Engaging With These Stakeholders

Stakeholder engagement takes place in countless formal and informal ways every day across our Company, from meetings with local community groups to market research with customers to gatherings of Ford dealers and suppliers.

At the corporate level, we use a variety of mechanisms to engage with stakeholders on sustainability issues to help us better understand the broader societal issues that our Company addresses. Some of these mechanisms are informal and ad hoc. In fact, simply picking up the telephone to discuss an issue with any of the numerous sustainability-related organizations or individuals with whom Ford has a relationship is a part of our standard protocol.

Indeed, the very process of engaging with stakeholders on our Sustainability Report has led to expanded and enhanced information in the report in a number of areas, including our positions on key public policy and other issues.

Some of our more formal engagement mechanisms include the following:

• The creation of forums to gather stakeholder input on our activities, challenges and performance. We work with stakeholder committees to help shape and provide feedback on our Sustainability Reports. For example, working with a Ceres Stakeholder Committee is one of the important ways we get input from stakeholders – including environmental groups, engaged shareholder groups and investors – to inform and shape our reporting approach and our materiality analysis. We have also organized meetings with individuals and groups of stakeholders to solicit input on the key sustainability challenges and opportunities facing Ford. These and other engagements have provided valuable feedback on our sustainability strategy.
• Outreach on emerging and ongoing issues of particular importance to Ford or our stakeholders. We believe we have taken a thoughtful approach to our stakeholders as we work through challenging issues. For example, stakeholder input has been critical to the development and testing of our approach to human rights over the past several years. Several organizations, notably the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), have been key partners with Ford, providing information, input and feedback at every step of the process, especially during conversations around shareholder resolutions. Our engagement with the ICCR and others helped us formulate our public commitment to product carbon dioxide reductions. We have also done outreach to the United Nations Global Compact, particularly as we developed our strategy to be a global leader in human rights, and have worked with stakeholders to address specific issues in the automotive industry supply chain. (See the Human Rights section for more detail.)
• Engagement with local stakeholders in the communities in which we operate as part of our Code of Human Rights, Basic Working Conditions and Corporate Responsibility assessment process. Read more about our community engagement in our Community section.
• Consultation with organizations that have implemented campaigns targeting Ford. We are not currently being targeted by organizations implementing campaigns. However, in the past we have benefited from the alternative perspectives presented during these consultations.
• Engagement with rating and ranking organizations in the investment community. This has provided insight into external perspectives on some important issues and our relative performance in addressing them.
• Offering new product test-drive opportunities to our employees, who, in turn, communicate about our vehicles to their friends and families. Read more about our employee engagement efforts in the People section.