A commitment to having a positive impact on our stakeholders is part of who we are as a mission-centric company. As such, we regularly engage with investors, rating agencies and other stakeholders about our most critical issues and the ESG and CSR strategies we are employing to address them. In 2024, we directly engaged with our stakeholders in a variety of ways. We conducted surveys gathering feedback on ESG topics from employees, investors, customers, vendor partners, community organizations, and company leadership.
Stakeholder engagement
In 2024, we undertook a formal stakeholder engagement survey to update and refine our understanding of potentially relevant ESG issues and their materiality. We selected an initial list of topics as a starting point for engagement based on our prior materiality survey topics, ESG ratings providers, ESG reporting frameworks and peer benchmarking. We solicited input on these from eight different external and internal stakeholder groups to ensure a diversity of voices both inside and outside of the business were included in the assessment. Engaged groups were the Board of Directors, senior leadership, employees, educators and customers, agents, investors, vendors, and community partners. For this assessment, we engaged with stakeholder groups via surveys, in addition to utilizing publicly disclosed guidelines and information to understand the priorities of several stakeholder groups.
Materiality assessment results
After engaging with stakeholders, we developed a materiality grid to highlight Horace Mann’s key priorities. As identified by this assessment, top priorities include:
- Business Ethics
- Data Security & Privacy
- Employee Training, Development & Retention
- Community Relations
The priority items identified in the materiality assessment will help Horace Mann leadership determine next steps for advancing our company’s ESG programs, including how best to manage and report on these topics going forward.
Horace Mann’s 2024 materiality assessment provides an enhancement on the 2021-2022 assessment by covering topics more specific to Horace Mann and reaching a larger stakeholder audience. Consistent with previous materiality assessments, human capital management topics were determined to be more critical to business success, as these areas are more closely aligned with Horace Mann’s business. Environmental topics remained a lower priority compared to social topics, which is likely because companies such as Horace Mann have a relatively small environmental impact given the nature of our industry as an insurance and financial services provider.