Grupo Sousa

The Group has always been actively involved in measures to promote the well-being of its people, to support and invest in the communities where it operates and to reduce its ecological footprint. This meant that the project was the logical next step, in line with the sustainability principles that the Group already defended and adopted, and because the Group is a key player in the regions where it operates and where it seeks to leave a positive mark. The impetus from its partners, who are fellow-travellers on this journey, combined with the need to respond to European requirements and standards, added to the momentum towards designing a medium and long term strategy involving all the Group's operational areas.

Because of the importance the Group assigns to these issues, it started the exercise of determining its contribution to society back in 2018. This exercise helped the Group to quantify in material terms the social, economic or environmental impact of its operations on the regions where it operates. The Group believes that awareness of its true value is not limited to its bottom line at the end of the business year, but extends to its contribution in different dimensions and the way that management decisions, operational activities, programmes to support people, returning resources to the community or environmental impact affect its current value. The Group is increasingly convinced that the way it allocates its resources to achieve its goals cannot be viewed only through the traditional lens of financial reporting, and that it needs a consistent measurement approach, which encompasses economic impacts but also the environmental and social impacts for all stakeholders and for the wider community. As a result, this methodology started to contribute to decision-making as from 2018, in particular as regards prioritisation of measures and action plans, and consequently, in reply to the previous question, in relation to strategy design and monitoring.

At this moment, the Group is at the concluding phase of its double materiality analysis, which has proved to be an enormous challenge. The Group had not previously addressed each of the topics involved in the double materiality analysis in such an integrated manner, either in terms of impacts, or in terms of risks and opportunities. It has essentially been an exercise in introspection which will of course need to be improved and reviewed, year after year. This exercise has forced the Group to rethink and set the coordinates for its strategy, action plan and the measures it implements, in the light of the topics identified as materially relevant and as having an impact, so that its efforts are focused and concentrated on the topics that are truly material to the company itself and to society at large. Despite this being one of the challenges of the moment and a tough assignment, giving rise to multiple uncertainties, due to both its complexity and to it all being still very new, reporting is just the "tip of the iceberg" and the result of a busy process of mapping out risks, opportunities and positive and negative impacts.

KPMG got involved in this area in 2018 with the challenge laid down to the Group to determine its contribution to society, and since then it has followed through and supported the process of "professionalisation" of consolidated reporting. The main contributions that KPMG has made during this period have been the ability to constantly challenge the Group, above all in its strategic thinking, to support us in identifying best practices to follow and implement and the ability to simplify and transmit this simplified vision of topics which, on first sight and when first addressed, appear difficult to understand. In addition, KPMG's knowledge of the Group and its history, combined with its technical feedback and expertise in this area, has added a lot to the process, and the Group believes that it has been a constant learning experience for both organisations.