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Chris Milton

Chris Milton

New CSR Regulation Coming Your Way

As has been stated many times, I’m a firm believer that the EU will introduce mandatory CSR regulation in the very near future.

This is not an article of faith (or want), simply a fact which springs from what the EU has said that it’s going to do.  In the timetable for implementing on the Single Market Act (PDF), passed in late 2011, the EU said the Single Market would include a “legislative proposal on the transparency of the social and environmental information provided by businesses”.

You can’t really get much clearer than that, can you? [Read more…] about New CSR Regulation Coming Your Way

The Eurozone, Cricket, and CSR

Sometimes you wonder just how committed people engaged in CSR are about changing business and society for the better.  For example, when seriously challenging stories surface about business and governance the news agenda seems to have a blind spot about their effect on the CSR agenda.  Instead the focus is on money alone, not finance or any other broader considerations.

As two examples, I hold up the the “spot fixing” convictions in cricket and Greece’s abortive referendum on the latest Euro bailout deal.  Both of these should cause CSR businessmen and proponents to think very carefully about what they believe in, and here’s why.

[Read more…] about The Eurozone, Cricket, and CSR

A new dawn for new business?

Let’s start this post with a little quiz.

Who here’s heard of the GRI?  Excellent, that’s nearly all of you.  Those with your hands down need to go off and do a little homework .

Now then, who’s heard of Ceres or the Tellus Institute?

Ah not so many of you, but then again that’s not too surprising.  Both are US based sustainability institutes: Ceres looks at it from the business and investment point of view while the Tellus Institute is more involved in policy formulation and research.  Together they founded GRI, although it is now a fully independent organisation.

Last question: who’s heard of GISR, the Global Institute for Sustainability Ratings?

Oooh, one, two .. a few more hands.  Not that many though.  Well, to be fair it was only unveiled a couple of months ago.  Like GRI it’s involved in the sustainability standards game, and like GRI it’s being established by Ceres and the Tellus Institute.

So, what you might ask, is the point of GISR?  What does it do which GRI doesn’t do?  Apart from give us yet another acronym to get confused by, that is.

[Read more…] about A new dawn for new business?

10 things a sustainability website should show | Part 2 of 2

This is Part Two of an examination of the 10 things a sustainability website should contain, based upon the Network for Business Sustainability’s list of 10 Things New Sustainability Managers Need to Know.

Click here for Part One.

6) How does the company measure its environmental impacts?

This is such a crucial question it’s often overlooked.  Every single sector, every single company, will have different environmental, social and sustainability impacts.  The current trend towards emissions and water use reporting, while welcome, is little more than a statement of the lowest common denominator.

At it’s heart sustainability is about examining how each individual company can improve its own performance and leave this kind of herd mentality behind.  So how does the company measure it’s impact, and what is unique about how it does so?

7) How does our sustainability attract and retain employees?

Another crucial question.  Sustainability is often allied to marketing and PR but is rarely linked to human resources.  However if sustainability is just as pertinent to a business’ operations as turning a profit, then it should be just as firmly embedded into the business’ recruitment and retention processes.

In all my years looking at corporate sustainability websites I’ve seen only a handful which have linked sustainability to recruitment and retention, and possibly only one which did so in a convincing manner.  This is still a growth area and one which any business serious about sustainability should seek to engage in.

8) How does the company mitigate climate change?

On the current science, this is all about emissions, but it’s a little more subtle than that.  “Mitigate” implies it is going to happen while most businesses appear to believe it’s all about stopping it from happening.

My personal perspective is that it IS happening and we have to adapt to survive.  So what adaptation is your company embarking upon?  Emissions reduction could be the least of your problems: perhaps you’re vulnerable to flooding or extreme weather conditions.  Have you even thought about these factors, ten or twenty years down the line?

9) What is business sustainability?

A hoary old chestnut, yet one around which there is still a lot of debate.  Yet it makes sense that if a business is claiming to be sustainable it should at least define, on its website, what it believes sustainability means.  You’d be surprised at how many don’t.

10) What further information is available on sustainability?

As I keep repeating, one of the major challenges of sustainability is for businesses to pull together in common cause rather than fight one another.  It’s not uncommon for a business website to point to resources published by NGOs, newspapers, research institutions and trade bodies.

What is uncommon is for a business’ website to point to one of their competitors and say “this is an initiative we aim to follow”.  Yet doing so is vital for a corporate website, not just because it fosters collaboration but also because it shows how seriously a business takes sustainability when compared to (say) profit.

Conclusion

It’s clear from this brief tour of what corporate sustainability websites should contain that there are many possible avenues which by and large remain unexplored by mainstream business communications.  This is partially because websites tend to fall within the remit of PR and marketing departments whose desire is to give as positive a spin on the company’s performance as possible.

Whilst this is an admirable ambition, it usually shuts off the need for a sustainable company to be transparent in the effects its operations has.  Overall, it is this need for transparency which represents the greatest challenge for any sustainable corporate website.

The new GRI on the block

New GRI on the block

Think GRI, think the Global Reporting Initiative in Amsterdam whose G3 framework has become the de facto standard for large businesses to report their sustainability against.

However there’s now a new GRI on the block, and I don’t mean the G4 framework which is due to be published in 2013.

The Glamis Research Institute is a Mauritius based business and academic research foundation and is part of the same group of companies as Glamis International, an education provider partnered with a number of UK academic and business establishments.

This institute has released its own sustainability model which, rather cheekily, it’s trademarked as the GRI Sustainability Model.  To differentiate from the GRI, I’ll refer to the institute as GResI.

At first glance, both Glamis International and GResI raise certain concerns.  They look like quite a small operation and the websites of both are sparse in places.

However the GResI Sustainability Model is worth looking at because it draws together various aspects in an approach I’ve not come across before.

[Read more…] about The new GRI on the block

When CSR meets culture – India | CSR Around The World

India has been on the lips of just about every economist and businessman in recent years.  Its booming economy is growing at over 10 percent a year and the country is ranked among the biggest, fastest growers by the IMF.

You’d think there’d be little room amongst all this capital-intensive activity for CSR, but you’d be wrong.

The Indian government has arguably tried to be a trailblazer in introducing CSR into its governance structures.  In 2009 a new Companies Bill proposed that every company with either a net value of Rs 5 billion (£66 m), a turnover of Rs 10 billion (£13.2 million) or a net annual profit of Rs 50 million (£ 660,000) be required to spend at least 2 percent of its profits from the preceding three years on CSR projects (as defined by the company itself).

Perhaps unsurprisingly the move was deeply unpopular and earlier this year the government backed down from making the proposal mandatory and has has opted for non-regulatory guidelines instead.

However the intention is clear so to try and understand a little more what was going on India I turned to Akhila Vijayaraghavan, founding director of the international CSR consultancy The Green Den.

[Read more…] about When CSR meets culture – India | CSR Around The World