CorpComms Magazine

If transforming attitudes and actions starts with changes in the language we use, look no further than what's happening in the lexicon of business terminology. For years, the efforts of companies to be seen as good corporate citizens have laboured under tortuous business jargon such as corporate and social responsibility and its ubiquitous acronym, CSR.

Defining terms

'Everybody has a different definition,' says Reed Paget, managing director of Belu Water, a company that supplies mineral water in biodegradable bottles made from corn, and which claims to be the only product with a zero-carbon footprint on the shelves of supermarket giant Tesco. 'Sustainability has become the middle ground phrase for describing how we can have a society that functions without contaminating the planet in the process.

'If the totality of what we can do for the environment and for other people is to choose between David Cameron and Tony Blair (or now Gordon Brown), that leaves us as helpless people. Sustainability as a marketing tool is our bread and butter. It's about having a product that lets people do something about their environment. The difficulty is that sustainability is not simply about combating climate change, reducing carbon emissions, reducing the hours of executive flight travel and other environmental measures.

'It also encompasses the growing gulf between rich and poor, the millions of people who don't have access to clean water and what some leading business figures feel is an increasing disconnection between large corporations and the communities they operate in.'

What's in a name?

Online encyclopedia Wikipedia defines sustainability as 'an attempt to provide the best outcomes for the human and natural environments, both now and into the indefinite future.' It outlines the central problem, in a nutshell, as figuring out how to change people's various physically unsustainable but deeply ingrained human habits, such as the continual exponential growth of consumption and development.

For companies, well-practised as they are in promoting those very two commodities, that can be a tricky subject. If sustainability really has such a wide remit, how are those corporate citizens expected to respond?

While entrepreneurs such as Paget are helping to provide choices for consumers, beating such an environmental or ethical drum is a lot harder for a multinational global company with myriad stakeholders across political and social lines and international boundaries. Many companies find it difficult enough to cope with framing, monitoring and measuring compliance with CSR policies; it is an almost impossible task to measure how sustainable these companies might be when people cannot even agree what the term means.

Some companies have responded by deliberately ignoring this new language, while continuing and expanding all the work that now comes under its banner. 'We don't use the terms 'sustainability' or 'sustainable development' - we use the term corporate responsibility,' says Charlotte Grezo, group director of corporate responsibility at Vodafone. 'It's convenient to use all sorts of different terms now but they are, in effect, all the same thing. There's so much jargon associated with this area that, for everybody's sanity, you have to keep it as simple as possible.'

Serving Fairtrade coffee in staff canteens, converting company vehicles to run on biofuels, making charitable donations and organising community projects can all fall under the sustainability banner but Grezo says companies need to define what corporate responsibility means for them. 'For us, it means the impact we have on society, the environment and the economy, and making sure we address those impacts,' she explains.

Comfortable content

Vodafone's performance management systems, targets and monitoring are all focused on this effort, adds Grezo, who heads a nine-person CSR team. 'It affects supply chain management because, although we do not manufacture anything ourselves, most handsets are made in China, so we need to address labour and environmental issues in the supply chain,' she says. 'We also focus on climate change and energy use. We're not a huge user of energy but nevertheless our operations emit 1.2 mn tons of CO2 a year - half the annual emissions of Albania.'

Grezo says Vodafone also strives to mitigate health concerns about mobile telecommunications masts and access of minors to adult content on the internet.

'This is a big issue for us as there is a proliferation of internet content you can access from mobile phones,' she points out. 'We need to offer adult content because everyone else does and in Europe it is what our customers want but we do a lot of work on content filtering. Customers have to ask for adult content to be enabled.

'It's not just sex, either - it's gaming and chat rooms and tracking services. You don't want your children using them. The issue is that you have to offer these services responsibly. Some computer games can be pretty violent and we have strict rules on what is acceptable. We never allow violence against women to be shown, for example.'

Grezo believes it's important to proclaim the positive societal benefits of products, too. For instance, Vodafone is supporting initiatives that allow people in towns in developing countries to send dollars back to their families in villages over their mobile phones.

'To be able to communicate with your family is a significant social benefit,' she says. 'We are proactive in your communications. Yes, there are issues that are potentially negative, and wellmanaged businesses should always be identifying these issues and making sure they have programmes and actions in place to minimise them.'

No gimmicks

The challenge for business is convincing a sceptical public that embracing sustainable practices has to be linked to profitability, says George Mayhew, group public relations director at National Grid. 'It's not about making money here and then doing something else that just makes you feel good,' Mayhew points out. 'It's about looking at sustainability in the broadest sense in terms of the way you do business. We're operating in a different world now and businesses have to find ways of dealing with it, rather than just coming up with gimmicks.'

So how can the impact of sustainability initiatives feed through to the bottom line? John Elkington, who set up corporate responsibility and sustainable development consultancy SustainAbility in 1987, coined the phrase 'triple bottom line' to refer to how companies need to perform for their customers, employees and society as well as the financial bottom line investors care about. This has driven a whole set of performance metrics measuring the performance of CSR initiatives.

BT Group, for example, spends about £30 mn a year on CSR projects and regards them not only as good ethical practice but also sound business sense. BT has lowered its carbon dioxide emissions by 60 percent since 1996; allows 70,000 employees to work flexibly, cutting their carbon footprints; and claims that using its own video and telephone conferencing technology saves the company 40 mn miles of employee travel every year.

Fighting the good fight

'There is a very good shareholder case for this,' says Tim Smart, president of BT Global Services UK. 'Customers really appreciate the fact that we have a deep and wide equality agenda and it makes people very proud to work for the company. From our research we know customers who rate us highly for our CSR work are 70 percent more likely to do repeat business with us than customers who don't. That in itself is a pretty compelling reason to do it. It is a big opportunity for the IT industry, enabling people to work where they want to work, when they want to work. Our CSR programme in 2005 saved us £98 mn - these are deliverable benefits.'

BT also uses surveys to assess perceptions of its responsibility in society and for the environment and says it has established that for every 1 percent improvement in the perception of its CSR, it gets a 0.25 percent increase in its corporate reputation, which in turn increases its sustainability by 0.4 percent. Measuring sustainability in such ways may not be easily understood by consumers, and there are other communication challenges, too. After all, there are obvious dangers in singing a company's praises too loudly.

At Goldman Sachs, the investment bank that routinely comes under scrutiny for the size of its bankers' bonuses, a deliberate decision was taken to give Community TeamWorks, the workforce volunteering programme the firm has run since 1997, a low public profile. About 3,000 of Goldman's 4,500 employees in London will take part in the initiative this year, by choosing a charity or community project to give one day's work to at the company's expense. Many return from the experience and opt to give their own time freely.

Goldman runs the programme worldwide and when it ran the numbers for the programme's 10-year anniversary last year it found its people had taken part in 9,427 projects and assisted 250,100 youths, 224,446 people with disabilities or special needs and 23,995 animals. Goldman staff had also painted 159 murals, beautified 59 beaches, planted 822 gardens and 126,811 trees and plants, and delivered and served 98,451 meals.

'People often miss the fact that banks - generally seen as focused on high-powered business activities and personal reward - also actively contribute time and effort to community projects,' says Toby Bates from Goldman's corporate communications department. 'The Community TeamWorks programme has been going for some time now and we wanted people to have a better understanding of how it contributes to the broader community.'

A softly, softly approach

As is Goldman's way, no huge publicity programme was planned. But a fact sheet on the 10-year impact of the programme was prepared and given to anyone who asked about Community TeamWorks.

'We have a range of CSR activities,' says Emma Turner, director of Goldman's Charitable Services Group, 'and we are very aware that what we do has to be based on a long-term commitment to the community.'

And that is the issue for sustainability's proponents: if their concept is to achieve anything, it needs to live up to its name and not disappear from the corporate agenda once the next buzzword comes along.

'Sustainability is a very important concept and can be used in lots of ways in the future,' says Tony Manwaring, chief executive of think tank Tomorrow's Company. 'But it can be misused, too, and it's important that people define what sustainability means. Climate change has provided a mechanism that allows sustainability to be talked about - but sustainability is also about Africa, resource depletion, mineral exploitation and energy use.

'Sustainability is entirely consistent with a commitment to profitability and that needs to run through everything a company does. So-called 'greenwashing' or putting a CSR fig leaf on organisations has to be avoided.'

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