To our stakeholders:

I am pleased to confirm that Orakel 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,
Dirk Spooren
Managing Director

Orakel’s goal is to inform employees about human rights principles and to organize in-company initiatives to raise awareness about human rights issues. Furthermore, we want to take human rights principles into account throughout our production processes and business transactions.

• Through the Foster Parents Plan (www.planbelgie.be) Orakel supports child-focused community development in third world countries. We keep our employees aware of this by communicating with our “foster child”, Jose from Ecuador, through letters and postcards. Employees let their children make drawings to send along with the cards. This way, raising awareness also happens outside of the company, within the employees’ families.
• Once a year Orakel hosts a fair trade breakfast for its employees. On this day, employees leave their car at home and come to work by bike or public transport. Upon arrival, they can partake in a breakfast with fair trade products and receive information about the principles and importance of fair trade.
• Orakel commits itself to strict ethical principles during the production process. Eco-tokens can be made from a variety of organic raw materials, but Orakel chooses to manufacture them strictly from organic waste products like potato peels, rather than taking products away from the food chain.

The initiatives Orakel organized have raised awareness and employee engagement towards human rights principles. With the company, we ‘adopted’ a child through the Foster Parents Plan for an amount of 25 euro per month.

Orakel supports the UN Global Compact principles regarding labour rights and applies these principles within the company. Orakel cares deeply for the well-being of its employees and actively engages in initiatives to constantly improve the employee’s personal health and well-being as well as the general atmosphere within the company.

• Orakel perceives diversity as an asset and has an equal opportunities policy which prevents discrimination of all kinds and ensures comparable pay for comparable work.
• Orakel has held a campaign to encourage its employees to give up smoking by providing professional coaches.
• Orakel provides fresh seasonal fruit to its employees on a regular basis.
• Orakel offers first aid courses to its employees.
• Orakel keeps its employees informed about ergonomics and the optimal way of executing tasks to avoid injury.
• Orakel arranged for its employees to receive a massage through the massage@work initiative.

The equal opportunities policy has led to a high degree of diversity within our organization. We employ 15 women and 3 men and we have 2 employees with a disability. The other initiatives have resulted in an augmentation of the employee’s engagement toward a healthy lifestyle, both at work and at home; it also served to improve the general atmosphere. For instance, ten employees partook in the anti-smoking campaign. Eight of them completed the program and three of those are still not smoking to this day. All of our employees took part in the first aid program.

We are committed to the environment and sustainability is our trademark. We are constantly challenging ourselves to produce safe, eco-friendly and sustainable products. We are closely monitoring the energy we use and the waste we generate. We constantly educate our employees with regard to environmental issues.

• We have cut down our energy use by installing 1 new fridge with water tap instead of 2 old fridges and 2 Sipwell containers and by installing an automatic shutdown program on all computers.
• We have organized check-ups for cold inflation pressure for our employees’ vehicles, since optimal tire pressure greatly increases fuel economy and reduces emissions.
• We have implemented the use of a paperless office, printing as little documents as possible and also encouraging others to do so by adding a reference (be green, keep it on the screen) to our e-mail signature.
• One thing we cannot avoid is sending packages. To compensate for these carbon emissions, we have registered with UPS Carbon Neutral. We pay a bit more per package and thereby support various projects, e.g. about reforestation.

In 2013 we have started an energy evaluation project through a local expertise centre. They are currently measuring and evaluating our energy use so they can provide us with a report on our progress and possible improvements for the future.

Orakel supports the United Nations Global Compact principles on anti-corruption. We work diligently to prevent corruption in all its forms, including extortion and bribery.

Our policies on corruption are part of our employee handbook and the introductory brochure for new employees. It also clearly indicates the counselor to whom employees can go to in the case of guideline violation.

So far, there hasn’t been any incident regarding corruption reported to the counselor.