Through its Management Board as well as executive and non-executive personnel, voestalpine is in regular contact with the stakeholder groups enumerated below. Numerous opportunities such as expert discussions and roundtables, conferences, trade shows as well as analyst and investor meetings are used to this end. Both the employee survey, which is conducted on a regular basis, and annual employee performance reviews are important settings for structured communications with internal stakeholders. voestalpine is also represented on a wide variety of bodies serving advocacy groups, trade associations, lobbying campaigns, and platforms.
During the reporting period, communications with individual stakeholder groups took place in various settings and with respect to various topics as described below.
Employees
The voestalpine Group currently has a global workforce of just under 52,000 people. In addition to annual employee performance reviews that are conducted with about 67% of the workforce, the employee survey that is carried out every three years (with the next one scheduled for the fall of 2019) plays a key role in this connection.
Following the last employee survey in 2016, a variety of measures were implemented with respect to issues such as information & communication, career development opportunities, and identification/employer.
Customers and suppliers
voestalpine maintains very open and close relationships with all of its business partners. Many of them are of long standing and form the basis of trustful and transparent cooperation. In turn, this enables the development of new processes and products that meet the requirements of all parties involved and ensure the responsible use of resources.
Issues of sustainability are increasingly moving to the center of our communications with customers and suppliers. Besides conventional supply chain management issues such as quality, costs, availability, and delivery dates, increasingly the conversations are also focused on climate protection, energy and resource efficiency, or compliance with labor and human rights in production.
voestalpine’s Code of Conduct is binding on all of the company’s suppliers and business partners and forms part of the terms and conditions. Technical visits and viewings of the production facilities also take place on a regular basis. For more information on this issue, please see Chapter “Transparency in the Supply Chain”.
Analysts and investors
voestalpine AG has been listed on the Vienna Stock Exchange since 1995. Institutional investors and analysts are among the company’s key stakeholder groups. The members of voestalpine’s Management Board and the managers of its Investor Relations department maintain close relationships with the company’s shareholder representatives and investors through investor conferences, roadshows as well as individual visits in order to discuss current issues and the market situation. As regards sustainability, climate-relevant emissions are among the key topics discussed with analysts and investors. Specifically, this concerns ways to represent the Group’s CO2 emissions and options for reducing them in the future—also taking into account the resulting negative impact on costs. At regular intervals, voestalpine holds so-called “Capital Markets Days,” i.e., special investor events at which trends and developments related to a high-priority issue in the Group are presented.
Research institutions and universities
Working closely with universities and research institutions is essential, particularly in the field of research and development. voestalpine supports outstanding dissertations, master’s theses, and research projects; it also endows professorships. The company’s Management Board regularly attends special student events at institutions such as the Montanuniversität Leoben to answer questions from the students.
NGOs, advocacy and special interest groups, and platforms
Representatives of voestalpine belong to various working groups and committees of special interest groups and platforms such as EUROFER, worldsteel, ASMET, and Estep. They contribute voestalpine’s knowledge of and opinions on a wide variety of issues during EU consultations.
There are intensive, fact-based exchanges with NGOs, especially with respect to environmental issues such as energy and climate policies.
Since April 2019, voestalpine AG has been a member of ResponsibleSteel, an initiative that focuses on the sustainable production of steel and the sustainable procurement of both raw and other materials. voestalpine actively engages in the ongoing development of the standard on which this policy initiative is based.
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