Solvay bases its sustainability priorities on a materiality analysis. This approach identifies critical economic, environmental, and social aspects with potential to significantly impact Solvay’s performance and/or substantially influence stakeholders’ decisions. The analysis is performed and updated each year using the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) materiality approach.
5
Priority aspects
8
High materiality aspects
15
Moderate materiality aspects
Materiality analysis
Category |
Moderate materiality |
High materiality |
Environment |
Ecological impacts |
|
Social capital |
Access and affordability |
|
Human capital |
Compensation and benefits |
|
Business model and innovation |
Business model resilience |
|
Leadership and governance |
Systemic risk management |
Critical incident risk management |
|
|
|
Materiality analysis process
Solvay’s Sustainable Development and Energy Function coordinates the analysis with an internal network of the Solvay Way Champions in the Global Business Units and Functions. Experts in each Corporate Function have reviewed the analysis of each aspect, paying particular attention to consistency with the Group’s risk analysis.
Materiality analysis process
2019 Updates
As in previous years, the vocabulary used for material aspects has been kept consistent with the SASB Materiality Map™, except in cases where the Group’s Executive Committee has decided to do otherwise during the validation step in order to broaden the scope of some material aspects.
This is the case for the following high materiality aspects:
- “Societal actions” includes “Community relations” from the 2018 SASB Materiality Map™;
- “Employee engagement and well-being” includes “Labor practices” and “Employee engagement” from the SASB Materiality Map™;
- “Sustainable business solutions” includes “Product design and Lifecycle Management” from the SASB Materiality Map™;
- “Management of the legal, ethics and regulatory framework” includes “Business ethics”, “Competitive behavior”, and “Human Rights” from the SASB Materiality Map™;
- As last year, Solvay has kept “Compensation and benefits”, “Recruitment, development and retention”, and “Diversity and inclusion” as three aspects, mainly because of the extent of reporting on these issues in this report.
The work done during 2019 on Solvay’s purpose, and the work done on the new sustainability approach, Solvay ONE Planet, have confirmed the high materiality aspects already selected.
Correspondence between the materiality analysis and the risk analysis of the Group
As described in the “Risks Management" chapter of this Annual Integrated Report, the risk analysis of Solvay is a specific process and is used as input for the materiality analysis.
All the main risks of the Group relate to high materiality aspects, except “Security” and “Cyber risks”, which relate to moderate materiality aspects because the impact on daily operations is limited and is material only in the event of a malicious act.