Stakeholders
Stakeholders help shape our approach to corporate responsibility.
Our major stakeholders include clients,
employees, current and prospective
investors (inlcuding socially
responsible investors), suppliers,
governments, regulators, environmental organizations (NGOs) and community partners.
We have a number of strategies and processes in place to discover
and address what really matters to them, as outlined here.
Clients
We encourage clients to tell us what they think so we can
evaluate how well we are "earning the right to be their
first choice." We also use information gained through
public opinion surveys to develop product and client strategies.
Most of our businesses track client satisfaction as a key
measure of performance and use feedback to make improvements.
We record problems noted by clients in a central database,
and we interview a sampling directly to find out how well
their issues were resolved.
We obtain client feedback in a number of formal and informal
ways to support the development of high-calibre client, marketing
and channel strategies. We conduct customer satisfaction and
loyalty surveys and report results quarterly. We use feedback
input from our Client Care Centre and Office of the Ombudsman
to improve our products and services, and we track all issues
to ensure that systemic problems are corrected.
We generally use third-party suppliers to administer both
our external market benchmarking surveys as well as our internally
designed surveys to our customers.
Employees
We have conducted comprehensive employee opinion surveys
since the late 1980s, covering the following areas:
- Reward and recognition
- Leadership
- Supportive/collaborative
team environment
- Personal development
possibilities
- Job satisfaction/opportunity
to make a difference
- Working environment (issues such as health and safety,
social climate)
- Identification with
corporate values and strategy
We conduct a comprehensive survey across the organization
every two years, resulting in organizational and local priorities
and action plans. A targeted, sample-based survey is conducted
in the following year to follow up on action plans.
The survey is based on a comprehensive engagement model,
which we have subsequently linked to client loyalty and financial
performance to demonstrate the value chain relative to employee
engagement. On an annual basis we look at our engagement scores
and the drivers of engagement (across approximately 100 items)
including trend analysis and external benchmarking, and develop
action plans to address any gaps or emerging issues identified.
Results are presented to senior executive management, to the
Board of Directors and to individual unit managers, but we
do not share the results externally.
Investors/Shareholders
Investor Relations sets the overall investor strategy and
manages all relationships and communications with the investment
community, which includes investors, financial services analysts
and rating agencies. The investors consist of all classes
(common, preferred and fixed income) and types (institutional
and retail) spanning all geographies. This group also oversees
rating agency strategy, relationships and communications in
order to achieve high debt ratings for RBC.
Investor Relations communicates the views, concerns and perceptions
of investors, analysts and rating agencies to the Group Executive
Committee and the Board of Directors. We meet with shareholders
regularly on both an individual and group basis as well as
in person at our Annual Meeting of Common Shareholders. Feedback
from analysts and investors is taken into consideration as
we formulate our strategy and priorities. We interact with
the investment community in a variety of ways including our
quarterly reports to shareholders and Annual Reports, our
quarterly earnings releases, analyst calls, various external
websites and our annual Corporate Responsibility Reports and
Public Accountability Statements.
Socially Responsible Investors/Researchers
We regularly provide information to the socially responsible
investment community. However, we believe that the proliferation
of sustainability ratings, indices and information requests
from NGOs and other interested parties can divert a company's
resources from designing, implementing and managing actual
social and environmental programs. As a result, in order to
focus our energy and resources on the indices that are most
relevant to our stakeholders, we regularly perform a strategic
review of socially responsible investments (SRI) researchers,
rating agencies and analysts worldwide. We evaluate the most
prominent research companies and rating agencies, as well
as smaller or emerging agencies from regional markets. We
analyze the relevance of each to our priority geographic markets,
as well as the likelihood of our shareholders or potential shareholders to use research from companies or
agencies in markets in which we have little or no presence.
From this list, we select the research agencies to which we
proactively respond, and we regularly provide information
to them for the creation of their indices, ratings and rankings
for analysts and SRI investors.
Suppliers
Our relations with major suppliers are governed by Service
Level Agreements, with quarterly reports providing information
on customer service and service delivery standards.
Governments
We have ongoing relationships with all levels of government.
In Canada, regional public relations managers and representatives
engage with local elected officials at the community level.
At present, we advocate on a broad range of issues from taxation,
agriculture, consumer issues, employment and training, environment,
financial institutions, industry, internal trade, small business,
securities regulation, financial sector policy and competition
policy.
Environmental Organizations (NGOs)
We are actively involved in stakeholder engagement on the
environmental front. We liaise with a number of stakeholder
groups to discuss environmental issues related to policy development,
transaction review, portfolio management, operational impacts
and business development opportunities. These groups include
the Canadian Boreal Initiative, Durrell Wildlife Preservation
Trust, ForestEthics, World Wildlife Fund and Nature Conservancy
of Canada. We encourage clients and the public to contact
us with inquiries or concerns. Learn
more.
