Acting responsibly

Respecting human rights and adopting good labour practices helps us live our Values. Having a robust Speak Up procedure and channels for people to raise concerns enables us to deliver on this commitment. Our commitment to labour practices and human rights and our associated policies and procedures also help us to recruit and retain talented people around the world. Maintaining good employee relations makes us a stronger and better company capable of winning market share and performing well for all our stakeholders.

Everyone at Subsea7 must abide by our Code of Conduct. Fundamentally our Code is all about standing up for human rights in all we do, wherever we work, so no-one is ever mistreated, abused or exploited by us or anyone we work with. Our Human Rights Policy Statement makes it explicitly clear that we will not accept any abuse of human rights, including forced or involuntary labour, and we will not work with suppliers or partners that do.

Subsea7 is proud to be a signatory to the UN Global Compact, in which the United Nations has set out 10 principles covering human rights, labour, environment and anti-corruption. We have also signed up to support the Worker Welfare Principles set out by the Building Responsibly organisation, of which we became a Board member in 2021.

We support the rights of our people to freedom of association and collective bargaining. By working with established international compacts, standards and organisations we aim to present a united international business community where we stand alongside others in our industry and other industries worldwide to put a stop to human rights abuses.

We are committed to fair and lawful employment practices across the Company and throughout our supply chain. We are an equal opportunities employer and seek to protect our people from discrimination, bullying and harassment. As a minimum we comply with national legal requirements regarding wages and working hours everywhere we have operations. We also apply the International Labour Organization’s standards regarding child labour and the minimum working age.

We are also committed to working with suppliers and partners whose human rights standards are consistent with our own. We require our suppliers to uphold the same standards when dealing with their employees, contract staff and subcontractors. We require them to commit to our Code of Conduct for Suppliers (which includes human rights and labour practices), and we encourage them to expect the same of us and report any behaviour that is inconsistent with this code. If they are not comfortable reporting to Subsea7 directly, we encourage the use of our externally administered confidential reporting line, Safecall.

90% High-risk suppliers undergoing enhanced human rights risk assessments by 2025 

Subsea 7 focuses on ensuring regulatory compliance and improving our environmental performance through careful selection of consumables and working practices designed to reduce waste, energy consumption and emissions. Subsea 7’s line managers are responsible for implementation and compliance with our policies within our Business Management Systems and for ensuring that all employees and contractors are aware of their responsibilities.

We manage the environmental impact from our projects and operations through our environmental management plans certified according to the ISO 14001Environmental Management Standard.

Awareness of the impact that our activities may have on the environment and the management of measures to control such impacts is encouraged through our environmental principles:

• Work according to applicable environmental laws, conventions, protocols and regulations
• Promote and maintain a positive environmental culture
• Manage our activities to eliminate or reduce any potential negative environmental impact
• Consider environmental sustainability an important element in the way we do business
• Use planning, design and risk assessment to avoid and reduce environmental risk.

Our environmental awareness training is mandatory for all new starters and covers environmental compliance, reporting environmental incidents, our impacts and the role of our employees and their actions.

Some ecological disruption is unavoidable when putting in place new subsea infrastructure. We recognise the impacts our operations may have on marine biodiversity above the water, below the water and on the seabed and are focused on minimising and mitigating these impacts through focused effort. Our Pipeline Bundle solutions eliminate the need for trenching and rock dumping and are a preferred solution for many clients in the North Sea.

We are a signatory to the UK Chamber of Shipping Single-Use Plastic Charter. In line with this agreement, we are looking at ways to reduce our dependence on single-use plastics on our sites and vessels and within our supply chain annually.

Many of our vessels transit from one ocean to another in the course of the year. We are sensitive to the risk of contamination of ecosystems that can result in disruption to biodiversity through the introduction of non-indigenous marine life to a new area. We follow all local requirements and legislation to ensure that any risk of contamination through the release of ballast water or from organisms attached to the hulls of our vessels is minimised through vigorous cleaning and decontamination.

Subsea 7 has formed an alliance with the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) - BORA Blue Ocean Research AllianceTM, joining industry and science together to better understand the Oceans that we work in. We look at biodiversity in areas of scientific interest that we work in for better understanding, measuring changes and to make informed decisions.

Subsea 7 provides decommissioning services to the offshore oil and gas market, helping our clients to safely and responsibly remove and dispose of obsolete offshore infrastructure at the end of its useful life. We also take responsibility for our own end-of-life assets, with all vessels recycled in accordance with the Hong Kong Accord when they are no longer operable. In 2021 Seven Eagle was decommissioned from the fleet.

Environmental Impact Assessments are carried out on our projects, sites and offices to provide information on the likely environmental impacts of our operations and activities, to detail environmental actions and mitigation. For projects, this is carried out at each project phase, to assist in managing the activities, products and services used for the execution of the project in order to minimize the environmental impacts. On our sites and facilities, we use them to form an action plan to minimise this impact from the early engineering design phase through to daily operations.

• 90% Waste recycled onshore by 2025
• 70% Waste segregated offshore for recycling by 2025
• 10 BORAbox® units available for science by 2025