participant experiences:

minter ellison & the corporate responsibility index

By Guy Templeton, CEO, Minter Ellison Lawyers

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.

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Click here for further information about Minter Ellison's Community Investment Program or contact Anton Hermann, National Director, Pro Bono and Community Investment on 03 8608 2071.

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The Corporate Responsibility Index is funded by the Australian Federal Government. The Index, developed and maintained by Business in the Community in the UK, is a project of St James Ethics Centre supported by Ernst & Young. Our media partners are The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Project catalyst: Pilotlight Australia.