Code of Conduct

We are aware of our responsibility to our employees and business partners. We strive to provide a reliably pleasant, respectful work climate in accordance with all valid laws.

1.Working conditions

To live up to this responsibility, we are committed to the following principles

• We condemn every form of forced labour and child labour.
• We believe in fair wages and working hours
• We respect our employees’ freedom of association within the framework of current valid laws.
• We believe in eliminating discrimination during hiring and employment.
• All applicable laws pertaining to the work environment are observed, including (for example) the payment of wages, working hours and the right to rest and leisure time.

2.Occupational health and safety

• We guarantee health protection and occupational safety within the framework of the national provisions.
• To ensure safety in the office, we adhere to the prescribed standards and directives regarding fire safety, emergency care and ergonomics.
• We require all our employees in field service to diligently comply with the respective local occupational safety guidelines.

Since most of the data we process as part of our business activities are sensitive data, we have a huge responsibility to our customers and collaborators with regard to data protection and information security. We handle sensitive data responsibly both internally and externally: this includes personal data, passwords and agreements.

1. CIA prinziple

We interpret the CIA principle (Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability) to mean protecting the confidentiality, integrity and availability of attack targets (such as data and communication connections/networks) as well as identities. The CIA principle therefore covers a wide range of risks and actions that threaten information systems. Please find below a selection of preventive measures we implement to protect us from possible attacks.

• An external service provider helps us with a number of matters, including compliance with the following technical security standards and installing updates promptly to deal with security issues at an early stage.
• We also create encrypted backups on external data carriers on a regular basis to guarantee the availability of our data.
• We choose passwords with the highest level of security and do not carelessly give them out to colleagues or third parties.
• We promote awareness of the risks associated with processing sensitive data.
• Antivirus software minimises the risk of malware attacks.

2. Zero trust principle

The zero trust principle is a security architecture that, simply put, means that employees are only granted the logins and access rights that they actually need for their work. This means each new employee starts out with no access rights. These are granted when the employee’s work makes this necessary. We implement this principle in various areas:

• Premises: Employees only receive keys to the rooms they require. For example, not all office workers have access to the server rooms in the building.
• Data servers: Access rights to internal data servers will only be given to the employees who need them due to their work.
• In particular, only the company management team has access to rooms in which sensitive data are stored or filed.

3. Data protection

We process personal data in accordance with the provisions of German data protection law and European Union data protection law. We are committed to complying with all applicable laws and guidelines regarding data protection. For detailed information on data protection, please visit our website: https://www.utpb.de/de/datenschutz/

When we work on projects, we inform our partners about the processing of your personal data and your rights in an external document. We also enter into nondisclosure agreements with our project partners and undertake to comply with them.

1. Human rights

We support and respect the protection of international human rights and condemn every form of violation of these rights. We are also committed to ensuring that we are not complicit in any human rights violations.

2.Competition

The standards of fair competition, fair business activity and fair advertising constitute principles for our business activities and we are committed to meeting these standards. We meet the highest standards of integrity in all our business activities. This results in a zero tolerance policy regarding bribery, corruption, extortion and embezzlement as well as compliance with antitrust law. We also respect intellectual property rights.

3.Financial responsibility

As an intergenerational family business, we believe sustainable financial management is particularly important. We always make financial decisions with a view to long-term success and to ensuring the company remains aware of its responsibility to our employees and to future generations.

4.Corporate citizenship

As a company, we do our best to act like a ‘good citizen’ in society within the meaning of corporate citizenship, thereby living up to our social responsibility.

We support the goal of environmental protection for current and future generations and we are aware of the responsibility this entails. As a family company, we take environmental sustainability very seriously. This results in the following guidelines:

• We comply with laws that were introduced to protect the environment and act according to the precautionary principle.
• We encourage our employees to be aware of environmental issues.
• For example, we operate paperless offices to avoid unnecessary waste and save resources.
• We endeavour to achieve energy efficiency and reduce resource usage as much as possible.

We undertake to implement this code of conduct as an important company policy. A functional compliance structure that uses software tools enables us to communicate these requirements to all employees effectively and on a regular basis. These requirements are also continuously monitored using the software to guarantee compliance.

We also require our business partners to comply with our code of conduct. If our business partners fail to observe key requirements, we endeavour to end the business relationship as quickly as possible.