Water came first, biodiversity came last

Four groups, deliberately, and the ones left out

Scope was set at four stakeholder groups: investors, customers, management and employees. Suppliers, local communities and regulators were explicitly out of scope, which is stated on the page because it bounds every conclusion drawn from it.

Seventy five candidate topics were shortlisted from a benchmark of six peers and customers plus an industry analysis that was added mid project, then narrowed to twenty one for assessment. Twelve interviews covered three investors, six customers and three from management. An employee survey went to 371 people and returned 168, a response rate of 45 per cent.

The interview base is small, three investors and three managers, and the group averages quoted here rest on those numbers. That is the honest scale of a materiality assessment and it is why the employee survey matters as a counterweight.

What the workforce chose when asked to pick three

Asked to name the three most important topics, 168 employees put water and waste water first by a clear margin, then climate and renewable energy, then carbon footprint and environmental impact, then health and safety.

At the other end of the same list, biodiversity drew six mentions and hazardous materials four.

That ordering is worth sitting with. A chemicals workforce ranked water above climate, and ranked the two topics most associated with chemical manufacturing risk almost last. It is a picture of what people who work there think the company is actually about.

Where the four groups pulled apart

On health and safety, management scored the maximum, customers close behind, and investors well below both. Investors are not indifferent to safety, they simply assume it and look elsewhere.

On employee diversity and inclusion the pattern reverses in an instructive way. All three groups rated its importance similarly, but on the question of impact, investors rated the company higher than the company rated itself. That is the only topic in the study where the outside view of performance was more generous than the inside one.

On environmental topics, investors rated carbon handprint, the positive contribution the products enable, level with carbon footprint at the top of their list. Biodiversity was last for every group, and lowest of all for management.

And internally, supporting customers to become more sustainable scored the maximum from management, above every other economic topic. The company sees its sustainability contribution as something it sells, not only something it does.

What both investors and customers asked for, in the same words

Two requests came from both external groups independently: set Scope 3 targets, and set science based targets. Investors added a portfolio expectation, to diversify away from oil and gas related business toward more sustainable segments.

Employees and management asked for something different and simpler. Concrete proof points. Being clear about where the company is now and how it gets to where it says it is going.

That divergence shaped the main recommendation. Alongside the standard reporting framework, add a table per material topic carrying the definition, the specific measure and target, the plan to reach it, the performance so far, and the goals it links to. Not more topics. Evidence against the topics already committed to.

What the client was left holding

Twenty one assessed topics, four prioritised development goals with ten supporting ones, and three alternative ways to visualise the result with the trade offs of each set out rather than one recommended. Choosing the picture is the client decision, and the analysis says so.

One goal was newly added on the strength of this work, decent work and economic growth, highlighted by investors and internal stakeholders alike.

And a set of instructions for doing it better next time, drawn from published practice: decide up front whether you are updating within the existing agenda or opening it up, define each topic before you ask anybody about it so people are not answering different questions, include the stakeholder groups left out this time, and talk to a few people before you send anybody a survey, because new topics surface in conversation and never in a tick box.

There is no measured result in this work. No target was hit and no performance changed. What it produced was an agreed list of what matters, and a specification for the evidence the company will need to stand behind it.