Healthy Business

We are pleased to report that we completed our gender pay parity analysis globally at the start of 2024. Based on data from the first half of 2024, we are proud to share that we have achieved total average gender pay parity across our global workforce, ahead of our 2025 target. We will continue to put in place tailored actions to ensure we monitor and maintain total average global gender pay parity. 

The health, safety, and well-being of all our employees is core to our culture at Dentsply Sirona. The primary measure of our safety performance over the course of a year is TRIR; a calculation of the number of recordable incidents that occur for every 100 employees. We are pleased to share that our TRIR dropped from 0.38 in 2022 to 0.17 in 2023, and that we reached our goal to have a top decile performance of less than 0.27 by 2025. Achieving this two years ahead of schedule is a testament to the efficacy of our health and safety processes and training and we will continue to focus on safety enhancing measures to keep reducing our TRIR every year.

We have our EHS programmes and initiatives that help assess and control risks, as well as established supporting actions that benefit the health and safety of everyone we work with.

We are proud to have achieved zero recordable injuries in 2023 at 16 of our distribution centres and manufacturing sites, across four continents and an additional three months without recordable injuries globally.

We are committed to upholding the highest levels of ethics and compliance and therefore have invested in building a leading Global Ethics & Compliance team and programme that supports and protects our employees, customers, business partners and shareholders.

We deliver trainings so our employees understand what an ethical violation is, the impact these have on the company, and employees’ role in reporting misconduct.

In July 2023, we launched our first-ever global Ethical Culture and Perceptions Assessment designed and supported by Ethisphere. The findings from this survey, which was completed by 60% of Dentsply Sirona employees, well above the benchmark for similar organisations, identified key actions that will allow us to strengthen our culture of performance with integrity and enhance our Ethics and Compliance programme.

Through an external partner we globally provide an anonymous and confidential Ethics Hotline to our employees for a safe space to report unethical activities.

Learn more about compliance and ethics at Dentsply Sirona here.

We are committed to running an ethical and transparent business and work hard to foster trusted relationships with our employees, customers, partners and shareholders and established an Ethical Customer Interaction Policy. Every interaction must be conducted in a manner that conforms with all applicable laws, regulations and government guidance.

We train our employees who are members of teams that frequently interact with healthcare professions annually, which led to another year without any monetary losses due to legal proceedings associated with false marketing claims.

We regularly monitor suppliers for potential risks across multiple platforms and dimensions, including adverse media mentions, business continuity plans, financial risk monitoring and environmental risk assessments.

People are central to our business, so we operate in line with the UN International Labour Organisation’s Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work. We strongly support freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining, the elimination of forced or compulsory labour, the abolition of child labour and the elimination of discrimination in respect of employment.

We take an active global approach to eliminate any issues surrounding exploitation, slavery, and human trafficking through internal policies as well as through direct actions with business partners in our supply chain. These policies include our Business Partner Code of Conduct. We expect all employees and business partners to fully comply with the California Transparency in Supply Chain Act of 2010 and the UK Modern Slavery Act of 2015, the Australian Modern Slavery Act, the New South Wales Modern Slavery Act, the Uyghur Forced Labour Prevention Act and the Conflict Minerals provisions of the US Dodd-Frank Act of 2010.

To mitigate the risks posed by cybersecurity incidents and cyberattacks, we have developed a programme to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and continued availability of our data and systems.

We will only work with contractors, suppliers, joint venture or co-promotion partners, and research or licensing partners who embrace standards of ethical governance and behaviours that are consistent with our own. This includes protecting the confidentiality, integrity and continued availability of data. All our policies and standards align with cyber control frameworks ISO27001, IEC81001-5-1 and NIST CSF, and we work with third-party security firms to evaluate our cybersecurity programmes. We are taking action to ensure that our digital cloud platform, DS Core, aligns with these standards and frameworks.

Additionally, all internal system users receive annual training on our cyber policies, continual anti-phishing assessments and training throughout the year. 

In the beginning of 2024, we updated our Quality Policy, supporting our commitment to upholding the highest quality standards. The Quality Policy serves as the cornerstone of our quality objectives, strategies, actions, and performance, and underpins our goal to create products that deliver high-quality care. Together we launched our “Quality Begins with Me” activation with the purpose of ensuring understanding of the new quality policy across the business’ global functions and geographies, as well as developing a “Quality Begins with Me” mindset across our global organisation.

Our Product Safety Programme includes the following:

• Complaints Management programme that collects, monitors and investigates, where appropriate, any product complaints
• Post Market Surveillance (“PMS”) Process, per product group, to ensure compliance with applicable PMS requirements
• Risk Management programme that covers the entire lifecycle of our products
• Product testing programme used throughout the lifecycle of the product including design, validation and verification, in-process and finished product testing
•  Quality Management System with a dedicated training programme, bespoke to each manufacturing entity
• Personnel involved in R&D, manufacturing and quality control trained to correctly carry out their responsibilities

Transparent pre-clinical and clinical testing

We always strive to comply with all local and regional regulatory requirements, as well as international codes, principles, data privacy laws and best practice guidelines. Each trial undergoes a pre-approval ethical assessment, and we follow set procedures to obtain participants' free and informed consent to conduct the trial.

Dentsply Sirona’s policy clearly states that no Company funds or other Company assets may be contributed for political purposes without the prior review and consent of our General Counsel.

We believe that telehealth and/or teledentistry will be a prominent topic in state legislatures, which has the potential to affect Byte’s business model. As a result, Byte has a government affairs team that leads its engagement in the legislative and regulatory process at all levels of government to advance responsible policies that are aligned with Byte’s mission to increase access to oral health care. In 2023, Byte made $800,000 in political contributions and lobbying expenditures to promote the interests of the Company and support policies that provide customers access to safe and affordable options for oral health care.

Dentsply Sirona is a member of several US dental trade associations including the Dental Trade Alliance (“DTA”). The DTA provides dental equipment, supplies, materials and services to dentists and other oral care professionals and may, occasionally, engage in lobbying regarding legislation that is of interest to its members.

To drive this change, we use a pricing approach that allows lower prices for selected dental product lines in low-income and lower-middle-income countries compared with developed markets. New price information is provided electronically to our distributors and customers.

Working with our charity and NGO partnerships, we also proactively support those in need through donations and in-person technical support.

With our Byte portfolio, we are on a mission to help people smile who may not have such opportunities otherwise. We aim to break down barriers and make direct-to-consumer orthodontic care more accessible and affordable.