Responsibility for the environment, employees, and society
Corporate social responsibility: our contribution to creating a livable future
By working together, we can ensure that our world remains a livable home for future generations. As an IT service provider and consulting company, we are conscious of our responsibility to people and the planet, and have firmly embedded social and entrepreneurial sustainability in our business strategy.
All three areas of sustainability – environmental, social and governance (ESG) – are intertwined and equally important to us. In terms of environmental sustainability, our focus is on reducing our carbon footprint. We also offer an extensive portfolio of products and services to help our customers achieve their sustainability goals. Regarding social sustainability, we focus on the well-being of our employees and on promoting social engagement. Our activities in the field of governance provide an entrepreneurial framework for our sustainability efforts, ensuring measurability and transparency.
Environment: responsibility for the climate and nature
As climate change progresses, the need for action is intensifying. We are conscious of this every day and in all our activities. That’s why, as a company, supporting efforts to limit global warming to 1.5°C is part of our identity.
Dietmar Focke, Managing Director Lufthansa Industry Solutions
Our goal: act 1.5°C compliant
Our net-zero roadmap is aligned with the 1.5-degree target set out in the international climate agreement, and we are supporting this target with all our measures. To ensure that our defined emissions reduction path until 2045 is in line with the 1.5-degree target, we are working with the XDC Scenario Explorer from “right. based on science.” The tool enables us to see whether our emissions since 2019 and the reduction targets we have set are in line with the 1.5-degree target. With our sustainability portfolio, we are also contributing to this beyond the boundaries of our company.
We calculate our carbon footprint each year, examining Scopes 1 to 3 of the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol, to identify our most significant impacts, take appropriate actions and measure their effects. Business travel and commuting account for roughly half of our CO2 emissions. We therefore promote sustainable travel through rail cards and “job tickets” for employees to use on public transport, along with car-pooling and bike-leasing initiatives. Since 2019, we have offset all business flights through donations to climate projects. In addition, we allow our employees to work from home or at co-working spaces in central locations, which reduces the distances our employees have to commute and facilitates their use of public transport.
We believe that helping our customers to improve their sustainability through our IT solutions and consultancy services has the potential to make a significant, positive contribution. Our sustainability portfolio comprises seven areas in which we’re driving forward the environmental and digital transformation.
For the continuing improvement of our environmental performance, we have implemented an environmental management system; our headquarter in Norderstedt has been ISO 14001 certified since July 2023.
Rail cards
We offer a “Bahncard 25” or a “Bahncard 50” rail card to our employees who travel regularly for business, giving them a 25%/50% discount on rail journeys in Germany. Not only does this make business travel by rail a more attractive option, our employees also benefit from lower prices outside of work – because these rail cards are also permitted (and intended) for private use.
Deutschland-Ticket – job ticket version
Our employees can access the Deutschland-Ticket – a nationwide local public transport subscription ticket – at a reduced price. This is because it is classified as a “job ticket” to support commuters. By offering this service, we’re promoting the use of local public transport for commuting and for private journeys outside of work.
Bike leasing
We offer our employees attractive pricing models to lease bicycles and e-bikes. This creates incentives to travel by bicycle rather than by car. Not only does this protect the environment, it also promotes healthy living.
Car pooling
As of mid-2024, we offer our employees access to the Twogo app. Twogo makes it easy and efficient to organize car-pooling groups. This means our employees can share journeys, split the costs and reduce their environmental impacts. By offering Twogo, we’re supporting more sustainable mobility services without curbing our employees’ flexibility.
World Cleanup Day
Together with the help alliance and other Lufthansa companies, we take part in World Cleanup Day each year to make our cities and the world around us a little cleaner. In 2024, our employees collected more than 8,600 liters of refuse across several sites.
Offsetting business flights
Since 2019, the Lufthansa Group has offset all its employees’ business flights. This involves retrospectively offsetting all CO2 emissions caused by these flights by making donations to certified climate projects in the myclimate portfolio.
Sustainable office buildings
We take care to purchase renewable energy and fit energy-saving sensors to the lighting systems and water-saving sensors to the taps at our sites. We place a particular emphasis on sustainable resource use and systematic waste separation.
Central co-working spaces
In addition to our own offices, we also offer our employees the option to work from co-working spaces in central locations. This makes it easier to commute by rail, bus or bicycle and reduces the CO2 emissions caused by journeys to work.
Bee hives
We support biodiversity at our Norderstedt site through five bee hives that house roughly 250,000 bees in total. A pleasant side effect of this is that we’re able to offer the honey to our employees and visitors in return for a small donation to help alliance, an aid organization founded by the Lufthansa Group.
Social responsibility and societal engagement
As part of our collaboration with the Hacker School, Lufthansa Industry Solutions (LHIND) regularly invites children to several of its sites with the aim of inspiring them to pursue programming and highlight their career prospects.
A commitment to a livable future means more than simply protecting the environment.
We’re committed to sustainable social development, advocate for human rights and promote social equality. Out of a sense of conviction, we take responsibility for societal concerns and support the tremendous dedication of various associations and initiatives in which our employees are involved. The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) serve as our guiding light.
Although our efforts extend beyond our company, they start from within: we promote equal opportunities and embrace diversity within our company. Our employees come from different age groups, countries, cultures and family structures, bringing different and valuable perspectives and abilities with them as a result. This diversity makes us strong, innovative and creative. That’s why we signed up to the Diversity Charter. We work together every day to create a place where all employees can realize their potential and develop in all their diversity.
The welfare and the health of our employees is our number one priority. Besides sporty benefits, we offer various possibilities, whether individually or in a team, to actively combat one’s own well-being and fitness. The thematical range reaches from stress prevention and resilience via nutrition to movement and fitness, just like the classic “active break”. We emphasize on cooperations with health insurances or work closely together with Lufthansa’s own offers like psychological consulting or its medical service. What we do to ensure the welfare of our employees is extensively explained on our career page.
Our societal engagement
Diversity Charta
We embrace a holistic understanding of diversity. Every day, we work together to create a workplace where employees, in all their diversity, can individually realize and develop their potential. For this reason, it was self-evident for us to sign the diversity Charta.
Pro bono projects
We apply our expertise in the fields of IT, digitalization and consultancy to support charitable associations and initiatives. Each year, we implement various pro bono projects. Our employees are always welcome to propose suitable projects and to implement them, if we have available capacities.
Hacker School
We have been collaborating successfully with the Hacker School for a number of years. This work aims to give young people access to digital education, highlight career prospects and equip them with skills to shape their own future. In 2023, we were able to get over 100 children excited about programming with the help of our dedicated employees and the Hacker School.
Hardware donations & recycling
We donate our used, written-off hardware such as smartphones, laptops and tablets to charitable educational institutions in Germany and around the world. In 2023, we donated 130 laptops and 50 smartphones to charitable organizations. In 2024, we established a partnership with AfB, which prepares our hardware for re-use and gives them a second life. As an inclusive company, AfB provides targeted support for people with disabilities and offers them a safe, secure working environment.
Cooperation with NORDAKADEMIE and Leuphana University Lüneburg
We emphasize the importance of input from external sources and value our cooperative relationships with universities and other educational institutions. We have collaborated with NORDAKADEMIE and Leuphana University Lüneburg on a range of sustainability-related topics, including a Corporate Digital Responsibility Strategy for responsible and sustainable use of data, a Net Zero Strategy for Lufthansa Industry Solutions, and examining how the EU taxonomy applies to specific products.
Impact Week
Our employees regularly participate in the Impact Week. A charitable initiative, Impact Week brings together people from different countries around the world to promote innovation by means of design thinking methods and entrepreneurship in emerging nations, thereby laying the foundations for sustainable growth. A number of international companies support this initiative, including the Lufthansa Group.
Memberships
We’re a longstanding member of B.A.U.M. e.V., a network that promotes sustainable business, and became a member of Circular Valley in 2024. We’re convinced that if we take action together, learn from each other, support each other and leverage synergy effects, we’ll have an even larger lever to pull in support of a livable future.
Governance: Sustainable business management & compliance
We interpret governance as a commitment to sustainable and responsible business management with a long-term perspective. It’s for this reason that sustainability is firmly embedded in our business strategy. We ensure that decisions are made transparently and in line with ethical standards. Acting lawfully and with integrity is our top priority. We lay the foundations for this with our compliance management system and our Code of Conduct.
By integrating sustainability as one of six strategic focus areas and implementing an environmental management system, we ensure that we ambitiously pursue and monitor our sustainability targets in the context of our environmental and social engagement.
Through responsible action, we aim to be a strong, supportive employer to our employees and a reliable, trustworthy partner to our customers.
Reporting system and ombudsman: Lufthansa Industry Solutions uses the Lufthansa Group’s whistleblower system, which is designed to allow individuals to report potential breaches of laws and regulations in our company (e.g. corruption, fraud, breaches of competition and anti-trust law). If you would like to report a breach, you can submit a report using the electronic whistleblower system or by contacting our external ombudsman, Dr. Rainer Buchert.
Sustainability as a key pillar of our corporate strategy
Through our ‘Digitalization & Sustainability’ strategy cluster, we set ourselves ambitious goals every four months, which are transparently communicated throughout the company. Every employee has the chance to contribute to achieving these goals within his or her area of business. Communication and transparency are important success factors for achieving our sustainability goals.
Compliance management system
Acting lawfully and with integrity is a fundamental principle of all our business activities. This includes, in particular, strict adherence to anti-trust law and anti-corruption regulations. Combating and preventing corruption and bribery are crucial for our company’s business activities and therefore represent an integral component of our value system. The Lufthansa Group has introduced a central compliance management system to protect the company and its employees against illegal acts – and their consequences – and to assist with proper application of legal requirements. We have also implemented this compliance management system at Lufthansa Industry Systems and continuously refine it with due consideration for specific risks to our business activities.
Code of Conduct
The Lufthansa Group Code of Conduct forms a central element of the compliance management system. It provides a binding framework that applies to all managers and employees. The Code of Conducts serves as a basis for fair competition and helps to identify and prevent regulatory and reputational risks. The most important principles of the Code of Conduct include taking over responsibility for the society and the environment, ethical business practices and securing the company’s values.
As a fundamental aspect of our business relationship to suppliers, we expect adherence to the principles as displayed in our codex. The supplier code of conduct concentrates on the three areas environment, social and governance and intents to ensure that suppliers meet the standards mentioned in the document. To take it even further, the supplier code of should encourage them to support the establishment of responsible and sustainable behavior within the supply chain.
In alignment with the Lufthansa Group, we acknowledge it as our duty to identify and minimize the risk of human rights violations and environmental damages in our business operations and throughout our entire supply chain, while also preventing potential breaches. Our approach is guided by regulatory frameworks such as the German Supply Chain Due Dilligence Law, international conventions like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the core Labor Standards of the International Labor Organization (ILO), the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Himan Rights (UN Global Compact), and the IATA resolution on combating human trafficking.
