CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY
AT RELX

Helping our people pursue the highest ethical standards

Our Board recognises the importance of maintaining high standards of corporate governance, which underpins our ability to deliver consistent financial performance and value to our stakeholders. It is consistent with our wider RELX culture of acting with integrity in all that we do. The 2018 UK Corporate Governance Code (UK Code) applied to RELX PLC during the year. The Board continued to review the Company’s compliance with the principles and provisions of the UK Code, focusing particularly on RELX’s approach to engaging with its key stakeholders, particularly in light of the Covid-19 pandemic, alongside its ongoing review of RELX’s culture, purpose, strategy and values.

RELX PLC is the sole parent company of the Group. It owns 100% of the shares in RELX Group plc which, in turn, holds all of the operating businesses, subsidiaries and financing activities of the Group. RELX PLC, its subsidiaries, associates and joint ventures are together known as RELX.

The shares of RELX PLC are traded through its primary listing on the London Stock Exchange and its secondary listing on Euronext Amsterdam, while its securities are also traded on the New York Stock Exchange under its American Depositary Share Programme. Accordingly, the Board has implemented standards of corporate governance and disclosure applicable to a UK incorporated company, with listings in London, Amsterdam and New York.

Information and documents detailing our governance procedures are available to stakeholders online at www.relx.com. The RELX financial statements are prepared in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards.

The RELX Operating and Governance Principles provide a framework of processes, policies, and controls to manage risk. The RELX Code of Ethics and Business Conduct (the Code) sets the standards for behaviour for all employees of RELX. Among other key issues, the Code addresses fair competition, anti-bribery, conflicts of interest, employment practices, data protection and appropriate use of company property and information. It also encourages reporting of violations – with an anonymous reporting option where legally permissible – and prohibits retaliation against anyone for reporting a violation they honestly believe may have occurred.

We maintain a comprehensive set of compliance policies and procedures in support of the Code reviewed at least annually to ensure they remain current and effective. Our policies and procedures help us comply with the law and conduct our business in an open, honest, ethical and principled way. They comprise part of our anti-bribery adequate procedures for compliance with applicable laws.

Employees receive mandatory training on the Code – both as new hires and regularly throughout their employment – on topics such as maintaining a respectful workplace, preventing bribery and anti-competitive behaviour, and protecting personal and company data. Mandatory periodic training covers key Code topics in depth and is supplemented by advanced in-person training for higher risk roles.

We offer employees a confidential reporting line, managed by an independent third party, accessible by telephone or online 24 hours a day, 365 days a year (as allowed under applicable law, employees may submit reports to the confidential line anonymously). Reports of violations of the Code or related policies are promptly investigated, with careful tracking and monitoring of violations and related mitigation and remediation efforts by Compliance teams across the business.

We remained diligent in our ongoing efforts to comply with applicable bribery and sanctions laws and mitigate risks in these areas. Our anti-bribery and sanctions programme includes testing and monitoring of compliance with detailed, risk-based internal policies and procedures on topics such as doing business with government officials, gift and entertainment limits, gift registers and complex sanctions requirements. Relationships with third parties and acquisition targets are evaluated for risk using questionnaires, references, detailed electronic searches, and ‘Know Your Customer’ screening tools. We monitor and assess the implementation of our anti-bribery and sanctions programmes by continually reviewing and updating our policies and procedures; conducting periodic programmatic risk assessments, quality reviews and internal monitoring and audits of the programme’s operational aspects.

We held a Compliance Week in November with videos, emails, articles and a quiz. During the Week we also introduced an Integrity Hall of Fame to recognise employees who demonstrated outstanding conduct and commitment to the company’s Do the Right Thing principles focused on respecting one another, incorporating ethics into actions; growing our business with integrity; and holding ourselves accountable.

As a signatory to the UNGC, we embed its principles, encompassing human rights, labour, environment and anti-corruption in key policies including our Code and our Supplier Code. As a signatory to the UNGC, we embed its principles, encompassing human rights, labour, environment and anti-corruption in key policies including our Code and our Supplier Code. During the year, we demonstrated leadership by maintaining our LEAD status, one of 38 companies among approximately 12,000 corporate signatories. We were part of the UNGC Expert Network and contributed to key UNGC SDG working groups on SDG 8, Decent Work in Global Supply Chains, and SDG 16, Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions. We served on the board of UNGC network in the UK, where our global head of CR and ERG is Chair. We produced an annual Communication on Progress report, required of signatories annually, attaining the Advanced Level and also shared our expertise by speaking at UNGC programmes on issues such as inclusion and climate change, including during COP26.

The Code supports the principles of the UNGC and stresses our commitment to human rights. In accordance with the UN’s Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, we have considered where and how we operate to ensure we uphold human rights. In 2021, we updated our Modern Slavery Act Statement, available from the RELX homepage, which states how we are working to avoid human trafficking and modern slavery in our direct operations and in our supply chain.

Data Privacy

As a company focused on knowledge and analytics, each year we are in possession of large amounts of data. It is therefore incumbent on RELX to ensure that we provide our customers and our people with the highest levels of data privacy and security as described in our Privacy Principles available here. We continually monitor our procedures and systems to meet this requirement, ensuring adherence with all relevant laws where we do business around the world. Dedicated privacy teams implement requirements for compliance with emerging data protection regulations as well. In the year, RELX Compliance completed a privacy quality review focused on the effectiveness of safeguards intended to mitigate the risk of non-compliance with the European Commission requirements for cross-border transfer of personal data originating in the European Economic Area.

Cyber security

In 2021, we continued efforts to increase the resilience of the company to attacks aimed at our users. We ran monthly phishing simulations for all employees, with results significantly better than the corresponding industry benchmarks. Using advanced technology controls, we blocked approximately 40 million unwanted emails in just one month from our users, including 5.9 million phishing attacks and 65,000 detection resistant attacks. We continued to communicate with employees about avoiding fraud during International Fraud Awareness Week and also recognised Cyber Security Awareness Month with a host of internal and external activities across operating divisions. We ran our fourth Great Phishing Challenge (and provided it as a service to the Texas Department of Public Safety for their awareness efforts). More than 1,750 employees used the opportunity to show off their skills in detecting suspicious emails.

Responsible Tax

Globally, in 2021, RELX paid £342m in corporate taxes. We are a responsible corporate taxpayer and conduct our tax affairs to ensure compliance with all laws and relevant regulations in the countries in which we operate. Tax is an important issue for our stakeholders and society at large. We have set out our approach to tax in our global tax strategy. This incorporates our Tax Principles along with additional disclosures about where we pay taxes and our broader contribution to society, available here.

In the year, we continued a pilot project to make tax law more transparent to both governments and citizens in Africa.

The Statement of Investment Principles for the Reed Elsevier UK pension scheme indicates that environmental, social or governance issues that may have a financial impact on the portfolio or a detrimental effect on the strength of the employer covenant, are taken into account when making investment decisions. CR issues are also relevant to other investment decisions we make.

2022 GOVERNANCE OBJECTIVES
Security – SDG 16 (Peace, Justice And Strong Institutions): Expand National Institute of Standards and Technology Cybersecurity Framework assessment reporting

Privacy – SDG 16 (Peace, Justice And Strong Institutions): Global activities for employees to raise awareness of data privacy and protection, including for Data Privacy Day

Responsible tax – SDG 16 (Peace, Justice And Strong Institutions): Continue to advance African tax law codification pilots

BY 2030
Continued progressive actions that advance excellence in corporate governance within our business and the marketplace

Valuing our people, one of our five values, means being known as an employer of choice, with excellence in recruiting and retaining the best staff. By being a company where employees can do their best work, we can achieve our objectives and meet the expectations of our customers and other stakeholders.

People

Our over 33,000 people are our strength. Our workforce is 50% women and 50% men, with an average length of service of 8 years. There were 44% women and 56% men managers, and 33% women and 67% men senior leaders.

At year-end 2021, women made up 45% of the Board. One member, in line with the UK Parker Review, is from a minority ethnic background. The two executive directors on the Board are men. The Nominations Committee considers the knowledge, experience and background of individual Board directors.

At year end, 18% of RELX senior executives were from ethnic minority backgrounds. 26% of all employees in the US and UK were from ethnic minority backgrounds.

Inclusion

Our Inclusion Council, which includes the heads of Inclusion and Diversity (I&D) for each of our businesses, helps us set our inclusion and diversity strategy and track its implementation, supported by an Inclusion Working Group with nearly 300 participants. The RELX strategy team host an I&D Data Steering Committee to understand trends in our diversity data.

In 2021, we advanced the RELX Inclusion Goals which aim to ensure an inclusive workplace; increase the representation of women and ethnic minorities in management and senior leadership positions; and improve our workforce data by enabling people to voluntarily disclose their sexual orientation and disability. Among the focus of our efforts is training for employees on critical issues such as unconscious bias, courageous conversations, psychological safety, and avoiding harassment. We also maintain mentoring programmes for senior women talent. We are signatories to the Women’s Empowerment Principles Target Gender Equality initiative; the Race at Work Charter; and the Valuable 500, which promotes workplace disability inclusion.

RELX was a 2021 Bloomberg Gender Equality Index constituent and was included in the top 25 for gender equality in the Netherlands as ranked by Equileap.

Our Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) grew to over 100 networks in the year, encompassing African ancestry, gender balance, pride and disability, to facilitate support, mentoring and community involvement. To celebrate Diversity Awareness Month in October, we held our third inclusion and diversity conference, RISE, with more than 1,100 attendees and 20 hours of programming to allow involvement of colleagues across multiple time zones. Sessions covered professional development, inclusive leadership and ERG engagement, as well as a panel with the CEOs of our four businesses led by our Chief Strategy Officer.

Pay equity

We comply with employee-related reporting requirements and, in 2021, our business areas published UK gender pay gap reports as part of UK legislation. These can be found here. We invest in research to identify causes of pay differences and regularly evaluate our policies and processes to ensure they are aligned to our inclusion strategy. We commit to building a robust framework for monitoring pay equity. We conducted living wage assessments in France, India and the Philippines. Our assessments in the US are ongoing with continued engagement with external stakeholders including BSR, the UN Global Compact and Living Wage for US.

In 2021, our workforce comprised 96% full time employees. 1% of all employees were temporary workers and over 1,000 were contingent workers. We estimate the total hours worked to be approximately 52m hours in the year. Our total turnover rate was 15.8%; the voluntary turnover rate was 12.5% and the involuntary rate was 3.3%

We operate a number of stock programmes for employees including options, restricted stock and performance stock units. For senior colleagues, these are based on annual allocations of stock – the vesting of which may be service-based or related to company performance. We also offer all employee stock programmes in which employees may elect to participate in certain markets, for example Sharesave in the UK. These incentive programmes are available to approximately 20% of our employees. Targets associated with CR performance are embedded within our annual incentive framework, including for the CEO and CFO, to progress our annual and multi-year CR objectives.

Well-being

Our employees have the right to a healthy and safe workplace, as outlined in our Global Health and Safety Policy. We concentrate on areas of greatest risk, for example warehouses, events and exhibitions. As a primarily office-based company, we also focus on manual handling, slips, trips and falls. To reduce our severity rate (lost days per 200,000 hours worked), we conduct risk assessments and work with a third party in the US to assign a nurse case manager to each complex or severe claim. There were 2 lost time incidents in the year.

During the year a significant number of employees continued to work from home in response to the global pandemic. Now more than ever, the physical and mental health of our employees is a top priority. We have dedicated health and wellbeing resources available to employees across all business areas and we maintain a network of more than 100 wellbeing champions. In the year, we progressed a Mental Health Policy to ensure a healthy culture with emphasis on positive wellbeing.

In the year, we conducted our most recent global employee opinion survey, with consistent questions to allow us to track performance. Employee engagement increased 13 points to 68% compared to the last company-wide survey three years earlier. Over the three year period, we conducted pulse surveys to understand and respond to employees’ current experience.

2022 PEOPLE OBJECTIVES
Inclusion – SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities): Progress RELX inclusion goals, including piloting voluntary disclosures for gender identity, sexual orientation and disability

Pay equity – SDG 8 (Decent Work And Economic Growth): Advance reward education for people managers encompassing pay equity; cascade newly developed ondemand, reward eLearning modules to managers for real time access

Well-being – SDG 3 (Good Health And Well-Being): Review safety risk assessment and training modules to cover three working models – office, home and hybrid

BY 2030
Continued high-performing and satisfied workforce through talent development, D&I and well-being; scale support for external human capital initiatives

Community

RELX Cares, our global community programme, supports employee volunteering and giving that makes a positive impact on society. In addition to local initiatives of importance to employees, the programme’s core focus is on education for disadvantaged young people that advances one or more of our unique contributions as a business. Since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, colleagues from around the world have come together to support their local and international communities through volunteerism and fundraising activities.

Staff have up to two days paid leave per year for their own community work. We donated £5.5m in cash (including through matching gifts) and the equivalent of £15.1m in products, services and staff time in 2021. Globally, 32% of employees were engaged in volunteering through RELX Cares. A network of over 220 RELX Cares Champions ensures the vibrancy of our community engagement.

In 2021 we reached our target to raise $120,000 to support global fundraising partner, Hope and Homes for Children (HHC), which aims to ensure children grow up in families rather than institutions. Colleagues are now working to raise an additional $15,000 to support their efforts in Moldova to integrate hearing-impaired children into mainstream education through speech therapy, quality hearing aids, support for parents and teacher training. Disability is a factor in children not remaining in a family setting in the country, with three institutions for children with hearing impairments. To date, RELX have funded 700 rehabilitation sessions for 49 children with hearing impairments and have enabled Hope and Homes for Children to work directly with 33 schools and kindergartens to create a quality education framework for children with sensory disabilities so they no longer have to live in fear of separation.

Each September, we hold RELX Cares Month to celebrate our community engagement. During the month, we held the eleventh Recognising Those Who Care Awards to highlight exceptional contributors to RELX Cares. This year we once again celebrated RELX employees who have shown an outstanding response to supporting their communities in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. Three individuals and three teams won donations for their chosen charities. In addition, we gave special recognition awards to LexisNexis Risk Solutions colleagues who collaborated on the song Times Like These, with more than 16,000 views during the year to benefit RELX’s global fundraising partnership with Hope and Homes for Children.

In 2021, we contributed over 182,000 books to Book Aid International and Books for Africa worth over $12.4 million.

2022 COMMUNITY OBJECTIVES
Employee community engagement – SDG 17 (Partnerships For The Goals): Continue to improve impact measurement of our charitable donations

Philanthropic giving – SDG 17 (Partnerships For The Goals): Establish new strategic global fundraising partnership

BY 2030
Through our unique contributions, significant, measurable advancement of education for disadvantaged young people; investments with partners for maximum impact

Managing an ethical supply chain

We have a Socially Responsible Supplier (SRS) programme encompassing all our businesses, supported by colleagues with expertise in operations and procurement and a dedicated SRS Director from our global procurement function.

We have a comprehensive Supplier Code of Conduct (Supplier Code) available in 16 languages, which we ask suppliers to sign and display prominently in the workplace. It commits them to following applicable laws and best practice in areas such as human rights, labour and the environment. It also asks suppliers to require the same standards in their supply chains, including requesting subcontractors to enter into a written commitment to uphold the Supplier Code. The Supplier Code states that where local industry standards are higher than applicable legal requirements, we expect suppliers to meet the higher standards. Our SRS programme is a key aspect of our efforts to prevent modern slavery and human trafficking in our supply chain.

Through our SRS database, we track suppliers with whom we spend >$1m annually, suppliers identified as critical by the business, and those located in medium- and high-risk locations, as designated by a tool we developed with Carnstone, with a spend of >$200K for a consecutive two-year period. The tool incorporates 11 indicators, including human trafficking information from the US State Department and Environmental Performance Index results produced by Yale University and Columbia University in collaboration with the World Economic Forum.

The tracking list changes year-on-year based on the suppliers we engage to meet the needs of our business. In 2021, there were 359 suppliers on the SRS tracking list, of which 44 are operating in high-risk locations and 50 in medium-risk locations. At year end, 96% of suppliers on the tracking list were signatories to our Supplier Code. We continue to work with non-signatories to gain agreement to our Code, and/or assess whether they have equivalent standards in place, in order to ultimately decide whether to continue doing business with them. We have embedded the Supplier Code into our sourcing processes and have a total of 3,670 suppliers who agreed to the Supplier Code in 2021, up from 3,457 in 2020.

We engage a specialist supply chain auditor who undertook 111 external audits on our behalf in 2021: 28 onsite and virtual onsite audits and 83 desktop audits. During a desktop audit, the supplier responds to an online questionnaire and uploads relevant supporting documents followed by a third-party auditor review. The virtual onsite audits require a supplier representative wearing a video and audio source located in a light-weight harness to allow remote interaction with an external auditor. The auditor then evaluates the facility, conducts interviews, and reviews the necessary documentation in real time, just as they would if conducting an in-person audit.

Incidence of non-compliance triggers continuous improvement reports summarising audit results, with agreed remediation plans and submission dates.

Supplier Diversity and Inclusion

We are committed to proactive engagement with suppliers to ensure our supply chain reflects the diversity of our communities. In the year, we continued to focus on our US supplier diversity programme. In 2021, 3.1% of our US spend, representing over $60m, was with veteran, minority or women-owned businesses. In total, including spend with small businesses, 12.9% of US spend was with diverse suppliers.

2022 SUPPLY CHAIN OBJECTIVES
Responsible Supply Chain – SDG 8 (Decent Work And Economic Growth): Increase number of suppliers as Code signatories; continue using audits to ensure continuous improvement in supplier performance and compliance

Supplier Diversity – SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities): Advance Supplier Diversity and Inclusion programme

BY 2030
Reduce supply chain risks related to human rights, labour, the environment and anti-bribery by ensuring adherence to our Supplier Code of Conduct through training, auditing and remediation; drive supply chain innovation, quality and efficiencies through a strong, diverse network of suppliers

We make a positive environmental impact through our products and services which inform debate, aid decision makers and encourage research and development.

There was reduced occupancy at our locations for much of the year due to the global pandemic which led to significant decreases in consumption levels across our environmental impact areas. In 2021, we reduced Scope 1 and Scope 2 (location-based) emissions by 16% from 2020. Since 2010, we have achieved a 70% reduction in Scope 1 and 2 (location-based) emissions. We also reduced total energy by 12%; water use by 19%; and waste sent to landfill from reporting locations, excluding estimated data, by 38% in the year.

For Scope 1, Scope 2 and Scope 3 (work-related flights, cloud computing, home-based working and commuting) we were net zero in 2021, through a combination of reduced emissions, the purchase of renewable energy and renewable energy certificates, with the balance offset through Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) credits in REDD+ carbon sequestration projects in Kenya and Brazil.

In 2021, we launched our new environment targets which include a target, set using the science-based target methodology, to reduce emissions by 46% in 2025 against a 2015 baseline. We also signed The Climate Pledge which commits RELX to achieving net zero emissions across our Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions by 2040 at the latest.

In the year, Elsevier launched a free report, Pathways to Net Zero, exploring clean energy research trends – available on the RELX SDG Resource Centre – with a foreword by former UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon. RELX is one of the Mayor of London’s London Business Climate Leaders committed to cutting pollution and emissions in excess of UK government thresholds. The goal is to help London, where we are headquartered, become a zero carbon city by 2050. We received an A- grade in CDP’s climate change programme and are a member of RE100.

We have a positive environmental impact through our environmental products and services, which spread good practice, encourage debate and aid researchers and decision makers. The most recent results from SCOPUS show that our share of citations in environmental science represented 51% of the total market. A small proportion of our customers operate in carbon intensive industries, and a small number of journals (less than 1% of the total) cover fossil fuel industries. We are committed to continuing our efforts to support these customers in their energy transition.

In support of this year’s United Nations World Environment Day theme, Ecosystem Restoration, RELX and Elsevier released a special issue on biodiversity. This collection of more than 110 articles and book chapters from Elsevier publications was made freely available on the RELX SDG Resource Centre. We also prepared special issues for World Water Day, Earth Day and World Food Day and COP26.

We use our convening power to highlight environmental innovation. The winners of Elsevier’s 2021 Chemistry for Climate Action Challenge were Pham Hong and Dinh Van Khuong from Vietnam, for their proposal to produce nano filters and biodegradable plastics from rice straws, and Brenya Isaac from Ghana, for his proposal to produce building and packaging materials from coconut waste. Each winning proposal was awarded a $25,000 prize.

Full performance data can be found in the 2021 Corporate Responsibility Report.

Our Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosure (TCFD) can be found here.

2022 ENVIRONMENTAL OBJECTIVES
Environmental responsibility – SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production): Launch new online reporting tool for sustainable production paper

Carbon reduction – SDG 13 (Climate Action): Advance reporting of Scope 3 (other) emissions

By 2030
Further environmental knowledge and positive action through our products and services and, accordingly, conduct our business with the lowest environmental impact possible