What are the material issues the company has identified?

In its 2020 Annual Report with Sustainability Report Bulten identified a range of material issues, such as business ethics and corporate social responsibility, Health and Safety, recruitment, employee turnover. Among these, promoting sustainability across its supply chain stands out as a key material issue for Bulten.

Stakeholder engagement in accordance with the GRI Standards              

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) defines the Principle of Stakeholder Inclusiveness when identifying material issues (or a company’s most important impacts) as follows:

“The reporting organization shall identify its stakeholders, and explain how it has responded to their reasonable expectations and interests.”

Stakeholders must be consulted in the process of identifying a company’s most important impacts and their reasonable expectations and interests must be taken into account. This is an important cornerstone for CSR / sustainability reporting done responsibly.

Key stakeholder groups Bulten engages with:

To identify and prioritise material topics Bulten engaged with its stakeholders through the following channels: 

Stakeholder Group	Method of engagement
Customers	·      Meetings with customers ·      Sustainability assessments ·      Customers’ sustainability seminars
Employees and their representatives	·      Global employee survey ·      Regular dialogue with union representatives and employee talks in Bulten’s so called annual development dialogue
Business partners (JV partners, suppliers, etc.)	·      Bulten’s process for selecting suppliers ·      JV board meetings ·      Dialogue in connection with audits ·      Supplier meetings
Owners, investors, analysts, etc.	·      Board meetings ·      Capital markets day ·      Investor meetings ·      Interviews ·      Quarterly reports ·      Annual General Meeting
Local community (residents, local management and authorities, etc.)	·      Student fairs ·      Collaboration groups locally with other companies ·      Collaboration with college / university ·      Dialogue and exchange in connection with the establishment of new operations, permit processes, etc.
Governments, legislators, authorities	·      Direct contacts in connection with establishment and permit processes, as well as via information from interest and industry organisations

What actions were taken by Bulten to promote sustainability across its supply chain?

In its 2020 Annual Report with Sustainability Report Bulten reports that it took the following actions for promoting sustainability across its supply chain:

• Promoting compliance
• All Bulten suppliers should be certified to ISO 9001 (IATF 16949) as well as ISO 14001 and they all have requirements for an implemented code of conduct to make sure that they share the same values with Bulten when it comes to its requirements on business ethics, health and safety, environmental requirements and social responsibility. To ensure compliance, the code of conduct is included in Bulten’s agreement templates and is managed via its Supplier Relationship Management, or SRM, system.

• Monitoring suppliers
• Over the years Bulten has established working methods to monitor and audit its main suppliers, and potential and new suppliers are carefully evaluated based on its code of conduct, including human rights, employment and working conditions, and health and safety. If it decides to proceed, an audit is performed by Bulten on site which, for example, includes the management system, financial status, the purchasing process and flow of goods, as well as the supplier’s follow-up systems. With its existing suppliers, Bulten conducts regular assessments, and has dedicated employees who work with quality assurance and supplier development.

Which GRI Standards and corresponding Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have been addressed?

The GRI Standard addressed in this case is: Disclosure 414-1 New suppliers that were screened using social criteria

Disclosure 414-1 New suppliers that were screened using social criteria corresponds to:

• Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5: Gender Equality
• Targets: 5.2
• Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth
• Targets: 8.8
• Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
• Targets: 16.1

 

78% of the world’s 250 largest companies report in accordance with the GRI Standards

SustainCase was primarily created to demonstrate, through case studies, the importance of dealing with a company’s most important impacts in a structured way, with use of the GRI Standards. To show how today’s best-run companies are achieving economic, social and environmental success – and how you can too.

Research by well-recognised institutions is clearly proving that responsible companies can look to the future with optimism.

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References:

This case study is based on published information by Bulten, located at the link below. For the sake of readability, we did not use brackets or ellipses. However, we made sure that the extra or missing words did not change the report’s meaning. If you would like to quote these written sources from the original please revert to the following link:

https://mb.cision.com/Main/405/3323465/1400027.pdf

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