Stakeholders & Materiality

How we define our stakeholders

Hoist Finance’s stakeholders are groups and individuals who, directly or indirectly, are affected by the company’s operations: employees, shareholders, business partners, customers and society at large. The Executive Management Team and the Board of Directors have overall responsibility for balancing these interests, while securing the company’s survival.

Stakeholder dialogues

Understanding the perspectives of our stakeholders is critical to identifying and managing our priorities. By continuously engaging with multiple stakeholders in all markets and developing our processes, we ensure that our sustainability strategy is built on the non-financial aspects that are most material to our stakeholders. This is an important part of keeping our business resilient.

Stakeholder Interaction

Our long-term success is tightly linked to how we manage our business in a sustainable manner and more specifically how we interact with our different stakeholders. For each stakeholder group, we have developed customized interaction strategies, as presented in a simplified model to the right. These strategies are helping us to minimize the negative impacts and amplify opportunities for positive impact on society, to create shared value for all parties.

Stakeholder Engagement & Materiality

Our stakeholder engagement process is the basis for our materiality matrix and helps us prioritize. Our stakeholder engagement is carried out continously over the year by channeling information from different functions in the organization to the sustainability function. Data is collected through e.g. quality assurance processes, employee surveys as Great Place to Work, and sales dialogues.

 

Most simplified, the model to the right demonstrates this process:

1. Analysis of external and internal perspectives
Identify mega, industry, and sustainability trends relevant to Hoist Finance and our stakeholders.
2. Stakeholder mapping and prioritization
Prioritise stakeholder groups for the coming year.
3. Design process
Design the level of ambition for the engagement and identify the most effective approach.
4. Engagement
Stakeholder engagement are performed with stakeholders through surveys, interviews or workshops.
5. Review, report and act
Review and analyse results and develop action plan to translate insights to action. Communicate results externally.

 

Materiality

Our stakeholder engagement in 2020, based on interviews and surveys, was the basis of our Materiality Matrix, plotting the non-financial areas with largest impact on Hoist Finance business success and importance to external stakeholders. The materiality matrix defines the issues most material to the organization, and thus guides the development of our sustainability strategy, our everyday work, and our reporting. The stakeholder groups involved are customers, clients, investors & analytics and employees and the result of the Materiality Matrix builds on a consolidated review of their collected key topics of interest. The Matrix is presented below.

Read about our business model for value creation

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