Social value creation

Our sustainability agenda aims to improve the well-being of our own employees, those in our value chain and of wider society through our innovative products and business processes.

We take a broad view on capable and engaged people. We are forming long-lasting external partnerships based on strong people connections, not only along our value chain, but also in a wider network, for example through our leadership role in the Human Cities Coalition.

Impact measurement across the value chain

We also take a value chain approach to measure our social impact. In 2014, we pioneered our measurement of negative and positive impact across four dimensions, including social. We have since expanded the pilot to cover more businesses and, in this report we are disclosing for the first time a company-wide 3D P&L. We will continue to work with industry leaders and other partners to refine our value chain measurement and increase our understanding of our social impact.

Our employees

Capable, engaged people are critical to our business success. An engaged workforce who live our core principles and values is what underpins the delivery of our strategic objectives. See Note 11.

With our Safety Common Platform, we have established company-wide improvement programs in people, process and product safety. See Notes 12-15.

Employees are routinely involved in delivering many aspects of our sustainability agenda. This includes improving energy or resource efficiency at our sites, developing and selling eco-premium solutions to customers, managing all areas of safety and assessing the sustainability aspects of investments. We want to build on all these activities to accelerate performance against our objectives.

Awareness training to help everybody understand their contribution is available for both current and new employees through an updated company-wide e-learning program. This is supported by communication through newsletters, webinars, events and videos. All of the company-level management training programs in the AkzoNobel Academy have sustainability embedded into the content. It also features strongly in our new training program to onboard new people managers. In addition, a number of functional-specific programs started to roll out in 2016.

We continued to use our Planet Possible sustainability agenda to stimulate employee engagement. Communication to employees at all levels took place, including a global campaign to take action. The Business Areas also have their own programs. For example, our Decorative Paints business is engaging employees on the strategic priority of moving the market to water-based products through the use of videos, newsletters and starting employee product trial sessions. Employees are also actively involved at their work locations through their everyday work and community activities around the world.

Human rights

We recognize the human rights of all people as outlined in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. We strive to prevent the infringement of human rights and to remediate the possible impact on human rights resulting from our activities or products. We expect our business partners to apply equivalent principles and seek to actively support them in their implementation where needed. See Note 16.

Human Cities

Our Human Cities initiative and Human Cities Coalition serve as an umbrella for everything we do for and with society. It complements our Planet Possible sustainability agenda and further strengthens our social value creation. Though local community programs, we aim to make lives more liveable and inspiring. In 2016, cumulative Community Program involvement increased to €16.8 million. See Note 17.