PO2: Social Issues

This indicator evaluates the existence and scope of policies that address social issues. Policies on social issues assist organizations with incorporating social criteria into their business practices and managing social risks.

Select Yes or No: If selecting 'Yes', select applicable sub-options.

Material social issues: Select all issues that are covered by the entity’s policy / policies. The policy or policies must exist and be valid during the reporting year provided in EC4. It is possible to report using the ‘Other’ answer option. Ensure that the ‘Other’ answer provided is not a duplicate or subset of another option. It is possible to report multiple ‘Other’ answers.

Terminology

Child labor

Work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to their physical or mental development including by interfering with their education. Specifically, it means types of work that are not permitted for children below the relevant minimum age.

Community

Persons or groups of persons living and/or working in any areas that are economically, socially or environmentally impacted (positively or negatively) by an entity’s ope

Contractors

Persons or organizations working onsite or offsite on behalf of an entity. A contractor can contract their own workers directly, or contract sub-contractors or independent contractors.

Community development

Actions to minimize, mitigate, or compensate for adverse social and/or economic impacts, and/or to identify opportunities or actions to enhance positive impacts on individuals/groups living or working in areas that are affected/could be affected by the organization's activities

Customer satisfaction

Customer satisfaction is one measure of an entity's sensitivity to its customers’ needs and preferences and, from an organizational perspective, is essential for long-term success. In the context of sustainability, customer satisfaction provides insight into how the entity approaches its relationship with one stakeholder group (customers).

Human capital

Human capital refers to the knowledge, culture, skills, experience, and overall contributions of an organization’s workforce. It encompasses strategies for fairly attracting, developing, and retaining talent, fostering a productive and engaged workplace, and ensuring fair and effective workforce management. Many organizational approaches can contribute to human capital objectives, including talent development & advancement; skills-based hiring & development; and diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Employee engagement

An employee's involvement with, commitment to and satisfaction with the entity.

Forced or compulsory labor

All work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered themselves voluntarily.

Freedom of association

Right of employers and workers to form, to join and to run their own organizations without prior authorization or interference by the state or any other entity.

Health and safety

Protecting the entity's stakeholders from harm or death due to injury or disease. Often, this is executed by developing policy, analyzing and controlling health and safety risks, providing training, and recording and investigating health and safety incidents.

Labor standards and working conditions

Labor standards and working conditions are at the core of paid work and employment relationships. Working conditions cover a broad range of topics and issues, from working time (hours of work, rest periods, and work schedules) to remuneration, as well as the physical conditions and mental demands that exist in the workplace.

Local employment

Providing jobs and skills to local people as employees, and to local contractors.

Policy

Defines an organizational commitment, direction or intention as formally adopted by the organization.

Social enterprise partnering

An entity's partnerships with organizations that have social objectives that serve as the primary purpose of the organization.

Stakeholder relations

The practice of forging mutually beneficial connections with third-party groups and indivduals that have a stake in common interest.

Supply chain

Range of activities carried out by organizations upstream from the reporting entity (i.e. with whom the entity has an indirect commercial relationship), which provide products or services that are used in the development of the entity's own products or services.

Users

Users are people that interact physically with the asset when they use its services.

Evidence

The evidence provided will be subject to manual validation.

The provided evidence must demonstrate the existence of formal policy document(s) that address(es) each of the selected social issues and not simply a list of general goals and/or commitments.

A policy is a guide for action which can serve the purpose of:

1. Outlining rules and procedures

2. Providing principles that guide action

3. Setting roles and responsibilities

4. Describing values and beliefs

5. Stating an intention to act or achieve defined goals and/or company vision

Acceptable evidence may include a social policy document, official documents or links to online resources describing the entity's social policy(ies). References such as bullet points or passages within a policy, can be provided to describe the goals or ambition for each issue.

The evidence should support each of the selected issues with a relevant document such as an employee health & wellbeing policy, human rights policy, code of conduct, or community investment statement. Note that overarching social policy documents covering multiple issues must have separate sections/clauses relevant to each of the selected issues.

Evidence Exemption Criteria

For PO1–3, GRESB recognizes that an entity’s policies typically remain consistent from year to year and across multiple reporting periods.

Therefore, entities that either (1) achieved full points in the previous submission or (2) achieved partial points but do not wish to modify their responses or supporting evidence can pre-fill this indicator and leave it unchanged in the current assessment cycle.

So long as the indicator response and documentation remain consistent (i.e., the entity does not modify its selections or evidence), GRESB will automatically reapply the previous year's validation decision. GRESB recommends that participants simply note that the documents apply to the current reporting year to ensure the evidence remains year-agnostic.

Scenario (1) - Entities that previously earned full points: changing any selections or evidence will not affect the validation decision. In practice, this means that an entity could:

• Leave the same links to policy documents, even if some links are no longer active,

• Replace last year’s links with inactive ones, or

• Replace last year’s documents with blank files — and still receive full acceptance for 2026.

However, an entity cannot:

• Remove the previously provided links and supply no evidence this year. Once an entity selects 'Yes’ for PO1–3, the portal will continue requiring supporting documentation.

Scenario (2) - Entities that previously earned partial points: changing the indicator response and/or documentation will prompt GRESB to re-validate the indicator.

Please note that GRESB encourages participants to update their evidence if there have been any material changes to the policy that the entity wishes to present to investors.

Other Answer

The other answer(s) provided will be subject to manual validation.

List applicable social issues that apply to the entity but are not already listed. Ensure that the ‘Other’ answer provided is not a duplicate or subset of another option (e.g. “Health and Safety: Customers” when “‘Health and Safety: Users” is selected). It is possible to report multiple ‘Other’ answers. If multiple ‘Other’ answers are accepted, only one will be counted towards scoring. Answers referring to evidence and/or other indicators will not be accepted.

Validation Basics

Materiality-Based Scoring

The scoring of this indicator is equal to the sum of the fractions assigned to the selected options and respective sub-options, multiplied by the total score of the indicator. The fractional points assigned to each option depend on their material relevance (as determined by the GRESB Materiality Assessment).

The entity must select all issues of ‘Medium relevance’ and ‘High relevance’ to obtain the maximum score.

Specific materiality weightings are assigned to the entity for each sustainability issue. The weightings are set at one of four levels for each of the issues:

• No relevance (scoring weight: 0)

• Low relevance (scoring weight: 0)

• Medium relevance (scoring weight: 1)

• High relevance (scoring weight: 2)

For more details, refer to the Asset Scoring Basics page or download the Asset Materiality & Scoring Tool.

Evidence

The evidence is manually validated and assigned a multiplier, according to the table below. The evidence must support the validation requirements. If any requirements are not met, the evidence may be partially accepted or not accepted, depending on the level of alignment with the requirements.

Other Answer

The 'Other' answer is manually validated and assigned a score, which is used as a multiplying factor, as per the table below. Any accepted ‘Other’ answers will be scored at ‘Medium' material relevance (i.e., with a scoring weight of 1).

Indicator responses must be true at the close of the chosen reporting year in indicator EC4 (i.e., calendar or fiscal year). The response does not need to have been true for the entire reporting year. For example, if the policy was adopted one month before the end of the reporting year, the document can be uploaded as evidence in the assessment, even if the policy was not in place for the entire reporting year.

GRESB recommends uploading the most recent (post-rebranding) versions of documents, as these will be used to pre-fill some indicators in the next assessment. However, GRESB accepts policies that were in effect at any time during the reporting year (fiscal year or calendar year, as selected in indicator EC4). This means participants can upload either the pre-rebranding policy, the post-rebranding policy, or both. Please use the open text box within the evidence upload section to explain that the rebranding occurred, and that the entity name changed during the year.

Yes. Public disclosure is not required. If you have the policies documented and implemented within your organization, you can answer "Yes," regardless of whether they are publicly available.

Supply Chain Sustainability School (UK and Australia), 2012

Alignment with External Frameworks

GRI Standards 2021 - General Disclosures 2021: 2-23: Policy commitments

GRI Standards 2016 - 400 series: Social Standards

Good practice examples: Multiple policies on issues such as Local engagement, Stakeholder engagement or Health and Safety can be found on this page.

Good practice examples: Multiple policies on issues such as Local employment, Human Capital, Community development can be found on this page.