Key stakeholders

Our stakeholders represent a diversity of communities and organizations. The breadth of the perspectives they provide gives us a greater understanding of concerns and expectations, as well as opportunities to create lasting value. We engage our stakeholders in a range of ways as we work to improve performance. The table identifies our stakeholders, shared priorities and our engagement approach.

Issue identification and prioritization

We continuously evolve our perspective on sustainability reporting priorities by considering the most pressing issues affecting stakeholders and our industry.

External stakeholders include mainstream investors, ESG-focused investors, banks, rating agencies and ESG-focused nonprofit organizations, as well as community members, leaders, policy makers and regulators in the areas where we operate. Through meetings, correspondence and a review of publicly available materials, we gather opinions and input from key external stakeholders to further identify issues and potential impacts. Based upon this collaborative approach, we regularly review a list of potentially important issues across a range of topics from governance to safety to impacts on the environment and society.

Additionally, through our annual risk assessment process, each business unit identifies potential sustainability risks while considering the physical, social and political settings of our operations. Local concerns may influence the potential importance of these environmental and social matters, including cumulative effects. Each risk is assessed using a matrix that evaluates both its likelihood and consequence. In evaluating the consequence level, we consider potential impacts to stakeholders and the company. Annual discussions with key internal functions, including subject matter experts from issues working groups (IWGs), provide further input and prioritization of the topic list.

This prioritization process is supplemented with analysis of the topics being considered by rating agencies and other survey questions, as well as recommended reporting for the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) and the World Economic Forum: Measuring Stakeholder Capitalism. We also review the priority issues as publicly reported by industry peers to ensure alignment with identified industry issues.

Annually, we conduct a priority issues assessment to identify and prioritize our reporting topics. Participants include subject matter experts (SMEs) from 20 key functions within the company who provide further insight and prioritize topics based on level of interest or concern to key stakeholders and strategic importance to the company. This process helps determine the significance of 27 sustainability topics. The issues covered in this report reflect discussions with SMEs from across our company, findings from primary and secondary research, the feedback we received, and insights we gained through our ongoing engagement with stakeholders.

_{*Other aspects of governance are fully addressed in our Annual Report and Proxy Statement.}