Why Are Quality Relationships Important?
Maintaining quality relationships with our employees, customers, suppliers, dealers and society at large is not just the right thing to do, it is an important part of our ability to meet our goals and build a strong business. Quality relationships with employees and business partners help us improve efficiencies, cost and quality, and develop and deliver new innovations. Strong two-way communication with dealers, customers and society at large helps us understand and deliver products that customers want and attract new customers. Finally, maintaining quality relationships with our suppliers allows us to partner with them to implement the environmental and human rights initiatives we believe are critical to sustainable business.
Our forums for communicating and engaging with these stakeholders are summarized in this table. Please see the Products and Customers section for discussion of our relationships with customers and the Community section for information on how we engage with the communities in which we do business.
Assessing Materiality
Our materiality analysis identified that quality of relationships and diversity were important issues for both the Company and our stakeholders. Specifically, our analysis identified that issues of employee relationships, supplier relationships and dealer relationships, community engagement and impacts, and diversity and inclusion ranked as highly or moderately important.
Our key issue "focus" in this section is diversity and inclusion. We believe that building and supporting diversity is critical to the quality of our relationships and the success of our business. This section also addresses our efforts to build and maintain strong relationships with employees, dealers, and suppliers. For a more detailed overview of our community engagement activities, please see the Community section of this report.
