Material matters

Our materiality analysis identifies the significant economic, environmental, social and governance factors that could substantively influence the decisions our capital providers and other stakeholders make about Gold Fields’ ability to deliver on its strategic objectives and create value over the short, medium and long term. This analysis contributes to the development of the Group’s business plans and strategies.

Gold Fields conducts an annual materiality analysis, which is informed by our strategic and risk management processes, among others. Our 2020 materiality analysis expands our 2019 build-up of material topics or matters. In the 2019 exercise we focused on revising and updating our scope and boundaries in line with our changing business footprint, confirmed our economic, environmental, social and governance-focused material matters, and prioritised and ranked those topics that are most important to Gold Fields and our stakeholders.

During our 2020 analysis, we revisited our 2019 material topics to confirm their continued relevance to Gold Fields. The impact of Covid-19 – to both Gold Fields and our stakeholders – was a new material topic introduced to this year’s analysis, and has been rated as the most material matter during the year. We separated stakeholder engagement and relations from direct and indirect socio-economic benefits in 2020, mostly due to the significance of this topic to our stakeholders. The ranking of other material matters did not change in 2020, and there were no significant inclusions or exclusions from the overall matters identified previously.

We identified opportunities to diversify our stakeholder engagements and widen the number of interviewees from different stakeholder groups.

We were not able to have as many face-to-face stakeholder interactions as originally planned, but through electronic interviews and engagements, as appropriate, we could conduct and supplement our engagements while navigating Covid-19-related restrictions. This enabled us to receive input from material stakeholders across the Group, including employees, host communities, governments, industry associations, media, third parties and traditional authorities.

In line with our revised 2019 presentation of the material matters, we categorised our material matters as economic, environmental, social and governance. The 2020 materiality analysis is concluded with an internal validation process to confirm strategic alignment with our business.

The map below graphically represents the outcomes of the 2020 materiality assessment:

MATERIALITY ASSESSMENT