It is important that our many stakeholders understand and feel informed and engaged in our business and understand the contribution we make to a sustainable built environment, through clear, concise and accurate communication.

Creating two-way communications with our stakeholders and responding to their needs is an essential part of becoming a sustainable business, and is an important element in our sustainability strategy. By talking and listening to stakeholders in an open, honest and transparent way, we keep track of their concerns and interests, potentially identifying emerging issues before they become a bigger problem.

Our key stakeholder groups are:

● Employees
● Communities
● Customers
● Suppliers
● Shareholders
● Government and other public bodies
● Trade associations
● Non-governmental organisations, sustainability organisations and advisors.

The case studies featured throughout this report provide real examples of how we have engaged and collaborated with these various groups throughout the year.

We keep people informed through newsletters, open days and consultations. One important way of communicating with our stakeholders is through this, our sustainability report, which we produce annually in compliance with the Global Reporting Initiative’s G4 guidelines at core level.

During 2016 we continued to use digital and social media channels, chiefly LinkedIn, YouTube and Twitter, to communicate with external audiences. We continued to build our LinkedIn presence and enhance our local community engagement channels.

Our network of social media ambassadors helped us to manage Tarmac’s reputation and position the business as an employer of choice by using their own social media channels to share news from Tarmac and tell the story of our business in their own words. We will be reviewing our social media channels in 2017.

We do not make donations or payments to politicians or political parties, elected officials or public servants.
We engage constructively with regulators and policy makers in the UK and the European Union, either directly or through industry trade bodies. We are mindful that the positions we take on issues that affect our company, markets and communities need to be in line with our sustainability strategy and business code of conduct.

Following the referendum vote for the UK to leave the European Union, Tarmac made early representations to the new Government to follow through and accelerate the delivery of the infrastructure pipeline in order to stimulate economic growth in a period of uncertainty.

We make sure our employees are fully informed about our business and can input their views, including through our quarterly employee magazine, Altogether, and our intranet site, which we call Vault. We also hold formal monthly face-to-face employee briefings delivered by team leaders, where staff can feedback their views, and provide a forum for viewpoints through our use of Google Communities and regular employee polls on our intranet.

However, we are also conscious that many of our employees work in outdoor environments where the internet is not always available, and we therefore provide alternative communication channels, including having information sent to home email addresses, mobile phones and where appropriate, direct mail.

Read our case study: Understanding our employees

We have continued to promote our new, ‘Make Your Mark’ careers website, and focus on promoting construction as an aspirational career choice, and prioritising the recruiting graduates, higher apprentices and apprentices.

Our regional sites have also continued to engage local communities around our planning activities, using public exhibitions, open days and statutory consultations.

Learn more about our Community Engagement