-mentioned consultancy services at SAVWIPL an e-mail address is:
compliance@skoda-vw.co.inAt SAVWIPL, we staunchly believe that economic success is sustainable only if everyone sticks to the rules. Voluntary standards – consisting of statutory and internal requirements, obligations stemming from the commitments that have been made, and ethical principles – are a company mainstay and form the bedrock of its decision-making. Compliance activities provide a means to implement strategy formulated by the Volkswagen Group and are part of global compliance efforts.
Risk Management
The Volkswagen Group’s risk management structure is built on a common principle of risk management, within the Volkswagen Group, complying with applicable legislative requirements. Risk management, as an operational component of the corporate process, must pinpoint individual risks down to the last detail, assess how great they are, take action to eliminate them, and document how effective the response has been.
Volkswagen Group’s global operations on automotive markets throw up numerous risks that could dent its financial performance and business success. At the same time, economic and regulatory changes can offer opportunities that the group then strives to seize so that it is able to consolidate and build on its competitive position.
Our Whistleblower System
Complying with statutory regulations and internal rules, and the principles laid down in the Code of Conduct at Škoda Auto Group and the Code of Conduct for Business Partners, has top priority at Škoda Auto Volkswagen India Private Limited. The success of our company is based on Integrity and Compliance. To meet these standards, it is important to learn of potential employee or supplier misconduct and to put a stop to it. Therefore, we entrusted the Central Investigation Office of the Volkswagen Group to operate an independent, impartial and confidential Whistleblower System on our behalf.
A key pillar of our Whistleblower System is the principle of procedural fairness. It also guarantees the greatest possible protection for whistleblowers, persons implicated and employees contributing to the investigation of reported misconduct.
This also includes offering opportunities for anonymous reporting and communication. We assure not to perform any steps in order to identify anonymous whistleblowers, who do not misuse our Whistleblower System. Retaliation of whistleblowers and all persons who contribute to investigations at Škoda Auto Volkswagen India Private Limited will not be tolerated. Persons implicated are presumed innocent until the violation of applicable laws and/or internal regulations is proven. Investigations will be conducted with the utmost confidentiality. The information will be processed in a fair, fast and protected process.