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Stakeholder engagement

Creating value for our shareholders is our primary responsibility. But, we also need to take account of our broader responsibilities to everyone who is affected by our business – this is the key to ensuring that our returns are sustainable in the long run. If we understand what drives and concerns our employees, our shareholders, our customers, our suppliers, our regulators and the people who live in the communities where we operate, we can make business decisions that properly reflect our responsibilities.

We engage our different stakeholder groups, including our shareholders, employees and customers, formally and informally through a range of mechanisms. For example, we communicate with our shareholders through our annual meeting and report, our corporate website, our SEC filings, our quarterly earnings presentation and conference call and multiple investor conferences each year. We communicate with our employees through our internal magazine, our intranets, regular email updates, employee interviews, employee surveys, training and development programs. We engage with our customers, both residential and commercial, through various initiatives in our operating countries such as focus groups, interviews, employee visits and of course through our day-to-day contacts with our customer care centers. In addition, we are starting to interact with customers in various online forums through dedicated ‘Web Care’ teams. 

In 2008, we carried out an extensive stakeholder engagement exercise that informed the development of our CR strategy. We held a series of in-depth conversations with people inside and outside our company to identify which social issues mattered to them most. We analyzed the findings of this exercise, and used them to build a CR strategy that takes our stakeholders’ opinions and priorities into account. We will continue to engage our stakeholders as we implement our CR strategy over the coming years.