Stakeholder Engagement 

AMD has a wide range of stakeholders: employees, customers, partners, stockholders, social investment analysts, the communities where we live and work, our suppliers, and Non-Government Organizations (NGOs), who follow our progress and plans on corporate responsibility.

2010 Activities

In 2010, we took stock of our stakeholder engagement methods and decided that we could do more. We set an objective to identify stakeholders with expertise in our industry and the corporate responsibility issues facing us. Our goal is to engage with these experts over an extended period of time to build awareness, trust, and understanding. The interactions with this group will provide AMD valuable insights and perspective on how to improve our corporate responsibility strategies, communications, and performance.

To accomplish this goal we turned to Ceres—a national network of social investment analysts, environmental organizations, and other public interest groups working with companies to address sustainability challenges. In February 2011, the Ceres board approved AMD as a member company. In 2011, we will work with Ceres to build upon and broaden our stakeholder engagement programs.

AMD took a major step in 2010 to reach out to external stakeholders concerned with the conflict minerals issue. An issue as serious and complex as conflict minerals demands leadership and AMD rose to the challenge. AMD reached across the traditional divide between NGOs and companies, and volunteered to co-chair a coalition with Project Enough—a well known NGO focused on human rights issues in Africa. The coalition attracted participation from leading NGOs, socially responsible investors, and companies from multiple industry sectors. The group set out to develop consensus policy recommendations for the U.S. government and, to date, has issued two policy documents with 20 and 24 endorsing organizations. In addition, AMD has engaged Project Enough and the U.S. State Department on the development of government policies and actions to support ethical sourcing of minerals in the DRC region.

Employees

One of our most important stakeholder groups is our own AMD employees.  We know that employees—especially younger employees and job seekers—are increasingly seeking employers with values that match their own. In 2010, we surveyed our employees worldwide to understand their overall satisfaction and we specifically asked them about their impressions of our corporate responsibility programs. It was gratifying to learn that our employees have a very high level of satisfaction with our corporate responsibility programs—averaging 83% favorable for all employees surveyed which is 11% higher than the global norm for this question.  AMD has a number of ways to engage employees in our corporate responsibility programs ranging from our employee-driven ”Green Teams” and “Go Green” commuter program, to our volunteer opportunities, matching gifts program, and the AMD Women’s Forum. Looking forward, we plan even more engagement activities such as conservation challenges, contests, and awards based on corporate responsibility themes. 

Customers, Peers, and Social Investment Analysts

In late 2009, AMD conducted a study to understand the perspectives and expectations of our customers, peer companies, and socially responsible investment analysts. The study focused on the perceptions and expectations of our corporate responsibility programs. Stakeholders expressed a common theme: AMD should engage more deeply and communicate more frequently on corporate responsibility matters. Specifically, several stakeholders told us that they would like our corporate responsibility efforts to be more entrenched in our business practices and our customer relationships. 

One result of this stakeholder feedback was increased communication with socially responsible investors and analysts in 2010. We learned that these stakeholders welcome engagement on corporate responsibility issues, and each views the topic from a different perspective.  Because of these differences, we have increased the frequency and type of interactions in order to disseminate information and address questions in real time.

Another outcome of the stakeholder feedback was the development of a new corporate responsibility strategy and the launch of our new corporate responsibility council. The strategy and diverse executives on the council serve to integrate our corporate responsibility programs into our business model.

Communities

Throughout 2010, we continued to be actively involved in the communities where we live and work. Many AMD executives hold leadership positions in community organizations.  AMD also actively participates at the board level in a number of local and national associations on issues ranging from education, to urban growth, to energy efficiency.

We encourage you to engage with AMD on corporate responsibility. We are interested in your input as we continually work to improve our stakeholder engagement. Let us know what you think by sending us a message—a very quick registration is required at responsibility@amd.com.

To reach each of these groups in the most efficient and effective way, we use targeted communications methods, as defined in the Stakeholder Groups and Methods of Communication table in our 2010 Annual CR Report.