Report Dialogue
Each year, we seek feedback from stakeholders to ascertain whether the content of the Report is relevant to their needs, assess the effectiveness of the Report and identify opportunities for improvement. This year we altered our engagement approach away from an independent survey to an interactive workshop format. Stakeholders who participated included representatives from the SRI sector, NGOs, academia, government, industry and Company employees.
Feedback was sought initially prior to the workshop through a brief survey, then during the workshop through a facilitated discussion, reflecting on survey results.
The Report was acknowledged as comprehensive, clearly communicating Company performance and sustainable development issues. The use of specific targets in the performance scorecard and the description of progress towards their achievement was noted as particularly useful.
All three formats – summary, online and full report – were seen to serve a specific purpose for various user groups and were still regarded as necessary in meeting the needs of all our stakeholders.
The sustainability challenges and dilemmas section was generally rated as being a critical component of the report, giving the audience an indication of honesty and providing information on how the challenges are measured at site level and how they filter up through the Company. While all sections rated above average, overall, the Performance Summaries received the lowest average score.
The key opportunities for improvement included:
- Providing more detail on the sustainability challenges and dilemmas. Many stakeholders cited difficulties in understanding how the Company is grappling with and learning from its sustainability challenges. A clearer link between the challenges faced by the Company and its overall vision was sought, as well as more information on the process and criteria used to select the sustainability challenges.
- Providing commentary on the HSEC Scorecard. While the scorecard was considered very useful, stakeholders considered it could be improved by providing a comment on how we feel about our performance, whether we consider it acceptable and what we propose to do to improve performance.
- Expanding the information contained within the Performance Summaries, in order to facilitate better analysis by the investment community.
- Broadening case studies from site-level. Stakeholders were keen to include case studies that demonstrate HSEC issues and challenges experienced at senior management and Board level, so they could better understand how issues filter up through the organisation, at what level they are managed and through what process.
- Improving the online report layout. With the information contained in the Report expanding in previous years, stakeholders are keen to be able to identify sections of most relevance to them and, within sections, to quickly identify what has been modified from previous reports.
We have attempted to address many of these points in this year's report and look forward to your further Feedback to see how we have progressed against these recommendations.
