Stakeholder engagement

Barco attaches great importance to stakeholder engagement. After all, external perspectives help us identify and prioritize emerging issues and better align our strategy, actions and policies with the interests of our key stakeholder groups: customers, employees, investors, suppliers and (non-) governmental organizations. In addition, stakeholders can provide valuable feedback on our performance and other aspects of our activities, like transparency.

At Barco, every department is responsible for identifying and engaging with its stakeholders (i.e. those they affect or are affected by). Barco’s corporate functions provide the departments with a framework for stakeholder engagement (i.e. stakeholder identification and classification, guidelines for stakeholder communication, etc.). By continuing to standardize the process of interacting with our stakeholders, we can mitigate risks, identify new business opportunities and improve financial results. The engagement approach per key stakeholder group is the following:

Customers

“We think with the customer” is one of Barco’s core cultural building blocks. To succeed in our mission of enabling bright outcomes, we have to fully understand what our customers want and offer the relevant value propositions to deliver outstanding customer experiences. That’s why we are constantly raising the bar on customer experience – to become a truly customer-centric company.

We engage with our customers via:

NPS (Net Promotor Score) surveys;
Daily contacts in the field (sales, segment marketing, customer service, …);
(Virtual or live) events and partner summits;
Digital interaction via social media, website, etc.;
Press releases.

Employees

People are key to the success of our company. We want to deliver the best-possible working conditions to our people. This means ensuring employee engagement, providing a safe and healthy workspace, offering continuous training and development opportunities and making diversity and inclusion priorities.

We engage with our employees via:

Townhall meetings and Q&A sessions for all employees;
Regular updates on internal news portals (BarcoZone intranet, Yammer and video walls in our offices);
Inspiration sessions on several topics (including sustainability);
Frequent feedback sessions.

In case an employee wishes to report or discuss an issue, even anonymously:

They can talk to trained confidants;
They can report the issue to the Ethics mailbox.

Investors

We value the essential role that our capital providers play in the success and prosperity of the company, as they allow us to pursue long-term value creation. This should also lead to a continuous increase of the company’s valuation for the benefit of its shareholders. We actively seek engagement with investors, as well as with financial advisors who cover Barco on behalf of their financial market clients and ESG rating agencies.

We engage with investors via:

The investor relations section on the company website;
The Annual General Meeting of Shareholders;
Events like the Capital Markets Day, investor conferences and roadshows;
Quarterly conference calls, one-on-one telephone and video calls.

Suppliers

In order to meet our customers’ expectations for high-quality, innovative products, we rely on service and manufacturing partners from around the world. Barco maintains frequent contact with suppliers, evaluates and trains them to ensure that we continue to drive responsible and ethical behavior and high standards across our supply chain.

We engage with suppliers via:
Clear communication about our standards and their updates (Barco code of conduct for suppliers, Product compliance requirements and the Responsible minerals sourcing policy);
Monitoring and audit system to evaluate supplier performance;
Business reviews with strategic suppliers;
Trainings (webinars and e-learnings);
Supplier innovation days.

(Non-) governmental organizations

Barco is a member of several associations that operate on global, regional, and national levels and enters into dialogue with public authorities, policymakers, etc.

We engage with associations via:

Participation in working groups of policymakers;
Meetings, roundtables and conferences;
Participation in global networks;
Internships and lectures.

In addition, we contribute to various charitable institutions and community projects around the globe. Structural partnerships include those with Close the Gap, Sakshi and CanSupport.

Stakeholder Engagement Process

In 2020, we organized a comprehensive stakeholder engagement process, involving external as well as internal stakeholders, as input for our materiality assessment. In total, 111 stakeholders participated in surveys and interviews.

In June 2021, we set up a poll on the Barco corporate website, asking which sustainability topics matter most to our stakeholders when choosing a Barco product. In total 3,300 stakeholders participated in the survey. The results gave us a deeper understanding of how we can create more value for our stakeholders. These insights are being used to shape our R&D, product management and marketing activities.

Top 5 material topics by stakeholder group (2020 assessment):

The overall outcome of our stakeholder engagement can be found in the materiality assessment.