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. On the increasingly important issue of water availability, for example, we held a “water futuring” workshop in 2013 with approximately 40 of our employees and outside stakeholders, to examine scenarios about water in the years ahead. Stakeholder input has also been critical to the development and testing of our approach to human rights and carbon dioxide reductions, among other issues.
• 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 Communities 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 and advanced product reveals 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.