Inaugural Index case studies
Below are reports from a selection of participants in the inaugural Corporate Responsibility Index, published in August 2004.
ANZ and the Corporate Responsibility Index
ANZ's business strategy is based around creating sustainable value for all stakeholders. Participating in the Corporate Responsibility Index has allowed ANZ to review risks and opportunities within the workplace, marketplace, environment and community, and how we have integrated such considerations into current business practice.
One of the outcomes has been a heightening of awareness within the organisation around our strengths and weaknesses. This has resulted in a defined action plan for improvement.
Until recently we have not had a central function for the collation and external reporting of such information across all business units. Although the collation of information for the Corporate Responsibility Index was a significant and challenging task, it has greatly assisted in improving our group-wide reporting processes.
To reduce 'survey fatigue' we took the opportunity to also map the Corporate Responsibility Index questions against the assessment criteria for the Dow Jones Sustainability and FTSE4Good indices, to which ANZ is a member. This will allow us to respond to such reviews in a more effective and efficient manner.
What we experienced in the process of participating in the Corporate Responsibility Index was that although it requires a high degree of assessment across a wide range of issues, it should not be seen as a complete solution for adopting and/or reporting your corporate responsibility. The Index provides a valuable tool for self-assessment and internal engagement and should be considered a success if it raises some important questions that have not been asked before.
Read more about how ANZ is making a sustainable contribution to society.
Minter Ellison and the Corporate Responsibility Index
Looking back five years to the commencement of the Corporate Responsibility Index in Australia, Minter Ellison has made substantial progress in the field of corporate social responsibility and owes much to the Index for assisting us to channel our efforts in the right direction.
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a vast field and has different application across different business sectors. The Index has provided us with a solid framework to address the four core areas of CSR - community, environment, marketplace and workplace - with a degree of flexibility that enables us to keep our CSR strategy and actions relevant to our business.
We took something of a risk five years ago to participate in the Index – and the public ranking process – at the very commencement of our CSR journey. We adopted the Index as an internal management tool to guide the growth of our program – and to utilise a framework that would help us achieve best practice. The primary benefit of our involvement has been to remain focussed on the key CSR priorities and to challenge ourselves to improve our performance year-on-year as part of the Index's annual reporting and verification cycle. The steady improvement in our Index score has been an added bonus along the way.
For the past four iterations of the Index we were the only law firm in Australia to participate publicly in the Australia/New Zealand Index. But when one considers the active involvement of legal and accounting firms in the UK Index, it would seem inevitable that more professional services firms will adopt the Index model in Australia. We would welcome this development as a signal that all businesses have something to gain from the Index model.
One of the great practical benefits of the Index is that it forced us to examine our environmental performance before the challenge of climate change had found its way into the public and business mainstream. Our progress in adopting Australia's Greenhouse Challenge as a national reporting tool, investing in 50 per cent GreenPower, switching to recycled office paper and assessing the CSR policies of our suppliers during tenders is directly attributable to the Index model.
Let's also be frank about the limitations. The Index is not a panacea – a good Index score does not necessarily denote a saintly business. Rather, the Index steers us in the right direction when the inevitable tensions between profit and principle arise. There are tough decisions to be made every day and, without a set of guiding CSR principles, a business will not have all the tools at its disposal to make the right call.
So, ultimately, the Index places the onus back onto each business. Our Index score counts for little if we are not seen by our people, our clients and the wider community to be acting responsibly. Our approach is to recognise that there will always be room for improvement and that our ultimate challenge is to embed our CSR principles and strategies into the culture of our firm. If the first five years of our journey is anything to go by, we are well on the way to achieving this objective.
Why Newmont Australia participated in the Corporate Responsibility Index
Participation in the Corporate Responsibility Index demands commitment on two levels – first is the time and effort required to gather together such an extensive representation of the way a company conducts its business. Second is a commitment to exposing our strategies, systems and performance to the world.
For Newmont, a robust reporting system meant most of the information was reasonably readily available to us – due largely to both our internal, discipline-specific monthly and quarterly reporting, but also our annual external reporting for which metrics have been designed for the measurement and reporting of our performance across health and safety, environment, community relations (including social investment) and employee wellbeing.
Despite the processes we have in place, the Index highlighted areas where our reporting could be strengthened or where other aspects of our activities could be considered for inclusion in the reporting system. This was particularly the case in the categories relating to supply chain management, an area that despite much effort, remains a challenge for us in relation to corporate responsibility.
This is one of the benefits of participating in such a survey. Not only are we tested by the extensiveness of the questions and topics covered in the survey, but we are also reminded of the gaps in our own systems.
The other significant benefit is in helping to enhance our ability to be more transparent by causing us to both collect the data required (some of which is not routinely collected for other reporting purposes) and by agreeing to make the results public.
There can appear a degree of reputational risk in participating in corporate responsibility surveys – how will we compare to our peers, will our internal view of our performance be comparable to an external view, what will the public think of our rating? Having participated, I can say the exercise is more an opportunity to gauge the health of our own corporate responsibility management tools, in terms of effectiveness and integration across the organisation, and to take the pulse of the external corporate responsibility environment and public interest.
One of the challenges is in trying to capture the countless activities that occur across the Company that contribute to our overall corporate responsibility effort, but that are considered part of the ‘norm’ and are as such, not considered to be corporate responsibility -specific activities.
The learnings from the outcome of the survey are also valuable in helping us to determine where our efforts in corporate responsibility should be focussed moving forward. We are encouraged by the preliminary feedback and and will volunteer to participate again in 2005.