Stakeholder Dialog at Bertelsmann

Every day, Bertelsmann reaches more than one billion people worldwide with its content, brands, and formats. This brings the company into contact with a wide range of external stakeholders, such as potential employees or B2B customers. Dialog with stakeholders is an important part of the strategic development of CR at Bertelsmann.

As part of so-called CR relevance analyses, Bertelsmann regularly determines which Corporate Responsibility (CR) topics should be primarily focused on. In the fall of 2020, a total of 632 selected stakeholders shared their views on CR at Bertelsmann: internally, selected top executives and experts from the divisions were surveyed; externally, the participants were business partners, potential employees, bankers, CR experts, journalists and politicians. The core of the survey was the assessment of 19 CR topics – internally according to their relevance for the business and externally according to their relevance for stakeholders. All divisions took part in the survey, which was coordinated by the Bertelsmann CR Council. Based on the survey results from the divisions, the Executive Board adopted eight Bertelsmann CR priorities. Follow-up measures are now being defined at both the Group and divisional levels for further developing Corporate Responsibility at Bertelsmann.

List of 8 Bertelsmann Priority CR Topics