Taking stakeholders' expectations into account

The Group’s activities are integrated into a social, economic and natural environment. And GDF SUEZ is careful to ensure that integration is successful, long lasting and sustainable. To achieve this, all the stakeholders in a project must be part of the dialogue.

Establishing a constructive dialogue with stakeholders

To ensure the acceptability of its projects and activities, GDF SUEZ bases its approach on listening to, and having a dialogue with, all stakeholders involved: customers, employees, shareholders, local populations and the broader society. Stakeholders are identified at the onset of the project and the exchanges are begun prior to project start-up and pursued through to completion.

A few examples of reaching out to stakeholders:

• For a wind farm it was building: Erelia, a GDF SUEZ subsidiary, engages in an in-depth and original process based on the involvement of local players at every stage of the project.
  • For further information about Erelia
     
• For customer relations: GDF SUEZ has a mediator whose mission is to improve relations with customers in France. The mediator gets in touch with the customers with a business dispute and proposes a customized solution to them. This allows the entire commercial organization to move forward and improve the way complaints are handled.
   
• For the financial community: GDF SUEZ responds to investors’ questions on Group performance. Answers are provided on a case-by-case basis for each request, and meeting and site visits are organized to examine some aspects of the Group’s strategy in greater depth.

Guaranteeing the safety of associates and facilities

The health and safety of associates and service providers is an absolute priority. Strategic action plans are drawn up at Group level to improve safety conditions, in agreement with the players involved: managers, experts, labour physicians, and unions. More than four hundred managers from all business areas and countries are directly involved in defining the guidelines for improving the Group’s Health & Safety policy. GDF SUEZ also undertakes preventative actions with its associates and outsourcers.

The goals in matters of health and safety are ambitious. From 2004 to 2008, the frequency and severity of work accidents were reduced 30%. The Group wants to pursue this trend with the goal of reducing the accident frequency rate by 1 point per year over the next few years. So the rate would then go from 11.2 in 2008 to 9 in 2010.