RWS Annual Report 2022 web - Flipbook - Page 26
Sustainability (continued)
OUR APPROACH TO CORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY
Our corporate sustainability pillars – our people,
our community, our environment and our corporate
governance – are at the centre of our purpose to
unlock global understanding. Engagement with all our
stakeholders has continued to develop, and in particular,
important strides have been achieved in diversity, equity
and inclusion, health and safety, and well-being, via our
Group-wide pillars. We have partnered with a number of
community organisations, have undertaken fundraising
aid for Ukraine, and progressed our focus on education,
partnering with over 700 universities and sponsoring
50 language students via the RWS-Brode Scholarship
programme. We have also contributed to important
life safety work in our Regulated Industries division,
undertaking segment analysis for a major technology
company to help protect its reputation and brand, as
well as working to remove structural bias from Language
Weaver, our machine translation solution. The RWS
Language Lab, led by our Chief Language Officer, also
works closely with the linguistic community to foster
future talent and incubate rare languages.
MATERIALITY ANALYSIS
This approach ensures that we can continue to build an
ESG focus that responds to external events, evolving
business priorities, stakeholder expectations, and our
own performance results.
The review enforced our corporate sustainability
strategy and identified emerging issues, such as
geopolitical risks and human rights. These insights have
shaped conversations across RWS as well as the Group’s
principal risks and uncertainties.
Engagement included a materiality survey which went
to over 80% of our shareholders, over 25% of our key
clients and over 85% of our suppliers, and meetings
with stakeholders, i.e. investors, clients, colleagues
and suppliers. We also ran a Group-wide colleague
engagement survey and we were delighted to achieve an
85% global response rate. 82% of respondents believe
RWS is committed to its responsibilities surrounding
ESG.
The results received from ongoing stakeholder
feedback, and the insights from the analysis, showed
us that client privacy and data security; public health
risks; climate change and GHG emissions; employee
diversity and inclusion; employee health and safety; and
ethical corporate behaviour have become increasingly
important to our stakeholders. The matrix ranks the
materiality of issues raised.
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RWS — Annual Report 2022
STRATEGIC REPORT
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Relevance to stakeholders
As a result of the limitation we encountered last year
regarding the amount of feedback we received from
certain stakeholders regarding materiality, we now
identify and prioritise material issues using Datamaran
software that enables a data-driven and dynamic
process for ESG risk identification and monitoring.
The software enabled us to gain a continuous, evidencebased review of ESG-related risks within our regulatory,
competitive, and operating contexts.
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Relevance to RWS
ENVIRONMENT
PEOPLE
1 Public health risks
2 Client privacy and data security
3 Climate change and GHG
emissions
4 Employee diversity and
inclusion
5 Employee health and safety
6 Ethical corporate behaviour
7 Human rights
8 Physical and sociopolitical risks
9 Workforce management
10 Natural capital
11 Energy management
12 Transition to renewables and
alternative energies
13 Client practices
14 Access and affordability
15 Labour practices
COMMUNITY
GOVERNANCE
16 Transparency
17 Governance structures
and mechanisms
18 Innovation and technology
19 Business model resilience
20 Waste and hazardous
materials management
21 Management of the legal
and regulatory environment
22 Community relations
23 Ecological impacts
24 Sourcing efficiency
and management
25 Competitive behaviour
26 Responsible consumption
and production
27 Selling practices and
product labelling
