ANNUAL REPORT 2017
EXPLORE OUR PERSPECTIVES

PEOPLE AND SOCIETY

Key in our mission to drive innovation and deliver excellence is having the right people; talented people who are able to provide our customers with pioneering solutions and first-class service. People who share our fascination for the future, but want answers today. From the sharpest graduates, to skillful engineers and inspirational leaders.

To be able to realize our ambition to drive innovation and deliver excellence, it is crucial to attract, develop, and retain critical talent. In our innovative industry particular, people are the differentiating element.

To ensure we are able to brand ASMI as global employer of choice in the global labor market, in 2017 we implemented a holistic approach. This approach integrates the mission, vision and strategy of the company with our employment brand and our people.

In the execution of all our people-related actions, we focus on four key areas:

ATTRACTING A DIVERSE WORKFORCE

A key part of attracting and developing the right talent is being an equal opportunities employer. We understand that everyone is unique and recognize and respect the differences between individuals, including ethnicity, religious beliefs, nationality, age, gender, sexual orientation, family status, physical ability, experience, and perspective. This is reflected in our Global Employment Standards and as such is integrated into our recruitment policy, processes, and practices.

Recruiting and developing a diverse workforce gives us a wide range of perspectives, and allows us to explore and adopt new technological ideas and innovations. It also allows us to better understand and meet the needs of our diverse customers, suppliers, and communities. Diversity also enables us to bring a range of different insights together to create breakthrough innovations, turning today’s challenges into tomorrow’s opportunities. This is supported by our global recruitment policy and process.

ENABLE OUR PEOPLE

To enable our people to fulfill their assignments to the best of their abilities, we use high-quality global processes and tooling that provide managers and employees with access to the services they need 24/7. This includes technical education, as well as leadership trainings, through our leadership academy and a newly introduced online platform.

THE ASM NEW COLLEGE GRADUATE PROGRAM

To help attract and develop our people, we have established the ASMI New College Graduate (NCG) program. We focus on top graduates with advanced degrees in physics, physical chemistry, chemistry, materials science, and engineering. Working with a select list of universities that focus on the education and training that fit our technology needs, we participate in career events, partnerships, and projects that give us the opportunity to showcase the company. Following their training period, the new graduates begin working at the cutting edge of technology, alongside experienced innovators. Their goal is to resolve some of our toughest scientific challenges. During the first few years of their careers, they are based at one of our innovation centers in Helsinki, Finland, or Leuven, Belgium, before being given the opportunity to apply their knowledge in different product areas at one of our global product development facilities.

THE ASM LEADERSHIP ACADEMY

Once the right people are attracted, we work hard to ensure they are engaged with the company and its strategic goals, and ensure we provide an enabling environment that allows them to excel and turn today’s challenges into tomorrow’s opportunities. One example is the ASMI Leadership Academy, which offers our people different leadership programs. Our Leadership Academy helps managers and leaders from all levels of the organization to foster a collaborative and engaging culture and build upon the diversity of their teams. Bringing managers and leaders together in these programs, while using consistent content, has also led to increased understanding and greater cross-cultural and business collaboration.

HELPING OUR PEOPLE ENGAGE AND EXCEL

To accelerate our people’s development and career, we focus on two areas: our succession and talent review process and our performance management and development process. Both processes are pivotal in managing and mitigating risks associated with our business operations.

Our global succession and talent reviews are deployed for all critical organizational areas. For those positions that are identified as pivotal to develop our capabilities, we define the required talent-related actions to ensure timely succession and support.

ASMI has implemented a structural performance management and development process. This process supports management and employees to discuss key objectives and competences on a regular basis and is set up as a dialog between manager and employees.

ETHICS

At ASMI, we have adopted a Code of Ethics that sets out clear standards in different areas of business life. Its purpose is to promote a clear, strong and consistent culture of ethics that applies to our Supervisory Board and Management Board, and to all our employees, consultants, contractors, temporary employees, and critical suppliers. The full Code of Ethics can be found on our website.

We continuously promote ethical behaviors and ensure all employees are actively exposed to our Code of Ethics in multiple ways:

Our goal of zero ethical violations is communicated and reinforced through these active engagements. All of these efforts aim to foster ethical behavior in line with our Code of Ethics and in reporting potential violations.

ASMI is committed to conducting business in a manner consistent with the Responsible Business Alliance (RBA) principles to protect our employees, customers, communities, shareholders and the environment.

Our ethics management system provides appropriate resources and tools:

SPEAKING UP

Potential violations of our Code of Ethics can be reported through the SpeakUp! process, or directly to management, HR, or the compliance officer. When we receive complaints, these are investigated under the supervision of the Ethics Committee. The SpeakUp! process lets employees, suppliers, customers, and any other stakeholder report ethics issues, concerns or complaints anonymously and in their own language. Independent of the way of reporting, our Code of Ethics includes a non-retaliation policy that applies to any person making use of this process.

We encourage our employees to speak up when they feel ASMI's actions or behaviors within are (potentially) in conflict with the Code of Ethics. An anonymous reporting system is available in all countries in which we operate, in native languages. In all cases and situations, we follow a comprehensive and consistent process to investigate, report and take appropriate measures. This is supported by a non-retaliation policy.

GLOBAL EMPLOYMENT STANDARDS

Our Global Employment Standards (GES) summarize our approach to respecting human rights throughout our global operations and supply chain. They are written with everyone in our value chain in mind.

The GES reflect the principles laid out by the United Nations in the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, and support the RBA Code of Conduct framework including the following:

We are committed to updating our management practices to stay compliant with the RBA code as it evolves.

Updates to the global employment standards are communicated to all employees as well as being posted internally and externally on our website.

We believe that everyone deserves to work in an environment free of any threats to their human rights. In 2017, we had no reports or evidence of any human rights violations or abuses within our global hiring or employment practices.

DISCLOSING OUTSIDE EMPLOYMENT ACTIVITIES

ASMI supports employee interests and activities away from the company. For reasons of transparency and to avoid conflict of interest, corruption and bribery, we further formalized ASMI's position through a policy change. Among other things, this policy change means that all employees are to report all outside employment activities prior to any employment activities occurring.

PROVIDING EMPLOYMENT CONTRACTS IN NATIVE OR PREFERRED LANGUAGES

ASMI strengthened its support of prospective employees full understanding of the terms of employment by providing employment contracts in the native or preferred languages.

These terms and conditions, when taken as a whole, contribute to ASMI’s approach for respecting human rights. Employees and prospective employees are not in debt to secure employment, they are able to understand the terms of their employment, and are free to sever employment.

HEALTH & SAFETY

Our corporate responsibility policy includes a commitment to a philosophy of ZERO HARM! with respect to the health and safety of our employees, our suppliers, and our customers’ employees who work with and around our equipment. The ZERO HARM! philosophy means we strive to prevent injury and illness at our sites and at our customers’ sites. This includes providing workplaces with good working conditions, positive reinforcement of health & safety, and proactive programs such as safety management by walking around (SMBWA) audits to prevent incidents. We look to all management to exhibit safety leadership and all employees to report risks and concerns, not only at our sites but in the design and manufacturing of our products. We take a proactive approach to identifying risks and hazards early, and a structural approach to elimination when they are discovered. We use a robust reporting system for identifying gaps and opportunities, and focus on continuous improvement.

We believe that safety is more than just complying with regulations. We have to continually challenge ourselves, our suppliers, our industry, and our customers to be leaders in safety. In an industry such as ours, where there are shared work sites, shared objectives for producing end-user products, and a supply chain that supports our peers and competitors, there is no room for a lapse in safety leadership. When it comes to health & safety, everyone is a stakeholder.

Our attitude to minimizing internal risks follows a similar approach. Through our strategic lab safety, service safety, and manufacturing safety plans, we have implemented working groups comprised of key representatives from the sites and functions. Those working groups are engaged in driving a strategic plan and objectives for each site/function that focuses on multiple dimensions of safety influence, including reduction of physical risks, improvement of procedures, and responding to employee feedback.