Sustainability

Sustainability Review and Governance

For Tata Steel, sustainability is an integral part of the business and is driven by the Company’s leadership, with an organisation-wide governance structure around it.

The performance related to various sustainability aspects is reviewed at the Corporate as well as the Board levels. The scope and membership of the Board-level Committees have been detailed in the Corporate Governance Report. (Refer Page 114) At the Corporate level, various committees review the sustainability and governance initiatives. These include the Apex Safety Committee, Apex Environment Committee, Apex HRD Committee, Apex CSR Committee, Apex R&D Committee and Quality and Production Meeting. These Committees are chaired by the Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director or the Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer.

FY 2017-18 has been a year in which the Company has strengthened the governance structure for addressing the environmental, social and people-related material issues and mitigating the related risks.

A new Safety, Health and Sustainability division was created and is led by a new dedicated VP (Safety, Health and Sustainability) for focussed action planning and review. A new team of about 80 sustainability champions was constituted across Tata Steel India to create capabilities for integrated approach and to drive sustainability issues across the organisation. In addition, the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) team, responsible for conducting LCA studies for the processes and products of the Company, was integrated with the Corporate Sustainability Group. To keep ourselves abreast with the changing global environment, emerging stakeholder needs and the risks and opportunities thereof, Tata Steel has undertaken an extensive stakeholder engagement and ‘materiality assessment’.

Thought Leadership with Participation in National and International Forums

Our senior leaders actively engage with various industry bodies such as the World Steel Association (WSA), the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC), UN Global Compact (UNGC) and the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), guiding the Company further on implementing sustainability practices.

Creating a Culture of Sustainability

Corporate Sustainability shares the best sustainability practices, benchmark data and reports on the key developments in the organisation through a quarterly Sustainability Management Information Systems (MIS). Customised awareness programmes for Tata Steel employees are conducted at regular intervals across the Company. Such programmes on relevant aspects of sustainability are also made available to external stakeholders such as suppliers and the community. Focussed campaigns and celebrations (such as World Environment Day, World Water Day, Biodiversity Day, Safety Week, World Health Day and Ethics Month) are undertaken to drive awareness on environmental, health and safety issues. In June every year, we celebrate the Tata Sustainability Month to mainstream sustainability in our business and conduct focussed campaigns for all employees, suppliers and the community. In 2017, Tata Sustainability Month was celebrated with the theme of ‘Mainstreaming Sustainability’, touching more than 1,000 stakeholders, including Group Companies, employees, suppliers and the community.

External Experts’ Perspectives

Our Corporate Sustainability team also drives various external assessments such as the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) and those conducted by the CII. We use feedback from these external assessments for further improvement. We use the feedback from the panel of experts of IIRC for bringing about improvements in our IR.