Sylvamo Corp

In this Human Capital section and elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, we refer in various contexts to our website and to reports, policies and other information published by us and on our website. The information on our website and in the referenced reports, policies and other information, and that is otherwise connected to our website, is not incorporated by reference into this Annual Report on Form 10-K, and should not be considered part of this or any other report that we file with or furnish to the SEC.

Employees

Sylvamo’s capabilities and potential are delivered through our dedicated, talented and diverse workforce, which we believe is among the best in the industry. Weemploy over 6,500 people globally, with 25%, 47% and 28% of our workforce located primarily in 14 countries in Europe, Latin America and North America, respectively. A portion of our workforce is represented by unions in Brazil, France, Sweden and, in the United States, at our mill in Ticonderoga, New York. We believe that our relationships with our unions are constructive.

We strive to be the employer of choice. To attract, retain and develop talented and diverse employees that reflect our diverse communities and customers, we work tofoster a safe and inclusive workplace where all employees feel safe, welcomed, valued, engaged, fairly compensated and have opportunities for professional development.

Health and Safety

The health and safety of our employees, contractors and visitors to our facilities are paramount. We strive to design and operate injury-free workplaces for ouremployees and everyone who enters our facilities. As responsible stewards of people and their communities, we have emphasized safety at our Company and strictly complied with national regulations such as, in the United States, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s regulations. Based on our safety record and our comparison of it against publicly available industry safety information, we are an industry-leading company in employee safety.

We track our safety record and report it annually in our Environmental, Social and Governance Report (“ESG Report”). This information is available at sylvamo.com.

We take precautions to protect the health and safety of our employees and comply with applicable government requirements and safety guidance in the three regions where we operate. Our “People Before Paper” program, introduced in 2022, includes ongoing communications, training and leadership emphasis throughout the organization on putting people’s safety before operations, always. As part of such program, we developed a Safety Leadership Training Program rolled out in 2023 to train our leaders in how and why people may act in unsafe ways and how to be a leader in reducing this risk. Our program also promotes increasing safety, especially in the manufacturing setting, by emphasizing focus on one safe task a time. It further emphasizes mental health and overall well-being as important to increasing safety. We frequently communicate and emphasize to employees the importance of, and have provided opportunities for them to enhance, their physical and mental health and well-being.

Notwithstanding our efforts to ensure a safe workplace and support the physical and mental health of our employees, we cannot guarantee that our efforts will always be successful. Success is subject to risks and uncertainties, both known and unknown, including risks noted in Item 1A. Risk Factors and elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, including Risk Factors –“A public health crisis could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.” A failure to keep our employees and others safe on our premises could disrupt our operations and cause us reputational harm.

Attraction and Retention of Employees and Labor Supply

Our talent strategy focuses on attracting and retaining the best employee talent from the diverse backgrounds of the communities where we operate. To that end, we aim to foster for employees an inclusive and diverse work culture, provide competitive compensation and benefits, reward performance, provide professional development opportunities, promote employee health and well-being, and encourage engagement by showing our employees that we value their engagement with us and in their communities.

To provide our employees globally competitive and fair compensation and benefits, we periodically review, adjust and align our compensation practices with best practices around the material elements of our compensation structure.

Our employee recruiting includes developing and recruiting new talent from diverse backgrounds through college recruiting efforts. For example, in the United States and Brazil, we have programs that include internships and trainee programs to attract college hires, with a special focus on preparing early career engineers and safety professionals to be future leaders at our Company.

We have launched Employee Assistance Programs globally, because our employees’ health and well-being is a top priority.

We support, encourage and provide our employees with opportunities to be engaged at Sylvamo and in the communities where they work and live. We communicate to our employees the value we place on employee engagement.

We develop the capabilities of our employees through our continuous learning, development and performance management programs. We invest in their growthand development by providing a multi-dimensional approach to learning. This approach includes various learning journeys to help employees grow personally and professionally and advance within our organization, including for specific positions, for specific development targets, and for development of competencies and our Company culture. These learning resources are intended to provide employees with the skills they need to achieve their career goals, build management skills and be leaders within our Company.

Our hiring and retention efforts are challenged by a competitive labor market, particularly for labor with the high level of the various skills needed in our industry, particularly at our mills, which makes our cost of labor high compared to industries that require less skilled labor. We have not experienced any material shortage of labor, but if the labor supply were to further contract substantially in any of the regions where we operate, including if a public health crisis resulted in restrictions on in-person interactions imposed by governmental authorities or were to lead to more people exiting the labor market – similar to what happened in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic – it could impede our ability to attract and retain employee talent and further increase our cost of labor. For more information regarding our risks relating to challenges in the labor market or a public health crisis, see Item 1A. Risk Factors, particularly – “Our business and business prospects could be materially adversely affected if we fail to attract and retain senior management and other key employees.”

In 2023, we implemented “Project Horizon” to streamline our organization and reduce costs. We streamlined our organization based upon an evaluation of needs at all levels of the organization, eliminating a number of salaried positions and reorganizing job responsibilities. This will result in a leaner, stronger organization and cost savings. We do not believe that there are any material risks arising from the changes to our workforce made as part of Project Horizon.

Inclusion and Diversity

As part of our effort to attract and retain exceptional employee talent, we show our employees that we value having an inclusive workforce of diverse backgrounds, reflecting the communities where we are located. We believe that a workforce where diverse backgrounds are represented, engaged and empowered to inspire innovative ideas and decisions, and where all employees feel welcome and valued, facilitates achieving organizational results, differentiates us in the competition for talent and drives innovation. As we compete for talent, our commitment to a diverse and inclusive workplace supports our employer of choice objective, as prospective employees and candidates may consider a company’s commitment to diversity and inclusion in deciding whether to apply for and accept jobs. Similarly, an employee’s choice to stay with an organization may be influenced by the organization’s commitment to those same attributes.

We want to give every employee equal opportunity and celebrate the different perspectives and talents that each of us brings to Sylvamo. Our Code of Conduct sets forth the actions and behaviors that we expect of our employees and reflects our core values, including conduct that promotes inclusion and diversity. Among other things, our Code of Conduct provides that our employee leaders will form inclusive teams reflecting our diverse global communities, build and sustain a work environment that embraces individuality and collaboration, respect differences and treat everyone fairly, demonstrate that all viewpoints matter, and provide equal opportunity for employee professional development and growth. We believe that embedding these values in our Code of Conduct stresses their importance at Sylvamo.

Our senior management team is internationally diverse with global experience, hailing from all of the geographies in which we operate — Europe, Latin America and North America. We have in place the following 2030 goals as we continue to hire top talent with diverse backgrounds and experience that reflect the communities in which we live and work:

• 30% overall women representation

• 35% women in leadership positions

• 25% minority representation in North America and other regional representation targets.

These percentages are directional goals to which we aspire to better reflect the communities in which we live and work and to be the employer of choice for our employees and potential employees. We report 2022 progress on our 2030 goals in our 2022 ESG Report at Sylvamo.com, and will report on 2023 progress in our 2023 ESG Report. We believe that we can achieve these goals by operating inclusively, embracing diversity, seeking large pools of candidates for positions, providing equal opportunity to all talent, and reducing barriers, but we cannot guarantee that we will achieve them. Our ability to achieve them is subject to risks and uncertainties both known and unknown, including many of the risks noted in Item 1A. Risk Factors.

We have an active Sylvamo team headed by our Manager of Organizational Development, Inclusion and Diversity, that, with the support of our senior leadership, refines our Company’s inclusion and diversity (“I&D”) strategy and governance model. Additionally, a broad-based team of employees, our Global I&D Council, further develops our I&D strategy and helps identify and implement means for our strategy to succeed. The Global I&D Council’s members include a range of employees at various levels of leadership, including our Senior Vice President – Operational Excellence and several Company vice presidents, who are from the regions where we operate and are of diverse races, genders and cultural backgrounds. In 2023, the efforts of the I&D team and Global I&D Council resulted in initiatives that included training and communications intended to help broaden employee perspectives and reduce biases, fostering employee mentoring and networking, and facilitating for employees the means to identify and leverage opportunities for growth and advancement. We also continued the meetings and activities of our employee inclusion networks that we started in 2022, “Women in Operations” and “Women in Leadership”. The networks provide opportunities for participating employees to share perspectives, provide and receive support and mentoring, and enhance inclusivity. All initiatives and employee inclusion networks are voluntary and open to all employees.

We expect that our Global I&D Council, regional I&D councils, employee inclusion networks and other I&D initiatives will create strong, diverse leaders who will serve as role models for other employees. Our senior leadership and board of directors strongly support our I&D initiatives, progress against which they are kept aware by periodic reports from management. The Management Development and Compensation Committee is the committee of our board of directors responsible for oversight of I&D matters.