Our Sustainability Strategy

Our sustainability strategy supports on four levels our objective of balancing ecological and social activities with the interests of our company. We comment on all four levels in detail in the following pages, as well as in the focus issue articles and our performance report.

1. Dialogue and commitment: We take account in our sustainability strategy of the expectations of our stakeholders. This basic understanding also applies to our employee relations and the discourse between industry, academia and politicians. In addition, it includes our social commitment.

2. Responsible business practices: Core aspects are compliance, a responsible human resources policy, product stewardship, issues of safety and health maintenance, and sustainable supplier management.

3. Integrating sustainability into our business: The sustainability strategy is accepted by all areas of the company, integrated into their business activities and implemented. Our innovations and products in particular make it an integral component of our business activities.

4.  Social challenges (relevant sustainability issues): Our Sustainability Program [ 6 ] [ @7 ] – close to our products – comprises solutions to major social challenges such as sustainable health care provision, high-quality nutrition for a growing population, and climate and resource protection. Our nine lighthouse projects illustrate particularly clearly the core of our strategy.

As a socially engaged, globally operating company, we know that open and transparent dialogue with our stakeholder groups is essential. We cannot achieve acceptance for our business activities without this regular discourse with our stakeholders. We believe that sustainable business and continuous dialogue are mutually dependent. We underscore this basic attitude with our commitment to the Responsible Care® [ 8 ] initiative of the chemical industry and the 10 principles of the United Nations Global Compact [ 9 ]. Furthermore, we are driving forward the strategic evolution of sustainability [ @11 ] internationally as an original signatory to the Global Compact initiative “Corporate Sustainability Leadership – LEAD” under the auspices of the United Nations.

We seek targeted dialogue with our stakeholders at the local, national and international levels. Our direct partners are our employees, customers and suppliers. The group comprising investors safeguards our economic foundation. We also seek dialogue with representatives of public interest groups, with residents in the communities near our sites, non-governmental organizations and politicians comprising the third stakeholder group. Also among the representatives of the public interest is the general public itself. Finally, we operate within a framework of action that is determined by legislation, scientific findings and public bodies.

We see dialogue with our various stakeholders as the global basis for building mutual understanding and trust, and as an opportunity to openly communicate to each other points of view and courses of action. Together, we identify challenges and analyze them from various perspectives. Important suggestions by our stakeholders serve as impulses for the company. Through this approach, we recognize risks earlier, discover improvement possibilities and are able to exploit trends and new market opportunities. In 2011, therefore, we aim to apply a newly developed tool for all strategic investment projects: the Stakeholder Check should make it possible to consider the views of stakeholders more effectively in investment decisions. With the materiality analysis, we determine which issues are crucial to the company by juxtaposing their importance for our external stakeholders with their relevance to Bayer (see table).

Bayer has developed a range of measures and formats that enable us to adequately communicate with our stakeholder groups. We have integrated various practical examples of stakeholder dialogue [ @10 ] into the following sections. Examples and forms of dialogue that were central for us in 2010 are summarized additionally in an online overview.

Employee surveys and annual discussions in particular provide our employees with further opportunities to voice suggestions and criticisms. More on this topic can be seen in the Employees section. In interaction with our investors, investor conferences, roadshows, individual meetings, the Annual Stockholders’ Meeting and the IR website are important communication tools. Our Board of Management and the Investor Relations Department maintain a regular dialogue with private and institutional investors and financial analysts, informing them, for example, about our sustainable development activities with the support of the Environment & Sustainability Department in the Corporate Center.

As a strategic measure with long-term consequences, sustainability management is a task for the entire Bayer Group that can only be implemented together with the subgroups and service companies. Accordingly, a Group-level committee is at the core of the leadership structure: the Bayer Community Board for Sustainable Development (CB SD) headed by the member of the Board of Management responsible for Innovation, Technology and Environment. The board holds responsibility for the alignment and steering of our Group-wide sustainability strategy. This Group-level board defines objectives and initiatives, adopts corresponding Group regulations and monitors their implementation. Further members include one member of the board of management of each of the subgroups, the Executive Board Chairman of Bayer Business Services and the Managing Director of Bayer Technology Services, and the heads of seven Corporate Center departments.

At the specialist level, the Bayer Community Council for Sustainable Development supports the operational alignment of sustainability and coordinates the corporate processes and functions throughout the Bayer Group. It processes interdisciplinary specialist issues and deploys expert committees and subcommittees when necessary. The sustainability officers from the subgroups and service companies steer the implementation of the strategy under the leadership of the Head of Environment & Sustainability. In addition to these Group-level bodies, the subgroups, regions and countries have also created organizational structures that focus on specifically relevant topics, objectives and measures.

The Bayer Sustainable Development Policy governs not only our actions, but also regulates cooperation with other bodies. It affects the subgroups’ structures and thematically related bodies such as the Bayer Community Council for Innovation, the Bayer Community Council for Industrial Operations or the Bayer Community Council for Politics. We coordinate our sustainability alignment particularly closely with the Bayer Community Council for Health, Safety, Environment & Quality, a subordinated committee of the Community Board for Technology, Innovations & Environment. This body is supplemented by the newly created Bayer Safety Council.

The Group-level Community Board for Sustainable Development (CB SD) forms the core of our leadership structure: front row (from left): Dr. Tony Van Osselaer, Bayer MaterialScience, Head of Industrial Operations, Ursula Mathar, CB SD Secretary, Dr. Wolfgang Plischke, Head of CB SD, member of the Board of Management of Bayer AG, Jörg Krell, Head of the Corporate Office. Middle row (from left): Dr. Roland Hartwig, Head of Law & Patents, Dr. Alexander Moscho, Head of Corporate Development, Dr. Dirk Van Meirvenne, Managing Director of Bayer Technology Services, Dr. Wolfgang Grosse Entrup, Head of Environment & Sustainability. Back row (from left): Dr. Franz-Josef Placke, Bayer CropScience, Head of Development, Dr. Hartmut Klusik, Bayer HealthCare, Head of Product Supply, Daniel Hartert, Chairman of the Executive Board of Bayer Business Services. Not pictured: Dr. Horst-Uwe Groh, Head of Corporate Human Resources & Organization, Dr. Alexander Rosar, Head of Investor Relations, Michael Schade, Head of Communications.

Responsible Care is a central objective for Bayer, as our activities in the 1970s and 1980s demonstrate. We have compiled an online overview of the evolution of sustainability at Bayer.

Today more than ever, Bayer as a globally operating company and its responsible Group committees are judged according to whether the sustainability strategy is integrated into the company’s structures through specific programs and measures.

We have firmly anchored the sustainability concept in our internal Group regulations. These include, for example, the Bayer Sustainable Development Policy [ 12 ], our position on human rights [ 13 ] and labor conditions, the Corporate Compliance Policy [ 14 ], the Directive on Integrity & Responsibility in Communications and Marketing [ 15 ] and our procurement directives.

On this basis we develop Group directives on issues such as HSEQ audits, donations, process and plant safety or supplier management (Supplier Code of Conduct [ 16 ] ). The aim here is to ensure that our sustainability strategy is consistently implemented in all parts of the company and along the entire value chain. These directives are supported primarily by efficient management systems that are explained in further detail in the Ecology section.

After being successfully tested in 2009, the Bayer Sustainability Check is now being introduced systematically throughout the Bayer Group. This tool assesses the sustainability impact of our products and product groups. The tools with which we actively implement and anchor the issues of compliance and risk management and procurement management in our organization are presented in more detail in the Management and Corporate Governance section. We have made available online an overview of the integration of sustainability [ @17 ] at all Group levels.

In 2005, we established for the first time ambitious and to a major extent measurable goals with the five-year program of objectives “2006+.” In the past years we have regularly reported on our progress and challenges in this area. The program was established following stakeholder analyses, benchmark studies and a stronger focus in the Bayer Group on the issue of sustainability.

The program of objectives has strengthened awareness in the company for its responsibility for sustainable development, raised internal acceptance and highlighted the business potential offered by sustainability. It has helped to make our sustainability management more transparent and measurable for stakeholders and enabled us to further develop the corresponding tools. Special mention should be made of our achievements in occupational health and safety, the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, the implementation of our own Human Rights Position and the development of a sustainable procurement management system.

A more detailed overview of the /en/program-of-objectives-2006-2010.pdfx is available online.

Governance through objectives and performance indicators is an essential component of sustainability management at Bayer. This enables us to generate transparency and ease of verification for our stakeholders, according to Dr. Wolfgang Grosse Entrup, Head of Environment & Sustainability in the Corporate Center. Following the completion of the 2006 - 2010 program, Bayer has now set ambitious new targets to be achieved by 2015. We have consistently aligned these to our value chain. They also include our ambitious long-term climate objectives regarding greenhouse gas reduction which we have once again tightened up. Our “Targets 2015,” which relate primarily to specifically measurable indicators, and our Sustainability Program with its objectives clearly illustrate the direction in which we want to go, namely toward an even stronger integration of sustainability into our business activities. In this way we aim to further improve our position as a responsible enterprise and drive forward more strategically our contribution to the sustainable development of society.

All the new targets for 2015 can be found here.
We have assigned them to the five fields of activity in this report: management & corporate governance, employees, innovation & products, ecology and social commitment. They can also be found at the beginning of each section.