At ARCADIS we are committed to operating our business in a socially responsible and sustainable way. To underline this commitment we have established a global policy for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). This policy is anchored in ARCADIS’ General Business Principles, which embed integrity into our business and describe our responsibilities and commitments towards stakeholders. Our employees are encouraged to share these commitments and have to sign our integrity code. Equally important is the attitude of our people as reflected in our mission: passionately contributing to a balanced and sustainable development of the human habitat, in open dialogue with all stakeholders.

Our CSR policy applies to all ARCADIS employees and governs our approach to all our activities. It includes five pillars:

CSR is an integral part of our strategy. The implementation and monitoring of the CSR policy is the responsibility of the Executive Board and management of each operating company. ARCADIS has dedicated persons for each CSR pillar, who have a primary responsibility to ensure its global implementation.

Stakeholder engagement
Our key stakeholder groups are society, clients, employees and shareholders. We engage with stakeholders to deepen our insights into their needs and expectations, and to serve them better. Stakeholder engagement helps us direct our strategy and actively promote initiatives that address their needs, including:

• Sustainable urbanization. Our partnership with UN-HABITAT to improve quality of life in rapidly growing cities, generates high levels of employee involvement.
• Climate Change. We subscribe to the Cancun Communiqué on Climate Change, a call from the international business community for global action on climate change.
• Trends in CSR. In May 2010, we held interviews and organized our Annual European Executive Roundtable for multinational clients, discussing CSR topics and trends.

We engage with stakeholders through various channels, including our annual shareholders’ meetings, customer and employee surveys and public hearings for specific projects. We intend to further develop these engagement efforts in 2013.

U.N. Global Compact
ARCADIS is member of U.N. Global Compact and is committed to its objectives and principles regarding human rights, labor standards, environmental stewardship and anti-corruption. Because of the nature of our business and the countries in which we operate, we are rarely faced with issues on human rights and labor standards. Nevertheless, we believe it is our obligation to ensure these are respected in our work and projects. ARCADIS regards its primary suppliers as partners and collaborates with them to help achieve its ambitions. More details of our contribution to U.N. Global Compact can be found at:
  www.arcadis.com/globalcompact

Global Reporting Initiative
The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) framework is the most widely used, standardized corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting framework in the world.  ARCADIS has followed the GRI G3 Sustainability Reporting Guidelines for reporting on CSR performance, the output for which is presented in the ARCADIS Annual Report 2012.  In so doing, levels of materiality were taken into consideration in selecting the indicators relevant for the business. Click here to view our 2012 disclosure in details.