What are the material issues the company has identified? 

In its 2020 Annual and Sustainability Report Skanska identified a range of material issues, such as anti-corruption, occupational health and safety, GHG emissions, anti-competitive behaviour. Among these, promoting sustainability among its suppliers stands out as a key material issue for Skanska.

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 Skanska engages with:   

Stakeholder Group

Investors and shareholders

Employees

Customers

Suppliers and subcontractors

Society and local communities

Academia and NGOs

How stakeholder engagement was made to identify material issues

To identify and prioritise material topics Skanska engaged with its stakeholders through surveys and structured interviews, receiving feedback from over 400 stakeholders.

What actions were taken by Skanska to promote sustainability among its suppliers?

In its 2020 Annual and Sustaina

Skanska works with its suppliers to implement a shared commitment to sustainability topics such as labour rights, human rights, the environment, safety and ethics.

bility Report Skanska reports that it took the following actions for promoting sustainability among its suppliers:

• Promoting compliance
• Skanska carries out risk-based assessments followed by due diligence for certain categories of suppliers or if this is deemed necessary. Mandatory ethical due diligence is carried out for intermediaries, joint venture partners and sellers or buyers of land or real estate assets. Additionally, Skanska collects information on the ethical standards and culture of third parties including information on any past legal violations, possible transaction-related conflicts and other indicators of risk. Skanska also has an automated sanctions screening process and uses a global database to check all active suppliers according to its sanctions procedure, every 24 hours.

• Implementing a Supplier Code of Conduct
• Skanska’s Code of Conduct is supplemented by its Supplier Code of Conduct, which must be adhered to by all subcontractors, suppliers, consultants, intermediates and agents. The Supplier Code of Conduct is included in agreements with these parties and outlines Skanska’s expectations from those it does business with. It enables continuous monitoring and audits to be carried out, where applicable. There is an option to terminate an agreement in the event of a major breach of Skanska’s Supplier Code of Conduct, such as corruption or inclusion on the sanctions list.

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

The GRI Standards addressed in this case are:

1) Disclosure 308-1 New suppliers that were screened using environmental criteria

2) Disclosure 414-1 New suppliers that were screened using social criteria

 

Disclosure 308-1 New suppliers that were screened using environmental criteria does not correspond to any SDG.

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 Skanska, 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://group.skanska.com/siteassets/investors/reports-publications/annual-reports/2020/annual-and-sustainability-report-2020.pdf – page=5

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