Your report can help!

Why should I submit a report?

Compliance with statutory, social and company-internal rules is part of our company culture.

Perhaps you are aware of behaviour or risks that harm or endanger our company. And maybe you are also hesitant to pass on this information personally. We wish to protect all whistleblowers by offering you BKMS^® System as a highly secure, externally certified communication platform for submitting reports. If necessary, you can even submit your reports entirely anonymously. Setting up a secured postbox allows you to communicate about your report with the examiner while safeguarding your anonymity.

Your report will assist with the investigation of problematic situations and the early identification of risks and possibly prevent damage to the assets and/or reputation of the ebm-papst group and third parties. In this way, you can actively participate in raising awareness and contribute to a fair business environment.

What incidents should I report?

You can report compliance violations of statutory requirements and internal guidelines, such as our code of conduct.

The following categories are available for your report:

• Corruption/ conflicts of interest
• Fraud/ embezzlement/ theft
• Anti-competitive practices
• Data protection and IT security
• Product safety and work safety
• Violations of internal guidelines and the code of conduct
• Violations of human rights, social and environmental standards
• Export control

Reports should be submitted in good faith. The system must not be used for the deliberate submission of false or slanderous statements.

If you are not certain whether a compliance violation has occurred, or if you would like other advice, you can consult your compliance officer at any time.

In case of doubt, however, we would rather have too many reports than too few.

What is the process for submitting a report?

If you wish to submit a report (either by name or anonymously), click the “Submit report” button at the top of our introduction page.

The reporting process consists of 4 steps:

1. First, you will be asked to read some information on the protection of your anonymity and to respond to a security query.
2. On the following page, you will be asked about the category of your report.
3. On the report page, you can elaborate on your report in your own words and answer questions about the case by simply selecting responses. You can enter up to 5,000 characters into the free text field, which corresponds to a full page. You may also submit a file of up to 5 MB to support your report. Please bear in mind that documents can contain information about the author. Following the submission of your report, you will receive a reference number to confirm that you have sent this report.
4. Please subsequently set up your own secured postbox. You will receive feedback from us via this postbox, including answers to questions and information about the progress of your report.

If you already have a secured postbox, you can access it directly via the “Login” button. Here, too, you will have to answer a security query first.

As long as you do not enter any data from which conclusions about your person can be drawn, the technology of the BKMS^® System will protect your anonymity.

How do I receive feedback and remain anonymous at the same time?

The BKMS^® System process used here places the utmost importance on protecting the whistleblower. The system’s anonymity protection function is certified by an independent body.

When you set up your secured postbox, you choose your pseudonym/user name and password yourself. These credentials are not visible to anyone except yourself. If you lose your login information, please submit a new report and set up a new postbox. If possible, please provide the reference number of your previous report. The new postbox will not contain any content associated with your previous report.

Your report is kept anonymous through encryption and other specialised security measures. You will never be asked for personal information if you submit a report anonymously. Do not submit any information that can be traced back to you. Please do not use any device, such as a PC or smartphone, that has been provided by your employer to submit your report.

Via the secured postbox, an examiner will give you feedback about the further processing of your information or ask you questions if some details are still unclear – you remain anonymous throughout the dialogue. We are interested in reports to avoid damage, not in you as a whistleblower.