How NS adds value to society

Each year, NS provides sustainable mobility to millions of passengers in the Netherlands. In doing so, we contribute to the accessibility and economic development of cities and regions, and to the country's climate goals. In our annual report, we report on the subjects that our internal and external stakeholders feel to be relevant and that enable us to create value for Dutch society. The value creation model, based on guidelines issued by the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC), determines the structure of our report. In 2020, we recalibrated our material relevance analysis to bring it more in line with our value creation model. In this chapter we will identify the social, economic and environmental resources we use, how we add value to them and which topics our stakeholders believe are important (‘of material relevance’) for our organisation.

Input

To make our business model work as effectively as possible, we depend on key inputs such as people, trains and technology. As a carrier, we would not for instance be able to function without our people and their knowledge. But other inputs are important too, such as energy (e.g. from wind) for powering our trains.

Business model

The main foundation of the value creation model is our business model. Our mission, ambition and underlying core activities serve as the input for our strategy.

Output

The activities in our business model have a variety of internal and external outcomes. These include our financial results, for example. We also provided an average of 1.3 million train journeys a day (before the COVID-19 outbreak). We have high employee satisfaction scores and by far the majority of our trains run on time.

Our impact

We want to make a considerable impact on our environment, given the fact that sustainable mobility can generate huge economic and social benefits for the Netherlands. At the same time, however, we also have an ecological footprint, as we use space and raw materials. In addition, travelling takes time. If we are to continue facilitating travel in future and keep the Netherlands mobile, it is important for us to understand the effects of our business model on society and to keep using that knowledge as a control parameter. We know, for instance, that the social costs of a train journey are lower than those of a trip by car or plane. We can improve our social return by increasing the share of rail travel in overall mobility growth.

Value creation model