United Kingdom
United States
Saudi Arabia
Australia
These range from our people, our customers and end users, suppliers, partners, our shareholders, our communities, regulators and our pensioners. So, it’s vital to us to engage and communicate appropriately with our stakeholders, and at the right time, being as transparent as we can. We also engage with other organisations who have a focus on business or defence and security issues to understand factors that can impact our business and how we operate.
Engaging in a two-way dialogue helps us understand stakeholder’s views and concerns, and explain our approach. We use the feedback our stakeholders give us to inform our strategy and approach to managing sustainability. Sometimes, however, due to the nature of our business we’re prevented from talking openly about all aspects of our operations.
To assist in providing a transparent account of our business we respond to a number of external indices and analyst requests for information including Dow Jones Sustainability Index, Carbon Disclosure Project and Transparency International. Each year, we report on progress in the Annual Report.
Ongoing dialogue with stakeholders
We interact with stakeholders as part of normal business practice, through regular employee surveys and dialogue with trade unions, for example. We also work closely with our strategic suppliers on joint projects and bids; importantly communicating the standards we expect them to meet.
Understanding and aiming to exceed the expectations of our stakeholders is critical to the long-term sustainability of our business and the vital role we play in helping our customers to protect people, information and nations.
Our approach to stakeholder engagement is detailed below:
Our people
We keep employees informed about what is happening across the business using a variety of channels, including our employee app, intranet, email, through podcasts, newsletters, leadership blogs and trade union forums, and also through virtual and face-to-face leadership briefing and team meetings where we seek to listen to employees’ views and opinions. Employees are encouraged to share their views through our channels and employee surveys. We also engage with trade unions in Australia and the UK and labour unions in the US.
Our customers and end-users
Through regular dialogue, virtual and face-to-face meetings, integrated project teams, joint reviews of programme performance, events and exhibitions.
We work very closely with the people who use our products and services, in some instances our people work alongside them at their facilities or bases. We also engage through regular dialogue, virtual and face-to-face meetings.
Our suppliers
Our suppliers and an effective, efficient and sustainable supply chain are essential to enable us to deliver for our customers and end-users. We engage with them through performance reviews, forums, regular dialogue and best practice sharing.
Our partners
We benefit from partnering with other organisations to leverage expertise or technology so that we can offer the best possible products and services to our customers. We engage with partners through regular dialogue, virtual and face-to-face meetings, forums and conferences and integrated project teams.
Our shareholders
We engage with our shareholders to ensure the owners of our shares and potential investors in the Company have a full understanding of our business including the strategy, growth potential and risks in the business as well as the overall performance of the business. We do this through regular dialogue with analysts and investors conducted through investor meetings and roadshows, capital market days, results presentations, Annual General Meeting, regulatory disclosures, our website and the investor relations app.
Our communities
We work to ensure we maintain the trust of the communities where we work. To understand and respond to any issues important to our communities. We provide employment opportunities and contribute to the economic prosperity of the places where our people live and work. We do all this through community forums, volunteering and fundraising, STEM initiatives, Schools Roadshows and programmes such as Movement to Work.
Regulators
Through regular dialogue and via our trade associations we engage with regulators in order to have constructive dialogue with those who impact the regulations which can influence our business.
Our pensioners
We need to inform our pensioners on how we continue to meet our commitments to them and to ensure that our pensioners have access to all the information they need to manage their pension and we do this through newsletters, our website and pensions contact centres.