44 Our material topics
Our material topics Our materiality assessment helps to align our business with the expectations of our stakeholders and with society in general. Defining report content and topic boundaries
A critical part of our sustainability approach involves identifying and prioritising the issues of the greatest material importance to Givaudan: this is also the basis for defining reporting content and the boundaries of the topics. The process follows the principles of stakeholder inclusiveness, sustainability context, materiality and completeness according to the GRI Standard. Materiality assessment Our activities have an impact that goes far beyond economic results. To be successful in the long run, we need to align our business performance with the expectations of our stakeholders and with society in general. To achieve this goal, a deep understanding of the most relevant topics for the different groups of stakeholders is essential. In this spirit, we have developed our materiality assessment to help shape our strategy, to strengthen our commitment to dialogue and to support our assumptions and our reports. We use the Givaudan materiality assessment to prioritise aspects identified as being of most concern to our customers and other key stakeholders. The matrix is reviewed through discussion with the main stakeholders and our materiality cycle aims to conduct a comprehensive assessment of surveys and interviews every four years. We address critical issues and strategic priorities, look for opportunities to improve management and relationships, and identify possible projects to work on together. In the middle of each cycle, we conduct a review based on the opportunity to acquire meaningful information about changes and emerging topics. The elements now considered material are those that had already been identified in the last materiality assessment as having a substantial influence on the decisions of the main
Givaudan – Our Sustainability Approach
stakeholders and a significant impact on Givaudan’s business performance as well as a wider social, environmental and economic impact in terms of how we create new value to be shared by all stakeholders in our supply chains. In 2018, we reviewed the materiality assessment defined in 2016 and included a database of about 600 sustainability questions from our customers, also making some light amendments to the definitions of the material topics to clarify the concepts. In this regard we have redefined what ‘Access to food’ means to us. Our definition largely revolves around dietary shifts made possible through ingredients that use less sugar, salt and fat and so we have decided to cluster this topic under ‘Consumer health and well-being’. We have also reviewed our SDG mapping to our material topics and made some changes to strengthen both meaning and the mapping itself. Given the prevalence of the collaboration with our suppliers and the co-creation of innovative solutions, we decided to include SDG 17 to cover this strong partnership aspect. This holistic assessment of current and future expectations and needs of key stakeholder groups (including employees, customers, governmental and non-governmental organisations and universities) allows us to assess our strategic focus and respond to stakeholder expectations, optimally allocating resources to material problems. In the next year we will incorporate other relevant elements such as an Employee Engagement Survey and will review the assessment to form the basis of our new five-year plan. Disclosures 102 – 46, 102 – 49
