RM2.2: Social Risk Assessment – Above Green

(3.55 points)

Intent

The intent of this indicator is to assess the entity’s understanding and mitigation of material social risks. Systematic responses to social issues include effective risk assessment, thoughtful mitigation planning, and implementation of action plans.

Requirements

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

Has the entity performed a social risk assessment(s) within the last three years?

Yes
- Select elements of the risk assessment process undertaken by the entity (multiple answers possible)
  - Risk assessments are regularly conducted or reviewed and updated
  - Risks are analyzed
  - Risks are evaluated and treated
- Select all material issues for which risk is assessed (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 chain
  - Health and safety: users
  - Inclusion and diversity
  - Labor standards and working conditions
  - Local employment
  - Social enterprise and partnering
  - Stakeholder relations
  - Other: ____________
No
- Provide additional context for the answer provided (not validated, for reporting purposes only)
  ________________________

2020 changes: “Local employment” added to the list of social issues.

Contractor and/or operator engagement: In some cases, an indicator addresses an activity that applies to the reporting entity, yet is undertaken by an assigned contractor, operator and/or contracted entity. This is often the case, for example, for PPP type arrangements. In these cases, when providing evidence, the participant should specify the entity undertaking the activity and the relationship to that entity, to verify how these actions are applicable to the reporting entity. Copies of redacted contractual agreements/clauses to verify these relationships are acceptable.

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 If a hyperlink is provided, ensure that it is not outdated and the relevant page can be accessed within two steps.

The provided evidence piece(s) should:

Confirm that a social risk assessment was conducted.
Contain all selected elements of the risk assessment process, highlighting or bringing attention to these where possible.
Include all selected issues within the assessment, highlighting or bringing attention to these where possible.

Evidence examples may include but are not limited to:

A document describing the entity’s social risk assessments or other tangible proof of the entity's risk assessment activity.
Acceptable evidence may include an extract of a procedure undertaken such as register or matrix, checklists, scenario analysis or a section of a social management plan addressing social risks.

Evidence completeness: Evidence does not necessarily need to be provided in full. Rather, the evidence needs to be sufficient to verify the existence of the claimed risk assessment for each issue.

Reporting Year: Evidence provided must refer to an assessment that has taken place within the last three years; up to and including the end of the reporting year identified in EC3.

Note: If certain social issues are embedded in law and/or regulation in the countries of operation, the entity may select the issue and evidence can be provided as a reference to the specific law or regulation and how it has been complied with, on the provided Evidence template.

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 uploaded: 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 having i.) financial or non-financial consequence of ESG targets and ii.) the selected group(s) of employees. Employee groups are not equally scored. Fractional points are then aggregated to calculate the indicator’s final score. It is not necessary to select all checkboxes to receive maximum points.

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

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.

Risk assessment: Careful examination of the factors that could potentially adversely impact the value or longevity of an infrastructure asset. The results of the assessment assist in identifying measures that have to be implemented in order to prevent and mitigate the risks.

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

DJSI CSA 2019 - 3.3.3 Emerging Risks

DJSI CSA 2019 - 3.3.4 Risk Culture

GRI Standards 2016 - 102-29: Identifying and managing economic, environmental and social impacts