What are the material issues the company has identified?

In its 2021 Sustainability Report the Voith Group identified a range of material issues, such as transparency regarding business practices, promoting work-life balance, efficient use of resources, innovative, high-quality products and services. Among these, creating economic value for its stakeholders stands out as a key material issue for the Voith Group.

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 the Voith Group engages with:

Stakeholder Group

Shareholders

Supervisory committees

Rating agencies

Employees

The Works Council

Customers

Suppliers

Investors

Communities neighbouring company sites

Trade associations

Academia

Government agencies

Policy makers

NGOs

Broader interested public

How stakeholder engagement was made to identify material issues

To identify and prioritise material topics the Voith Group engaged with its stakeholders through a survey.

What actions were taken by the Voith Group to create economic value for its stakeholders?

In its 2021 Sustainability Report the Voith Group reports that it took the following actions for creating economic value for its stakeholders:

• Creating economic value for employees
• In FY 2020/21, the Voith Group paid € 1,247 million for employee wages and salaries, € 268.6 million for social security contributions, retirement pensions, and benefits, and € 2.3 million for training and career development.

• Creating economic value for communities
• In FY 2020/21, the Voith Group paid € 1.98 million in donations and sponsorship.

• Creating economic value for governments
• In FY 2020/21, the Voith Group paid € 57,416 thousand in taxes.

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

The GRI Standard addressed in this case is: Disclosure 201-1 Direct economic value generated and distributed

Disclosure 201-1 Direct economic value generated and distributed corresponds to:

• Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth
• Targets: 8.1, 8.2
• Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
• Targets: 9.1, 9.4, 9.5

 

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

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References:

This case study is based on published information by the Voith Group, 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://voith.com/corp-en/VZ_Sustainability-Report_21_en.pdf

Note to the Voith Group: With each case study we send out an email requesting a comment on this case study. If you have not received such an email please contact us.