TNT engages systematically in dialogue with its stakeholders to improve our understanding of their perspectives and concerns regarding risk and responsibility. This allows us to understand the impact of our activities on various groups, prevents negative repercussions, forms productive partnerships and captures a range of different opinions and perspectives. Knowledge of our stakeholders’ concerns also helps us to develop new products and services as well as take on social responsibility challenges in cooperative ways.
We define stakeholders as any interested party, either group or individual, which can affect or is affected by an organisation delivering its objectives. For TNT, they include civil society, suppliers, subcontractors, employees, customers and investors.
We began our stakeholder dialogues in 2004 as part of the World Economic Forum (WEF) Logistics & Transport Sustainability Group. This ongoing cross-industry initiative identifies and develops potential solutions to those issues that affect a range of stakeholders. It also allows us to remain at the forefront of best practice; delivering products and services that meet the evolving requirements of our customers and their business goals.
We started our second consultation with some of our most valued customers in 2006 and continued in 2007 with a customer consultation panel meeting. We also performed a stakeholder dialogue with our main investors. We will be holding at least one stakeholder dialogue a year whereby one of the stakeholder groups will be selected based on the rotation scheme, the sense of urgency, internal and external issues that are predominant on a specific stakeholder group’s agenda and our responsiveness to previous stakeholder dialogues.
AA1000 standard
We base our stakeholder dialogues on the framework provided by the Accountability (AA1000) standard. This allows us to align our social responsibility report with the expectations of our stakeholders and enables us to verify whether our social responsibility report meets transparency requirements. The dialogues are based on the AA1000’s three principles of materiality, completeness and responsiveness.
Materiality: The content of our social responsibility reports is based in part on the input of the stakeholder dialogues in which the stakeholders involved identified their most relevant issues for TNT. Additionally, when determining the content of our social responsibility report, we took into account feedback received from stakeholders on the social responsibility 2006 report and discussions with different stakeholders on the relevant social responsibility themes for TNT.
Completeness: If applicable, social responsibility issues identified on the basis of stakeholder dialogues are incorporated in our policies and implementation programmes. Two key points identified by our stakeholders are CO₂ emissions and health and safety. In addressing the former, we have gained greater insight into our CO₂ footprint by estimating the CO₂ emissions of our subcontractors. This report provides a complete overview of the policy and the implementation tools for these social responsibility issues. For more insight on how these issues are embedded in the organisation see “our world” and “our people”. Together with the annual report, the social responsibility report provides all material financial and non-financial information as requested by our stakeholders. The scope of the report and the data clarification table (Annex 4) provide insight and level of completeness into the areas on which TNT is reporting.
Responsiveness: Over the years, different stakeholders have been identifying trends and issues for TNT to include in its social responsibility strategy. Two of these key issues are the environment and health and safety. We have followed up these concerns and provide information on how we addressed these trends and issues in the case studies included in this report. We provide detailed information on our two most recent stakeholder dialogues, our customer consultation and the investors’ dialogue, and our response to these dialogues. As we greatly value the opinion of readers, we welcome feedback on this report (see colophon).
Customer consultation panel
In 2007 we held a customer consultation panel with a number of our main customers. TNT is looking to further develop partnerships with customers and develop innovative ideas together, thereby supporting our commitment to exceeding customer expectations and supporting customers’ own sustainability goals. The panel provided considerable input and focus areas for guiding cooperation between TNT and its customers on future sustainability. These included matters such as joint investigation of alternative fuels, sector-wide initiatives to integrate supply chains and thereby improve carbon efficiencies, and the need to increase employee engagement. Participants also recognised a number of opportunities for working together to share information. It was agreed that a regular forum would be established to meet two times a year. The results of these panels will be presented in our next social responsibility reports.
TNT has also implemented a series of initiatives that address risks to our reputation and business, and create new business opportunities with customers. This includes our Planet Me programme, which aims to manage CO₂ emissions by reducing energy consumption, improving energy efficiency and achieving a sustainable reduction in individual vehicle emissions. Most of TNT’s customers also expressed an interest in partnering on sustainability services that address global warming, with a strong correlation between their own performance and their identification of business opportunities to address these topics jointly with TNT.
Investor dialogue
In addition to the customer consultations, TNT also commissioned an investor dialogue in 2007 with 40 of its current and former investors. This consisted of a web review of each investor and a questionnaire supported by interviews. Sixteen organisations responded.
The majority of responses were from the perspective of mainstream rather than socially-responsible investors. Nevertheless, there would appear to be scope for TNT to appeal to mainstream investors on the basis of its environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance on the grounds that this provides a measure of risk management proficiency. None of the respondents who offer social responsibility investment (SRI) products said that their shareholding in TNT was fully within SRI funds.
Six of the 16 survey respondents listed specific ESG requirements for companies in which they invest. Requirements shared by more than one respondent were: efficient energy use; an increase in energy efficiency; fair and reasonable terms of employment; ensuring safe and healthy working conditions; promotion of human rights in high-risk countries; and compliance with global standards based on best practice. The most widely endorsed sustainability principles were those of the Carbon Disclosure Project (70 percent), which suggests that investors should respond positively to improvements in TNT’s carbon disclosure and management.
Five of the 16 survey respondents listed future risks and responsibilities for the logistics and transportation sector: climate change; increasing energy efficiency; reducing pollution; cost-saving plans in the Netherlands resulting in significant redundancies as a result of downsizing; the temptation of applying local business practices in emerging economies; carbon taxes; coping with increasing carbon emissions; health and safety; and data protection. Furthermore, the research shows that investors attribute high importance to the discipline of risk management.
Results from the stakeholder dialogues
Since 2004 we have held eight stakeholder dialogues among six different types of stakeholders: civil society, customers, subcontractors, employees, investors and suppliers. The results of these dialogues are summarised in the table below for each of the stakeholder groups. The percentage in the table shows the importance of that specific issue related to the total population of respondents. The respondent can mention multiple issues so that the percentages do not add up to 100%.
There is a clear difference in priority between the top five material issues for each stakeholder group. Despite this variation, it is also clear that the dominant concerns are compliance with legislation, reducing carbon dioxide emissions and employee health and safety.