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 sustainability performance reviews, other reports, policies, and other information published by us or on our website. The information on our website and in the referenced sustainability performance reviews, other 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%, 49% and 26% of our workforce located primarily in 13 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. We aim to attract, retain and develop talented and diverse employees that reflect our diverse communities and global end-users of our paper. To that end, 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

Our priority is people before paper -- 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. Information about our safety record is available on our website, sylvamo.com, and in our annual sustainability performance review. Our Sustainability Performance Review for 2023 is available on our website, sylvamo.com. We will post our Sustainability Performance Review for 2024 on our website when it is completed, which is expected in the first half of 2025.

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. We continue to promote safety through our “People Before Paper” program, which we first introduced in 2022. This program promotes increasing safety, especially in the manufacturing setting, by emphasizing focus on one safe task a time and stopping work if work conditions appear unsafe. It further emphasizes mental health and overall well-being as important to increasing safety. Since we introduced the program, we have consistently worked to increase safety through initiatives developed and implemented under the program. These initiatives included ongoing communications and training, as well as our leadership’s insistence that employees put people’s safety before operations, always.

As we have promoted safety and tracked our safety performance, we have found it challenging to ensure that injuries are avoided. Therefore, in 2024, we ramped up efforts under our safety program, including: adding even more frequent communications from our leadership emphasizing safety; implementing further safety training at our facilities with a focus on specific areas for safety improvements; conducting an organization-wide safety “stand-down,” ceasing work, to emphasize that we want employees to speak up and stop work if conditions seem unsafe; providing recognition to employees who have improved safety, such as by seeing and bringing attention to a potentially unsafe issue or proposing safety improvements; and having employees who have contributed to safety improvements share how they improved safety, at periodic company-wide safety meetings. Additionally, 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. We have Employee Assistance Programs and additional benefit resources available in all regions where we operate to support our employees’ 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, including A public health crisis could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows and elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. A failure to keep our employees and others safe on our premises could disrupt our operations, result in losses associated with liability or potential liability to the harmed individual and to applicable governmental agencies responsible for regulation of safety, and cause us reputational harm.

Attraction and Retention

Compensation, Benefits and Talent Development

Our talent strategy focuses on attracting and retaining the best employee talent from the diverse backgrounds of the communities where we operate. We aim to foster for employees a work culture where employees from those diverse backgrounds work well together, are treated fairly, and are valued for their talents and the viewpoints that they bring to the table. We aim to provide competitive compensation and benefits, reward individual, team and company performance, provide professional development opportunities, promote employee health and well-being, and encourage engagement by showing our employees that we value their commitment to our company objectives, to each other and to 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 through lateral and college recruiting efforts. As an example of such college recruiting efforts, in the United States, Brazil and Europe, 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 Sylvamo. We believe that these efforts help develop a strong, talented and diverse workforce at Sylvamo.

We support, encourage and provide our employees with opportunities to strengthen their connection and commitment to Sylvamo and the communities where they work and live, because a highly engaged workforce is important to our business success. In 2024, we launched a global engagement survey. Through the survey, we determined that engagement levels at Sylvamo in all regions where we have employees are fairly high, and we established a baseline for engagement levels to consistently work to improve upon. Also in 2024, we provided multiple opportunities, in the various regions where we operate, for our employees to engage in and help their communities. We share information about some of these engagement opportunities at the “Why we Care” tab on our website, sylvamo.com.

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 Sylvamo’s 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 at Sylvamo.

Inclusion and Diversity

A component of our overall effort to attract and retain exceptional employee talent, supporting our objective to be the employer of choice, is to cultivate a workforce where employees from diverse backgrounds are represented, engaged and empowered to inspire innovative ideas and decisions, where employees feel welcome, included and valued, and where all employees are treated fairly, regardless of background.

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 a Global I&D Council that develops our I&D strategy and helps identify and implement means for our strategy to succeed. The Global I&D Council meets quarterly and includes a range of employees at various levels of leadership, who are from the regions where we operate and are of diverse races, genders and cultural backgrounds. In 2024, the efforts of the Global I&D Council resulted in initiatives that included training managers on strengthening the ability of our leaders to facilitate inclusive work teams, providing employee mentoring and networking opportunities, and facilitating means for employees to identify and leverage opportunities for their career growth and advancement. Our employee inclusion networks, which we started in 2022, continued to meet in 2024. All initiatives and employee inclusion networks are voluntary and open to all employees.

Management keeps our senior leadership and board of directors aware of our I&D initiatives and progress through periodic reports. The Management Development and Compensation Committee of our board of directors is responsible for oversight of I&D matters.

Challenges and Risks

Our hiring and retention efforts are challenged by competition for labor having a 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 contract substantially in any of the regions where we operate, 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 the labor market, 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.”

Our hiring and retention efforts focus on ensuring equal opportunities in hiring and promotion, enhanced by our inclusion and diversity efforts that value employees of all backgrounds and talents and that, without regard to their backgrounds, provide employees with access to the support we provide for career growth and success. There is risk, particularly in the United States, that such efforts could expose us to legal challenges relating to such efforts. There is also risk that, despite our efforts, we will not achieve our aspirational goals or adequately foster the work culture described above.

In 2023 and 2024, we conducted “Project Horizon” to streamline our organization and reduce costs, based upon an evaluation of our needs at all levels of the organization. We eliminated a number of salaried positions and reorganized job responsibilities. We believe that the streamlining resulted in a leaner, stronger organization.