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. As of December 31, 2025, our global workforce of over 6,500 people was located approximately 25% in Europe, 49% in Latin America and 26% in North America. 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 employees that reflect our diverse communities and global end-users of our paper. To that end, we work to foster 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 our employees 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 2024 is available on our website, sylvamo.com. We will post our Sustainability Performance Review for 2025 on our website when it is completed, which is expected in the first half of 2026.

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 at 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 part of our ongoing evaluation of safety performance, we undertook expanded and sustained initiatives under our safety program in 2024, continuing in 2025, to further strengthen our safety culture and outcomes. These initiatives included leadership communications emphasizing safety; regular company‑wide meetings focused on safety performance and improvement efforts; targeted safety training at our facilities addressing specific areas for improvement; safety “stand‑downs” to reinforce the expectation that employees speak up and stop work when conditions appear unsafe; recognition of employees who identify or address potential safety issues; and opportunities for employees to share safety improvements at periodic company‑wide meetings.

In addition, we continue to emphasize the importance of employees’ physical and mental health and well‑being and provide opportunities and resources to support them, including our Employee Assistance Program and other benefit resources available in all regions where we operate.

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. 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 talent through lateral and promotional movesand recruiting new talent through externaland 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.

To strengthen our recruitment and retention efforts, we recently launched Sylvamo’s Global Employee Value Proposition (“EVP”). In 2024, we conducted research engaging a large sample of our workforce, to better understand the attributes that make Sylvamo the Employer of Choice. This research surfaced five core pillars that define our EVP and reflect what our employees have said they value most: Total Rewards, Safety & Well‑being, Development, Company Performance, and Work Environment and Relationships. Beginning in 2026, we will focus on communicating and embedding these pillars in our business to enhance talent attraction and retention.

We support and encourage our employees by providing opportunities to strengthen their connection and commitment to Sylvamo and to the communities in which they work and live, as we believe that a highly engaged workforce is important to our business success. In 2024, we conducted a global employee engagement survey, which indicated that employee engagement levels are fairly high across all regions in which we operate. The survey also established a baseline against which we intend to measure and improve engagement over time, based on the most impactful business need in each location and region. With over 80 engagement action plans across our locations, our teams focused on improvements ranging from safety and well-being, employees’ connection to our strategy, collaboration, employee development and fostering a stronger “speak your mind” culture. By 2025 year-end, progress was made on nearly all of these action plans, and this will continue to be a focus for the organization. In addition, during 2025 we offered employees in our various operating regions multiple opportunities to engage with and support their communities. We share information about our employee engagement opportunities on the “Why We Care” section of our website at sylvamo.com.

We develop the capabilities of our employees through our continuous learning, development and performance management programs. We invest in their growth and 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. With tools in place to support meaningful development discussions and global development sessions and resources available, employees are encouraged to own their development.

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.

To ensure we advance and create a more inclusive work environment, we follow a model that includes: (1) our Global I&D Council, (2) employee inclusion networks open to all employees, and (3) regional action plans. The Global I&D Council provides feedback, sponsorship and support to our inclusion and diversity strategy and helps identify and implement means for our strategy to succeed. They meet quarterly and membership 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.

We believe that education is essential to strengthening an inclusive culture. We offer and encourage employees and leaders to participate in learning opportunities designed to increase awareness, foster more inclusive behaviors, and help create a workplace where everyone feels valued and respected.

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 impacted by competition for the highly skilled labor 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 depends on our ability to attract, retain and develop skilled employees and management.”

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.