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We engage our patients, end-consumers and other stakeholders regularly to better understand the issues that are most important to them. We also periodically undertake a formal materiality assessment process that guides us on the current and emerging sustainability-related topics that are most significant to our operations, and, in turn, informs our sustainability strategy.
Stakeholder engagement is a foundation of our approach to sustainability, and we have identified our key stakeholders as patient groups, employees, investors, regulators, suppliers, government, healthcare professionals, plasma donors, business partners and the academic and scientific community.
Stakeholder engagement covers many different activities from the provision of information and educational material to health service providers, through to active collaboration with, and support of, patient organisations and structured dialogue with stakeholder representatives.
The table shown contains a list of our key stakeholders and their interests and the key mechanisms in which we engage with them.
Performance across our three strategic pillars - Environment, Social and Sustainable Workforce – support the execution of our 2030 Strategy and our promise to improve the lives of patients and protect public health. Our pillar focus areas are further guided by our material topics, which inform continuous improvement across our operations and transparency in areas that matter most to our key stakeholders.
CSL’s Executive Sustainability Committee has overall responsibility for the materiality process and executes a global materiality assessment on a biennial basis. In 2021/22, we concluded our fifth assessment and followed the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) 2016 standards of sustainability context, materiality, completeness and stakeholder inclusiveness through our process of identification, review and prioritisation. The application and disclosure of our materiality process against the GRI 2016 standard materiality principle definition was subject to limited external assurance by Ernst & Young.
Our fifth materiality assessment excluded Vifor Pharma, a biotech company, that was acquired in August 2022.
To understand the alignment between sustainability topics identified by Vifor, and CSL’s existing sustainability priorities, in 2023 we compared CSL's fifth materiality assessment outcomes with that of Vifor Pharma’s last materiality assessment. We found strong alignment in material topics, with some areas of difference to be investigated further.
In financial year 2024 we plan to conduct a refreshed enterprise-wide assessment, to continually engage with our key stakeholders, understand changing priorities and capture emerging sustainability topics.
The first stage of CSL’s fifth materiality process involved developing a universal list of topics driven by an evidence-based approach involving: a current state assessment (review of previous assessment and possible improvements); desktop research, including a global media scan and review of key global frameworks and standards; peer benchmarking of eight organisations and internal and external stakeholder interviews.
The resulting material topics were prioritised by a group of 86 internal representatives from across the organisation who rated their importance by considering the perspectives of stakeholders and reviewing the potential impact/value to the business, economy, society and the environment. The diversity of respondents at both a functional and geographical level ensured a broad set of views and perspectives.
The final prioritised list and matrix are grouped by sustainability pillar, to ensure the most material topics across environment, social, sustainable workforce, and governance pillars of CSL’s sustainability strategy were captured in reporting.
| Environment | Social | Sustainable Workforce | Governance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Promoting environmental protection | Product safety and quality | Talent recruitment, development & retention | Ethics & integrity |
| Climate resilience | Supply continuity & resilience | Health, safety and wellbeing | Human rights & responsible supply chain |
| Energy & emissions | Innovation & R&D | Diversity, equity and inclusion | |
| Waste & packaging | Trust & transparency | ||
| Health security | |||
| Accessible & affordable healthcare |