Our Commitments

Commitment Against Modern Day Slavery

FreeBalance does not tolerate slavery or human trafficking within our organization or our supply chain.

Modern slavery is a crime and a violation of fundamental human rights. FreeBalance recognizes that slavery deprives a person of their liberty in order to exploit them for personal or commercial gain. Slavery can take various forms including slavery, servitude, forced labor and human trafficking. We uphold this commitment through our transparent recruiting, employment and supply chain management procedures, supported by our whistleblowing policy.

Commitment to In-Country Economic Contribution

FreeBalance holds as a core principle that our Government Resource Planning (GRP) software customers are “customers for life”. FreeBalance makes a long-term commitment to the countries in which we operate around the world. In keeping with good governance, we establish ourselves legally with registered subsidiaries or branches which are governed in accordance with local corporation reporting obligations, environmental regulations and tax laws.

• We hire local employees in accordance with labor law and invest in their growth and career advancement. We offer a wide variety of employee training programs to help them improve personally and professionally. These efforts contribute directly to building local capacity in the countries in which we operate.
• We invest in local office and training facilities and use our purchasing power to support local vendors particularly in areas of legal, accounting and payroll services. Services and commodities for our in-country offices are also acquired locally.
• We contribute directly to the economy through payment of payroll and income taxes.

Commitment to the Environment

Health, safety, security and the environment are critical elements of success for our employees and our business. We are committed to conducting our business in ways that contribute to an environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable future. FreeBalance recognizes that its activities impact the environment in a number of ways, principally through our use of:

• Energy in the buildings we occupy
• Energy related to employee and consultant travel
• Information communication technology hardware (ICT)
• Paper and consumables

In recognizing this, FreeBalance is committed to protecting the environment and continually improving its environmental performance by:

• Ensuring compliance with all relevant legislation and standards and meeting the expectations of our customers and other key stakeholders
• Ensuring our systems and procedures prevent pollution
• Ensuring our suppliers are able and encouraged to support environmental commitments
• Ensuring we continually review how we make improvements to our environmental performance

Specifically, we will:

• Reduce energy consumption across our office locations through staff awareness and improved controls. FreeBalance employees take responsibility to turn off lights and power down unnecessary equipment when the office is not in use.
• Reduce business travel miles: FreeBalance has carefully invested in platforms and tools for remote collaboration of the worldwide team and with our customers, providing voice and video conferencing capabilities with virtual office working structures. It is recognized that in person working sessions can have substantial benefits for the company and/or our customers and is prudent to undertake as needed. All travel for business purposes requires advance approval in accordance with the FreeBalance travel policy with a goal to minimize our environmental impact from unnecessary travel.
• Where supported by the community and the office buildings that we occupy, we encourage employees to use recycling programs to reduce waste.
• FreeBalance ensures that clean drinking water is available to employees in all offices, utilizing water service options that are environmentally friendly and avoid individual use bottles.
• Reduce paper consumption through staff awareness and increased use of electronic communication and data storage.
• Rationalize our use of ICT hardware and ensure that all waste electrical and electronic equipment is reused or recycled where possible.

Commitment to Health and Safety

Using a combination of practices, tools, resources and training, we help our employees manage risks in dynamic work environments. FreeBalance and our employees recognize that we work together to create a safe and hazard-free working environment in our office locations. FreeBalance ensures that we comply with all local health and safety guidelines. The FreeBalance Employee Contractor Handbook recognizes that circumstances exist where employees need to telecommute and has provided guidelines to promote worker’s health and safety while telecommuting. We equip our people with the knowledge they need to work safely, promote trust and co-operation, and recognize that safety is crucial everywhere, not just at work.

Every employee and consultant are entitled to a work environment free from harassment. The Employee Contractor Handbook covers topics including safety, sexual harassment, bullying and workplace violence. FreeBalance does not condone workplace behavior that undermines work relationships and productivity. The Handbook ensures that employee safety responsibilities are understood and that employees know their right to come forward directly to human resources comfortably and confidentially in the event of a safety concern.

The FreeBalance human resources and executive team have direct responsibility for decisions related to travel to work destinations that are affected by pandemics or have other safety concerns and provide employees with the necessary tools to protect themselves. In the event of an emergency during travel, Human Resources and Managers provide direct support to the affected employees to ensure safe extraction is achieved.