Stakeholder Engagement

Communication with our internal and external stakeholders is very important to us, both in daily business and on an ad hoc basis – e.g. in advance of the sustainability reporting. We took account of the concerns voiced by the stakeholders when defining our action areas and selecting the aspects to report. Outside of institutional dialog management such as that performed by Investor Relations, Corporate Communications or the Governmental Relations & Regulatory Affairs department, we are developing new channels of communication and expanding existing forms of dialog for the maintenance of our stakeholder relationships in the field of sustainability.

Below, we describe selected stakeholder dialogs of ProSiebenSat.1 Group:

• Customers: Dialog with our customers, such as advertisers and media agencies, but also end customers in our online trading business, helps us better identify their requirements in order to adjust advertising products and commerce offerings appropriately. Market analyses, surveys and face-to-face discussions provide us, for example, with information on which programming environments and TV formats are of interest to advertising customers.
• Audiences and users: Alongside the advertising industry, the most important stakeholders are the consumers of our offerings, i.e. TV audiences and users of our digital entertainment platforms. Direct interaction with them is very important to ProSiebenSat.1. Our Group runs 109 Facebook pages and 28 Twitter accounts relating to its TV brands. In addition, viewers can e-mail their questions about program content, suggestions or criticism to the central audience relations department. In 2015, this department processed around 107,000 queries.
• Employees: The success of our company is based on the competence and motivation of our employees. Communication with them therefore plays a particularly important role. There are regular work meetings as well as employee surveys on topics such as “engagement” and “commuting”. Moreover, we use the intranet to share the latest information, where we also provide a feedback channel.
• Analysts and investors: In numerous road shows and conferences, we outline business performance and the company outlook, take questions from the capital market on ESG issues and accept suggestions and recommendations. In particular, we have observed increased demands for the communication of governance issues and information on the company’s ecological performance. The activities are independently evaluated in various sustainability rankings (for example CDP Climate Change).
• Media representatives: ProSiebenSat.1 informs media representatives comprehensively, promptly and openly via various channels. These include press releases, press conferences, interviews and background discussions for journalists. We provide detailed information in German and English about our company, business activities and relevant sustainability issues on our Group website.
• Politicians, government and associations: As a DAX corporation and one of the biggest media companies in Germany, ProSiebenSat.1 is subjected to particular public attention. In the national and international dialog with representatives of governments, specialized agencies and parliaments, we contribute to the political discussion directly or via memberships in various associations and organizations.