The material sustainability issues for our company can influence the Group's commercial success in the short, medium and long term. With a view to identifying material non-financial topics, we conducted another stakeholder survey with an external partner in 2018. Representatives of the stakeholder groups comprised of customers, brokers, the capital market, employees, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and the public sector were surveyed by means of an online questionnaire and telephone interviews.
On this basis, our already existing materiality analysis was reviewed and adjusted. In this context, we took into account the various materiality approaches of the GRI, which constitutes the basis for our extensive annual Sustainability Report, and the German Commercial Code (HGB), on which the combined non-financial information statement is based. As a first step, potential issues were identified using internal sources and already received stakeholder feedback as well as information obtained from media analysis, a peer comparison and global standards. The issues were then categorised according to our four action fields in the context of the sustainability strategy. While the external survey developed on this basis focused on the relevance of these issues, the internal survey carried out among our employees included additional dimensions, namely "business relevance" and "impacts of business operations". All three dimensions were rated on a scale of 1 to 7, with the lowest figure indicating very low relevance and the highest reflecting a very high degree of relevance. We considered issues rated 5.0 and higher to be material for our company within the meaning of the CSR Directive Implementation Act (CSR-RUG). The survey findings were discussed and approved at an internal workshop attended by representatives of various specialist units and management.
In total, we identified 14 material sustainability issues in accordance with the Commercial Code and the GRI, which we discuss below in our Sustainability Report.