P02: Policies on Social Issues – Above Green

(1.8 points)

Intent

The intent of this indicator is to describe the existence and scope of policies that address social issues. Policies on social issues assist organizations with incorporating social criteria into their business practices and managing social risks.

Requirements

Select Yes or No: If selecting Yes, select applicable sub-options.

Does the entity have a policy or policies on social issues?

Yes
- Select all material issues which are covered by a policy or policies (multiple answers possible)
  - Child labor
  - Community development
  - Customer satisfaction
  - Employee engagement
  - Forced or compulsory labor
  - Freedom of association
  - Health and safety: community
  - Health and safety: contractors
  - Health and safety: employees
  - Health and safety: supply chains
  - Health and safety: users
  - Inclusion and diversity
  - Labor standards and working conditions
  - Local employment
  - Social enterprise partnering
  - Stakeholder relations
  - Other: ____________
No
- Provide additional context for the answer provided (not validated, for reporting purposes only)
  ________________________

Prefill: This indicator is similar to the one included in the 2019 Assessment and some sections have been prefilled from the 2019 Assessment. Review the response and/or evidence carefully.

2020 changes: i). ‘Local employment’ was added as a social issue. ii.) Section on which stakeholder(s) the policy applied to has been removed.

Note: The policy or policies must be existing and valid policies during the Reporting Year identified in EC 4.

Validation

Evidence: Document upload or hyperlink. The evidence should sufficiently support all the items selected for this question. If a hyperlink is provided, ensure that it is not outdated and the relevant page can be accessed within two steps.

Evidence requirements:

Demonstrate that there is a formal policy document in place and not simply a list of general goals and/or commitments.
Specifically addresses each Social issue selected. For example, a policy on issues such as local employment or child labor.

Acceptable evidence may include a formal policy that is in place such as an Social Policy document, official documents or links to online resources describing the entity's Social policies. Reference can be provided, such as bullets or passages within a policy, to describe the goals or ambition for each issue.

Note: If certain social issues are embedded in law and/or regulation in the countries of operation, the entity may select the relevant checkbox and evidence can be provided as a reference to the specific law or regulation on the provided Document Upload Cover Page (see Appendix 12).

Other: State the other social issue. Ensure that the other answer provided is not a duplicate of a selected option above (e.g., modern slavery when ‘forced or compulsory labor’ is selected). It is possible to report multiple other answers.If valid, the issue will be assigned Medium Relevance.

Document upload: Participants may upload several documents. When providing a document upload, it is mandatory to indicate where relevant information can be found within the document.

See Appendix 4 of the reference guide for additional information about GRESB Validation.

Scoring

This indicator is scored as a Two Section Indicator (i.e. Section 1: 'Elements' response and, Section 2: 'Evidence' response).

Section 1: Fractional points are awarded depending on the participant selecting the issues deemed material by the GRESB Materiality Assessment (see output in RC7 which will automatically populate once the indicators RC3 and RC7 of the Asset Assessment have been fully completed). It is therefore not necessary to select all checkboxes to receive maximum points. Fractional points are then aggregated to calculate the indicator’s final score.

Other: Any ‘other’ answer provided will be manually validated and must be accepted before achieving the respective fractional score. If multiple ‘other’ answers are listed, more than one may be accepted in manual validation, but only one will be counted towards the score.

Materiality-based scoring: This indicator applies materiality-based scoring. Specific materiality weightings are assigned to the entity for each ESG issue in the GRESB Materiality Assessment indicator (RC7). The weightings are set at one of four levels for each of the ESG issues: No Relevance, Low Relevance, Medium Relevance, and High Relevance. Where an issue is of 'No relevance' or ‘Low relevance’ then the issue is not considered in scoring (i.e. there is no impact on score whether or not the issue is addressed). If an issue is of 'Medium relevance' then the issue counts towards the score with ‘medium’ weighting. If an issue is of 'High relevance' then the issue counts towards the score with ‘high’ weighting.

All issues of “Medium relevance” and “High relevance” need to be selected and addressed in the evidence to obtain the maximum score. For more details refer to the section on Materiality Based Scoring in this Reference Guide or download the GRESB Materiality & Scoring Tool.

Section 2: ‘Evidence’ is mandatory for this indicator. Therefore, no points will be awarded unless the hyperlink and/or the uploaded document is considered valid, based on the evidence criteria stated above. The evidence is validated which determines a multiplier, according to the table below:

Evidence: The evidence is manually validated and assigned a multiplier, according to the table below. The evidence must support the validation requirements. If any requirements are not met, the evidence may be partially accepted or not accepted depending on the level of alignment with the requirements.

Validation status	Score
Accepted	2/2
Partially accepted	1/2
Not accepted/not provided	0

Materiality-based scoring: The scoring of this indicator links to the Materiality for the entity, as determined by the GRESB Materiality Assessment (RC7).

Specific materiality weightings are assigned to the entity for each ESG issue as described in (RC7). The weightings are set at one of four levels for each of the ESG issues: No Relevance, Low Relevance, Medium Relevance, and High Relevance. Where an issue is of 'No relevance' or ‘Low relevance’ then the issue is not considered at all in scoring (i.e. there is no impact on score whether or not the issue is addressed). If an issue is of 'Medium relevance' then the issue counts towards the score with ‘standard’ weighting. If an issue is of 'High relevance' then the issue counts towards the score with higher than ‘standard’ weighting.

All issues of “Medium relevance” and “High relevance” need to be selected and addressed in the evidence to obtain the maximum score.

Terminology

Child labor: Work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to their physical or mental development including by interfering with their education. Specifically, it means types of work that are not permitted for children below the relevant minimum age.

Community development: A process where community members come together to take collective action and generate solutions to common problems.

Customer satisfaction: Customer satisfaction is one measure of an entity's sensitivity to its customers’ needs and preferences and, from an organizational perspective, is essential for long-term success. In the context of sustainability, customer satisfaction provides insight into how the entity approaches its relationship with one stakeholder group (customers).

Employee engagement: An employee's involvement with, commitment to and satisfaction with the entity.

Forced or compulsory labor: All work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered themselves voluntarily.

Freedom of association: Right of employers and workers to form, to join and to run their own organizations without prior authorization or interference by the state or any other entity.

Health and safety: The principles of occupational health and safety management systems include developing a policy, analyzing and controlling health and safety risks, providing training, and recording and investigating health and safety incidents.

Inclusion and diversity: Composition of governance bodies and breakdown of employees per employee category according to gender, age group, minority group membership, and other indicators of diversity including discrimination.

Labor standards and working conditions: Labor standards and working conditions are at the core of paid work and employment relationships. Working conditions cover a broad range of topics and issues, from working time (hours of work, rest periods, and work schedules) to remuneration, as well as the physical conditions and mental demands that exist in the workplace.

Local employment: Providing jobs and skills to local people as employees, and to local contractors.

Policy: Defines an organizational commitment, direction or intention as formally adopted by the organization.

Social enterprise partnering: An entity's partnerships with organizations that have social objectives that serve as the primary purpose of the organization.

Stakeholder relations: The practice of forging mutually beneficial connections with third-party groups and individuals that have a stake in common interest.

References

Supply Chain Sustainability School (UK and Australia), 2012

Alignment with External Frameworks

GRI Standards 2016 - 103-2: The management approach and its components

GRI Standards 2016 - 400 series: Social Standards

Good practice example: Please refer to this link.