Corporate responsibility governance
We’re committed to the pursuit of economic, social and environmental sustainability through corporate responsibility. Our commitments are supported by relevant policies, standards and guidelines, including a broad Sustainability Policy. We have a dedicated corporate responsibility team as well as workplace, community and environment professionals throughout the business, and a strategic group to provide direction and leadership in this area.
Leadership for corporate responsibility
Our Corporate Responsibility Group (CRG) provides a strategic steer on emerging sustainability and corporate responsibility issues within the business. CRG is chaired by David Higgins, Chief Executive, and includes a combination of senior team members and representatives from across the company.
In 2010/11, in the group met three times (and a further three scheduled meetings were cancelled). Items on the agenda have included diversity, sustainable procurement, utilities management and wider sustainability policy.
The remit of CRG is to provide:
- direction on the policy, strategy and objectives necessary to deliver the Company’s sustainability goals across economic, social and environmental areas
- measurable targets for sustainability and the specific activities and initiatives to deliver these
- a monitoring system for the progress and success of these activities.
Benchmarking our performance
Our corporate responsibility performance has been independently rated against the Business in the Community (BITC) Corporate Responsibility Index for the last four years.
In 2010/11, our performance was rated as gold (2009/10: gold). Our overall score was 1.5 per cent less than last year. This decrease is in part due to lower performance in certain areas (such as our figures for employee absence), but also because we lowered some of our self-assessed scores to enhance accuracy and to acknowledge the work still to be done (such as in sustainable procurement).
Talking about corporate responsibility
Corporate responsibility and sustainability have featured regularly in our internal communications during 2010/11, covering topics such as sustainable procurement, community safety, and charitable giving.
Between 21 and 27 March 2011 we supported the first national Climate Week campaign, using a network of employee climate ambassadors, events and internal communications campaigns to educate and inspire our people to tackle climate change, and promote more sustainable behaviour in the workplace.