Human Rights

In 2025, Sanofi undertook a refresh of its salient human rights risks assessment, using a methodology aligned with international human rights standards.​ This process involved identifying potential human rights impacts that could occur in Sanofi’s operations and value chain, including through desktop research and interviews with relevant Sanofi business units. ​

The assessment considered changes in the Company’s human rights risk environment since 2017, as well as salient risks identified by peers. These indicative risks were then validated through a cross-functional workshop and evaluated based on their severity (in terms of potential harm to people), and likelihood. The results were plotted on heatmaps and further discussed in a second cross-functional workshop. ​

Based on this work, the most severe and likely identified impacts were then grouped to define Sanofi’s updated salient human rights risks. This new framework simplifies the categorization of risks (reducing them from eight to five), introduces a new risk related to access to medicine, and places greater emphasis on community-level impacts.

In line with international standards, the salient risks reflect the areas where the most severe human rights harms may be most likely in the absence of effective risk management. Sanofi is taking steps to address these risks across each of these areas. ​

Sanofi’s salient human rights risks​ are the following:

• Decent working conditions in our operations and value chain​: Risks related to workers’ health and safety and fundamental rights at work including freedom from slavery, child labour and other exploitive practices, freedom from discrimination and harassment and the right to freedom of association. ​
• Safety and wellbeing of patients, consumers and clinical trial participants ​: Risks related to exposure to unsafe products or research practices, including physical and mental health impacts.
• Privacy, including for trial participants, patients, consumers and workers​: Risks related to unauthorised disclosure of sensitive information (including personal data) we collect, hold, or use. ​
• Sustainable and healthy environment and communities​: Risks to the environment and communities related to the social and environmental impacts of our business activities or those of third parties, including our suppliers and consumers​.
• Access to medicine​: Risks related to access to essential medicine in line with international standards.​

1. Decent working conditions in our operations and value chain:

• Freedom of Association and social dialogue: Sanofi adheres ILO conventions 87 and 98 on freedom of association and collective bargaining. Employees can freely join workers' organizations without interference or discrimination. Sanofi supports collective bargaining, provides necessary resources, and ensures open dialogue to resolve issues. Suppliers must comply with these standards. Moreover, Sanofi values employee feedback and encourages open dialogue. In 2024, the company launched an internal Speak-Up Portal and established an Ombuds Office to address employee concerns confidentially. Feedback is gathered through the annual "Your Voice" engagement survey, pulse surveys, and mechanisms like Manager90. Employee Resource Groups and Town Hall meetings further support social dialogue.
• Forced Labor: Sanofi adheres to ILO conventions 29 and 105, rejecting all forms of forced labor, including debt bondage and trafficking. Employees can freely enter and terminate employment with transparent contracts and regular wages. Sanofi respects working time regulations and requires suppliers to comply. Special attention is given to vulnerable workers, especially migrants.
• Child Labor: Sanofi adheres to ILO conventions 138 and 182, prohibiting all forms of child labor. Employment of individuals under 15 or the legal age for finishing compulsory schooling is prohibited, and no hazardous work is allowed for those under 18. Suppliers must comply with these standards.
• Non-Discrimination: Sanofi's policy outlines principles of non-discrimination, equal opportunity, and respect for individuals. It includes non-discrimination in HR processes, equal treatment, awareness and training, annual policy updates, and a complaint reporting procedure. Sanofi prohibits all forms of discrimination, complying with international standards and laws.
• Adequate wages: Sanofi is committed to ensuring a living wage for all direct employees, enabling them and their families to meet basic needs. Annual reviews are conducted to monitor living wage standards, with adjustments made as necessary. Transparency is promoted through regular progress measurement and stakeholder reporting. Sanofi also advocates for living wage principles among strategic suppliers. Sanofi aligns with the UN Global Compact and Sustainable Development Goals, using the latest ILO principles.
• Equal remuneration: At Sanofi we believe in paying equitably for similar work, with differences justified by clear criteria like grade, job profiles, locations, skills, etc. In 2021, the Company launched a Global Pay Equity Action Plan to track and reinforce practices to ensure and promote pay equity. This action plan includes three core global commitments:  
  - Regularly monitor gender pay equity across all countries via the dashboards available and develop action plans to remediate any unjustified pay gaps.
  - Push further for equity in all pay decisions, develop Pay Equity mindset and addressing factors that may impact pay gaps at each critical pay step (hiring, pay review, etc.).
  - Encourage local processes to review base salary for employees returning from parental / family leave, preventing disparities.
  The Company aims to prevent any discrimination (e.g. based on gender, race, etc) in compensations and allocate specific budgets to address pay gaps.
   

2. Safety and wellbeing of patients, consumers and clinical trial participants: Patient safety issues are managed by processes related to pharmacovigilance (which is intended to monitor and continuously assess the risk-benefit balance of products), the quality of medicines and the fight against the counterfeiting. Regarding clinical trials, specific rules compliant with international and national standards have been developed to ensure in particular the free and informed consent of participants. A clinical trial audit program is developed to verify compliance of operations with internal and external standards of reference. See Product Quality and Patient Safety, Bioethics and Clinical Trials and the Sustainability Statement.

3. Privacy, including for trial participants, patients, consumers and workers​: Sanofi is committed to protecting personal data through measures outlined in its Code of Conduct, which identifies data privacy as a core principle. privacy measure. The Code of Conduct commitments include the implementation of a Global Privacy Framework, security protocols, and privacy-by-design practices, especially involving patient data.
In the event of a data privacy breach posing material risk to patients, Sanofi follows a notification process: directly contacting known individuals and publishing a general information notice online for patients not known to the Company. This notice will seek to provide the full context of the incident, the measure taken by Sanofi (e.g. access shutdown, password reinitialization, data moved to a secure location, disclosed data deleted, additional training on human errors. etc.) to contain and reduce the potential material impact.
Furthermore, Sanofi is dedicated to safeguarding the privacy and protection of employees' personal data, recognizing its critical role in maintaining trust and compliance with legal standards.

4. Sustainable and healthy environment and communities: At Sanofi, our dedication to improving people’s lives goes beyond innovations in healthcare. As a global organization, Sanofi also has a role in caring for the planet. Sanofi continuously works to minimize the environmental impacts of its products and activities while strengthening its business resilience to environmental changes. See the Environment section of the ESG Index.

5. Access to medicine: We aim to improve and accelerate sustainable and equitable access to quality medicines, vaccines and healthcare for underserved populations in places where we can have the greatest impact. See the Sustainable and Equitable Access to Healthcare page.

Sanofi provides a grievance mechanism through a secured compliance helpline available 24/7 in 28 languages, Speak Up. Employees can report concerns or violations of the Code of Conduct without fear of discrimination or discipline if they act in good faith.

For patients, consumers and others, Sanofi has a dedicated system to manage product complaints, ensuring prompt analysis, regulatory compliance, and continuous improvement. Sanofi partners with Patient Advocates and Groups (PAGs) to design solutions genuinely addressing patients’ needs. An internal ombudsman, independent of the procurement function, facilitates the resolution of work-related differences between Sanofi and our suppliers with neutrality, impartiality and confidentiality.

Our due diligence approach is under the joint control of the CSR and HSE departments. Global coordination is provided by our CSR department, who seek to ensure that there is a good fit between the various measures in the vigilance approach, and that those measures are implemented. The CSR department works closely with our People & Culture, HSE, Procurement, Legal and Ethics & Business Integrity departments; its remit includes global oversight of Vigilance Plan implementation. Monitoring of risk management policies and whistleblowing systems is the responsibility of the specific departments concerned, such as HSE.