Corporate responsibility issues, risk management and related policies

We define our corporate responsibility issues as those specific topics that have the potential to impact us – or one or more of our stakeholders – in our ability to create financial or non-financial value. These are areas requiring a special effort that exceeds any 'business as usual' approach.

Through continuing dialogue and engagement with our stakeholders, as an integral part of our business activity, we have identified a number of important corporate responsibility 'issues' that we believe we should focus our attention on specifically. These may be longstanding, recent, specific to our industry, particular to our company, or simply reflect a general concern relating to the impact of business on society.

These key issues are listed in the CR section of our website together with more general issues or areas of activity relating to CR. The issues are presented in the context of three aspects:

• The triple bottom line and our CR Report structure
• Some of the material risks disclosed in our 20-F report
• The policies and high-level documents that support our governance structure and organization.

More information can also be found in our CR Issues in Context diagram.

Looking at our CR issues in the context of these wider aspects serves as a general illustration of the 'business case' for CR; in other words, the business benefits of strong implementation of CR through the company's business activities and some of the related risks and opportunities.

Our management systems for CR include a comprehensive self-assessment tool, beSTick, which allows sites and organizations throughout the company to evaluate and monitor their CR performance, and manage risks and opportunities accordingly. The organizational framework for CR, also summarized here, which includes the beSTick tool used by Local Sustainable Excellence Committees, is designed to monitor CR risks and bring them to the attention of higher levels of management as quickly and effectively as possible.