Sustainability Report 2017
13
Stakeholder Engagement
Stakeholder Engagement Approach
Stakeholder engagement is the process
through which we stay connected
with our customers, employees,
shareholders, investors, suppliers and
the wider communities in which we
operate. We believe that the approach
of stakeholder engagement is integral
to the development of our sustainability
strategy, and is also a pre-requisite for
our long-term sustainable growth.
VTech has an open door policy to
encourage suggestions or comments
given by our stakeholders through
various communication channels.
Since FY2014, we have developed a
formal annual stakeholder engagement
procedure, which helps us identify
which sustainability issues are most
important to our stakeholders and
report our sustainability approach,
performance and activities to
address their material concerns and
priorities. Our purpose is to engage
with those who are directly affected,
either economically, environmentally
or socially, by our operations and to
ensure that our sustainability strategies,
activities and reporting process would
meet or exceed their expectations.
The selection of stakeholder groups is
determined by the RMSC in conjunction
with the Sustainability Sub-Committees.
In FY2017, we have selected a number
of representative customers and
suppliers from the Company’s different
product lines, a range of employees
from all levels in the Company, our
major shareholders and investors,
and communities with whom we were
actively involved. As part of our annual
review process, we also engaged our
stakeholders through their preferred
communication channels to conduct
our materiality assessment surveys.
Our Sustainability Sub-Committees
have also developed an approach
which identifies the broad topics
that the stakeholder groups are
concerned with, and used a materiality
matrix to assess the material issues
identified by our stakeholders during
the engagement process. An issue
is classified as “material” when it
substantially affects our long-term
commercial or operational viability,
with material impacts from economic,
environmental or social aspects. This
matrix combines VTech’s approach to
identifying and assessing the material
concerns of our stakeholders, and our
own materiality scoring methodology by
following the principles outlined in GRI
G4 Guidelines.