Rhodia Way

To strengthen our company-wide approach to sustainable development, Rhodia established a framework of commitments that we call the Rhodia Way - a continuous progress approach based on a management guide and self-assessment tool that steers everything we do.

We devised 21 pledges to be made to our six stakeholders — our customers, employees, the environment, investors, suppliers and communities. Ambitious, yet practical and flexible enough to meet new challenges, the Rhodia Way is our guide to sustainable development now and in the future.

How the Rhodia Way was created

We analyzed how we managed each stakeholder and scrutinized our practices and performance. This self-assessment enabled each Rhodia entity to examine their performance and identify where improvement was needed.

In early 2007, the Rhodia Way framework was presented to 260 senior managers representing every business unit, function and country in which Rhodia operates. In a practical workshop, they were invited to experience first-hand how easy it is to carry out the self-assessment. The results demonstrated the reliability of the procedure.

How the Rhodia Way was communicated

The launch was accompanied by a worldwide internal publicity campaign to raise awareness - posters presenting the Rhodia Way in clear, simple terms were displayed in all our locations, in each of the company’s seven working languages.

We also created an intranet site for employees, designed to increase awareness and understanding, featuring comprehensive information on sustainable development and the Rhodia Way.

What our commitments are

• To ensure we familiarize our stakeholders with our CSR objectives

• To ensure we innovate in line with those objectives

• To ensure we identify any product-related risks and inform our customers of them

• To ensure we handle criticisms and requests for information swiftly and effectively

From the start, Rhodia’s sustainable development department has been committed to encouraging all levels of the workforce to take ownership of the Rhodia Way. Internal dialogue is at its heart and, in time, every employee at every level will be in a position to contribute to the conversation.

A Rhodia Way network was created to relay and manage onsite implementation. The 100 champions and correspondents responsible for global deployment of the project met the team to outline issues relating to sustainable development and impulse the Rhodia Way approach.

Success!

We had 100 percent success in our first self-assessment, with the full participation of 61 sites, five R&D centers, 17 business units and the global Purchasing function. From now on, we will be able to evaluate the level of awareness and readiness of our different employee families around the world to develop our sustainability commitments into practice.

In 2008, Rhodia aims to increase employee participation and understanding by aiding communication, organizing training and supporting staff.