To ensure we are addressing the issues with the most potential to impact our business and stakeholders, we maintain a sustainability materiality assessment. This includes a detailed assessment every few years, complemented by annual reviews to assess emerging issues and make sure we continue to focus on the issues of greatest relevance to our business and our stakeholders.
We completed our first formal sustainability materiality assessment in 2016. Since then, we have continually monitored and updated our priority issues. This year, we refreshed our 2016 assessment by taking a new approach, outlined below. We will continue to revisit our assessment and engage a broad group of stakeholders for their feedback on key environmental, social and governance topics.
We completed our first formal sustainability materiality assessment in 2016. Since then, we have continually monitored and updated our priority issues. This year, we refreshed our 2016 assessment by taking a new approach, outlined below. We will continue to revisit our assessment and engage a broad group of stakeholders for their feedback on key environmental, social and governance topics.
We completed our first formal sustainability materiality assessment in 2016. Since then, we have continually monitored and updated our priority issues. This year, we refreshed our 2016 assessment by taking a new approach, outlined below. We will continue to revisit our assessment and engage a broad group of stakeholders for their feedback on key environmental, social and governance topics.
To identify relevant issues to assess further, we worked with an independent consultant, GlobeScan, to review internal LS&Co. documents, including our original 2016 sustainability materiality assessment, sustainability strategy documents, key consumer insights and our supplier Sustainability Guidebook. GlobeScan also consulted external sources to review the priority issues identified by our peers as well as public reporting organizations and frameworks such as the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) and Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Standards. Through this analysis, we compiled a list of 28 issues relevant to our long-term business success, to our stakeholders, to the industry and to society at large.
We surveyed a wide range of internal and external stakeholders on these 28 issues as they relate to our business success, importance to society and our ability to make an impact. Among the external stakeholders were NGOs, apparel industry peers, think tanks, retail partners, research institutions, corporate leaders and investors. Internal stakeholders included employees within our operations, finance, product, legal, communications and IT functions, across all regions in which LS&Co. operates.
All 28 issues are important, and LS&Co. will continue to address each one as part of our global sustainability strategy. To make sure we were able to identify relevant priorities among these issues, GlobeScan used an approach known as maximum differential, or max-diff, scaling, which uses “best-worst” scaling to gauge respondents’ preference score for each issue. This technique results in more accurate and actionable findings, as respondents are compelled to be decisive. Without this approach, respondents could have ranked everything as important or would have had to rank a long list of issues, which can introduce significant inaccuracies.
Using the results of the reviews and surveys, GlobeScan created a matrix detailing our priority issues. The x-axis, which refers to the relative importance of the topics to LS&Co.’s business, also includes a weighting derived from the SASB materiality map, including the specific issues highlighted for “Apparel, Accessories & Footwear companies.” The y-axis highlights the relative importance of the topics to society at large — those issues related to the best interest of people and the planet.
Definitions of the 28 material issues are provided here.
The results of our latest sustainability materiality assessment are shown in the matrix, with the highest priority issues reflected in the top right. These results are in line with the highest priority issues identified by our peers and others in the industry. Many of the highest priority issues are also interdependent, requiring a holistic approach. While the remaining issues were ranked relatively lower in importance, all were identified as material and will remain significant to LS&Co. We will continue to assess how they connect to other issues and have established a management plan for each.
Overall, seven key themes emerged, reflecting the areas where we have the greatest opportunity to maximize our impact:
This sustainability report reflects the priorities identified through the assessment and provides detail about how we are addressing these priority issues and themes. Throughout this report, we have addressed these material issues through our management approaches and by establishing objectives and goals to manage them effectively.
