GoDaddy 2023 Sustainability Report: Our Operations | Honest and Ethical Conduct

Originally published in GoDaddy's 2023 Sustainability Report

Honest and Ethical Conduct

We uphold the highest level of professional and ethical standards.

Our company is built on transparency, integrity, and trust. We earn the trust of our customers, employees, and business partners because we have high ethical standards that we expect everyone at GoDaddy to uphold. We proactively review and evolve our ethical standards to help ensure we are equipped to comply with and respond to a continuously changing global regulatory environment.

GoDaddy’s Code of Business Conduct and Ethics

Our Code of Business Conduct and Ethics guides our day-to-day operations and sets forth principles which enable us to do the right thing. The Code applies to every GoDaddy employee, contractor, officer, and director. Our Audit and Finance Committee of the Board of Directors monitors ethics issues raised through our reporting processes and the resulting actions. Our Chief Strategy & Legal Officer, who reports directly to the Chief Executive Officer, is responsible for overseeing and monitoring compliance with the Code. The Code covers a range of topics, including anti-bribery and anti-corruption, anti-discrimination and harassment, confidentiality and security, data privacy, conflicts of interest, and political contributions, among others.

Education and Training 

Our commitment to ethical behavior starts with our employees. From day one, new GoDaddy employees are taught about this commitment. The onboarding process for all new GoDaddy employees includes our DTRT training, which enforces awareness of and compliance with the Code. It also teaches critical ethics topics, such as anti-harassment and discrimination, data protection, social engineering, and security awareness. To support information retention and continued compliance, existing employees must complete DTRT refresher courses yearly. Employees may also receive more targeted training based on their roles and responsibilities in areas like anti-trust, anti-bribery, and anti-corruption.

When vendors and contractors begin working with us, we require them to complete ethics trainings on our Code, data protection, security awareness, and other topics, where relevant. Refresher ethics trainings are also required annually.

Holding Ourselves Accountable 

Acting with integrity means speaking up and holding ourselves accountable. We encourage our employees to report ethics concerns or questions to their supervisor, local management, local People Operations representatives, or the Legal Department. Reports may also be made online or by phone through GoDaddy’s third-party Ethics Helpline, which is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and accommodates multiple languages. Reports can be made anonymously, unless prohibited under local law. The helpline can be used by our entire workforce and those outside GoDaddy, including contractors and vendors.

• 87/100: In 2023, through our annual GoDaddy Voice survey, we achieved an average score of 87 out of 100 on the question, “Do you feel comfortable reporting ethics and compliance issues?”
• 86/100: We achieved an average score of 86 out of 100 on the question, “Does your management maintain high ethical and compliance standards?”

Be a Guardian 

Launched in 2023, GoDaddy’s ‘Be a Guardian’ program recognizes and incentivizes employees who model good compliance practices. By learning how to identify threats, Guardians protect GoDaddy, our customers, and our employees from decisions that can lead to unwanted outcomes. Guardians then apply that knowledge to our daily decisions and interactions and do what’s right to protect what we all work so hard to build.

Building an Ethical and Equitable Supply Chain 

Our contractors and suppliers help us fulfill our mission while following high standards of ethical conduct. To help advance responsible and ethical practices outside of our own operations, we publish a Modern Slavery Act Statement outlining our commitment to managing potential human rights risks and opportunities across our company and supply chain.

As a part of our work to integrate DEIB principles into our business and across our operations, in 2023, we launched a Supplier Diversity Program. This program is focused on realizing the value of diversification within our supply chain by including diverse and small businesses in our sourcing processes. This program helps GoDaddy to develop inclusive products and services for our customers while also supporting our local communities.

We formalized our approach in a Supplier Diversity Policy and intend to facilitate and maintain diverse and small supplier inclusion by:

• Actively and consistently expanding our network of diverse and small business vendors.
• Sourcing and including diverse and small business vendors in the bidding process.
• Measuring the effectiveness of our Supplier Diversity program on an ongoing basis and evaluating potential areas of opportunity and impact.

Ambitions for 2024 

We continue to strive to uphold standards of excellence and ethics that underpin every part of GoDaddy’s business. We’re focused on emerging and ever-evolving topics such as using GenAI ethically and responsibly, protecting customer data, and mitigating forthcoming risks.

To learn more, read our 2023 Sustainability Report.

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About this Report 

The GoDaddy 2023 Sustainability Report details our progress toward our corporate sustainability goals, strategies, and initiatives in support of our overarching corporate mission and values. Unless otherwise noted, this report reflects our corporate sustainability performance across our global operations covering the fiscal year period from January 1 to December 31, 2023. To demonstrate our commitment to transparent communication regarding our sustainability progress, we routinely share updates through our website and our annual Sustainability Report. We welcome your questions, comments, and feedback on this report by contacting ESG@GoDaddy.com.

This report references the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Standards and includes select Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) metrics for the Internet Media and Services sector. We also disclose our contributions and progress toward priority UN SDGs. For additional information on how we align with these frameworks and key indicators demonstrating our sustainability performance, please review the Frameworks and Metrics section.