About this report (PDF - 385KB)

About this report

Stakeholder engagement

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AngloGold Ashanti recognises that, as the company conducts its business, so it has an impact, or has the potential to have an impact on a wide range of stakeholders.

The company has broadly identified the following principal stakeholders:

• employees
• unions
• employees' families and dependents
• communities surrounding operations or from which the company draws its labour
• shareholders
• business partners
• peer companies
• suppliers
• local, regional and national governments
• customers
• non-governmental and community-based organisations
• academic institutions
• regulatory authorities
• professional organisations.

A detailed list including many of the stakeholders with whom the various operations engage may be found on the website under the various sections. Included in this is the frequency and type of interaction engaged in.

This is the third year that the company has published a Report to Society. The Report to Society 2004 was widely disseminated to stakeholders in its printed form, as well as through the website. In addition, 2004 was the first year that the company published country operational reports. Following the publication of last year's report, feedback was sought from stakeholders in a variety of ways:

• a feedback form was provided in the printed report and on the website. Very little feedback was received in this way.
• an independent commentator was asked to evaluate the report and feedback was obtained.
• subject champions (those responsible for the various components of the report) at a corporate level were asked to disseminate the report as widely as possible to their stakeholders. Useful, but little feedback was received in this way.
• feedback was provided by independent assurers PricewaterhouseCoopers in a management report to the company.
• each operation and region was asked to provide specific feedback on the report, following interaction with local stakeholders. This was returned formally (through a questionnaire) and informally. The feedback received from this process revealed the following:
  • users of the report were often interested in a particular section of the report only, and not in the report in its entirety. Specific comments were given and have been addressed.
  • greater alignment was needed between internal and external reporting processes. To address this for example, the South Africa region's quarterly sustainable development report and the group sustainable development report now report against the same key indicators.
  • some users, particularly in South America for example, could not make use of the report owing to language barriers. Although the country reports were translated into Spanish in Argentina and Portuguese in Brazil, there was insufficient level of detail in them. To remedy this the country reports will be more comprehensive in 2005.
  • The Minerals Council of Australia indicated that the GRI indicators for the Australia region needed to be separated out from the group statistics to ensure that the report is compliant in Australia. Consideration is being given to this.

Overall, the level of engagement with the company by external audiences on the report and its contents was disappointing. In discussions with peers and others, it appears, however that this experience is not unique.

In 2006 the company plans to distribute the report as widely as in 2005. More attention will be given to obtaining direct and formal feedback from stakeholders.