Respect for Human Rights

We believe that respect for human rights is not only the realization of our basic principles but also an essential social responsibility that we must fulfill. It is the foundation for sustainable growth, for our corporate activities involving many employees and business partners, including franchised stores and, suppliers, as well as stakeholders.

We have established FamilyMart's Human Rights Policy to recognize the importance of respect for human rights as a universal value in Japan and overseas. It has also been created to demonstrate our stance on them as a responsible company.

To establish the policy, we formed a project team of members mainly from our Sustainability Promotion Department and other divisions closely related to human rights issues. The team consulted with experts to seek guidance on how to prepare an appropriate draft, which was then reviewed by the Sustainability Committee and approved by the Board of Directors and Management Meeting.

Based on the organizational structure of the Sustainability Committee, its chairperson (CMO*) is responsible for supervising the Sustainability Promotion Department, which serves as a secretariat. This department collaborates and share information with other departments to promote our initiatives based on this policy and confirm their implementation status.

The Sustainability Committee meets twice a year to discuss reviews, reports, and proposals and then presents the result to the Board of Directors.

*Chief Marketing Officer

Human rights due diligence is a continuous activity to counter adverse human rights impacts.

FamilyMart has established an appropriate system in compliance with the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. This system allows us to identify and assess (Plan), prevent and mitigate (Do), investigate and analyze (Check), and correct and improve (Act) adverse human rights impacts of our business activities based mainly on information collected from reporting mechanisms, while carefully communicating with our stakeholders.

Our human rights due diligence will be reviewed as necessary in response to social changes, internal and external incidents, and the implementation of new projects.

By taking advice from external experts, we anticipate human rights risks of our business activities and incorporate them into our human rights due diligence plan, considering their frequency of occurrence and severity.

We have identified relevant human rights risks based on advice from external experts, feedback on our business activities, and complaints received by our consultation desks. We have created a risk map considering the people involved, frequency of occurrence, and severity.

Severity (impact level)

• Scale: Degree of impact of human-rights infringements on life and health
• Scope: Whether the scope of impact of human-rights infringements is foreseeable or not, and whether it is geographically limited or not
• Difficulty of remedy: Measured based on whether a human rights infringement is remediable or not

We ensure that all our employees abide by FamilyMart's Human Rights Policy when they engage in our business activities by providing them opportunities to acquire knowledge on human rights and receive education to deepen their understanding of human rights risks and challenges in corporate activities.

We educate all our directors and employees through videos and outside instructors' lectures on human rights. As a relevant topic, human rights education is also incorporated into e-learning materials on other themes, such as SDGs.

In fiscal 2022, all employees participated in the “Business and Human Rights” lecture. In addition, the textbooks and other related educational materials used for education are posted on our learning system that is available to all our employees at any time.

We invite external experts to conduct educational sessions on each human rights risk and issue such as human rights enlightenment and food labeling guidelines including non-food products for related divisions.

Our education for management includes human rights education to ensure that our managers can identify and mitigate the risk of harassment and other potential human rights violations based on accurate knowledge of human rights. By helping them to be precautious in their daily communication, we encourage them to act on their own initiatives to apply what they have learned in their work.

In fiscal 2022, a study session titled Case Studies on Store Operation and Human Rights was held for all 266 sales office managers.

We are working to prevent and mitigate human rights risks throughout our supply chain by informing our stakeholders about FamilyMart's Human Rights Policy and approaching our business partners on various occasions to gain their understanding and support for this policy.

We raise awareness of our franchised stores by providing basic knowledge of human rights and information on human rights infringements that may occur in stores through the portal site for franchised stores, which is accessible from computers in their stores.

In our training for newly appointed store managers and franchisees who operate multiple stores, we provide information about the importance of respect for human rights in store operations, briefing on FamilyMart's Human Rights Policy, and case studies related to stores.

Since fiscal 2020, we have been conducting questionnaires on human rights with our suppliers, subsidiaries, and others. Based on the previous survey results and issues that may arise, we will broaden its scope and improve its content to carry out this survey continuously.

A growing number of our suppliers have requested us to share information about the education and communication of non-Japanese employees and foreign technical intern trainees. In response to this, we have prepared a “Human Rights Protection Checklist” under the supervision of external experts, which is helpful for human rights issues. We have distributed it to some of our suppliers.

FamilyMart has been operating several internal and external contact points through which all employees and business partners can ask for advice, file reports, and give comments at any time on any matters, including human-rights-related issues.

In case of possible human rights infringement reports, we will strive to protect whistleblowers by preserving the confidentiality of the reported information and forbidding disadvantageous treatment or retaliatory measures against the informant. At the same time, we will ensure that the departments involved confirm the facts, correct such violations, and prevent their recurrence. In this way, we seek to prevent human rights infringements and establish a corrective system when they occur.

Furthermore, in response to the enforcement of the Revised Whistle-Blower Protection Act of June 2022, we have revised our internal reporting system (hotline) regulation for our employees. It has been modified to be more secure for informants to report information. Items such as “expansion of the system to cover more people, including staff at directly-managed stores”, and “actions forbidden to take against informants” have been included.

In case of any issue that may potentially lead to a severe infringement, we seek to resolve it promptly by having the Risk & Compliance Committee report it to management so that they can take countermeasures.

In fiscal 2022, we received 129 reports, including those unrelated to human rights.

Customer Service Office (internal contact point), Franchisee Relations Office (internal contact point), and Supplier Helpline (external contact point)

We have regularly been promoting various initiatives with NGOs and NPOs to which we donate through our in-store fundraising campaign, the FamilyMart Connecting Dreams Foundation Donation.