The Works CSR

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The Works enjoys contributing to the IR community's growing CSR conversation.
Click here to read our Inside Investor Relations article on CSR reporting for beginners.

Corporate Responsibility: When the Memo Comes

By Lorie Brière, Principal, The Works

You might actually be looking forward to annual report season this year. After all, you’ve been producing the document for some time and you’ve got the process down.

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Does Your Company Need a CSR Brand?

By Eric Johnson, Director, Strategic Communications, The Works

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The Works is happy to provide links to some clear thinking on Corporate Social Responsibility issues. Our goal is to continually add new content to this section, and to provide a resource that adds value to every visit.

Business for Social Responsibility
Canadian Business for Social Responsibility
Corporate Register
Dow Jones Sustainability Index
Equator Principles
FTSE4Good Index
Global Reporting Initiative
Green Biz
Jantzi Social Index
Just Means
Stratos
SustainAbility
The Accountability Project

Corporate Responsibility:
When the Memo Comes

By Lorie Brière, Principal, The Works

You might actually be looking forward to annual report season this year. After all, you've been producing the document for some time and you've got the process down. You've developed great relationships with your colleagues in finance and investor relations. They, along with the company's senior leadership, are pleased with the results and confident that you and the rest of the folks in corporate communications will produce another stellar book.

Naturally, this is when your CEO suggests that now is the time to tackle the company's first Corporate Responsibility (CR) report.

The news might make you reach for TUMS. But, if you are honest, the request is not unexpected. Over the last decade, businesses around the globe have increasingly been implementing and reporting on company practices and policies that contribute to the well-being of the environment, economy and society.

There's good reason why businesses are doing so. To begin with, it's expected. Given globalization and the size and power of corporations today, society is demanding much more of the world's businesses. Sure, successful companies are still focused on making money for their shareholders. But they are doing so at the same time as they are devoting energy to internal business practices, such as employee diversity, sound corporate governance and ethical behaviour, as well as external social issues, including community capacity building, climate change and human rights.

There's another compelling motivation. CR is good business. An effective CR program can help a company improve, market and sustain its image. It can attract employees, customers and investors, and help mitigate risk. It can also contribute to a more robust society, which in turn benefits business. Reflecting on CR's ability to make a real and positive impact on the bottom line, SocialFunds.com, a personal finance site devoted to socially responsible investing, notes, "A study of mutual funds managed by members of the Social Investment Forum finds that two-thirds outperformed their benchmarks across nearly all asset classes in 2009."

Given the benefits – as well as a laudable desire to do good – it's not surprising that more and more companies are exploring CR. Yet, given the scope of CR, it's also not unusual for the individuals charged with the task of reporting on a company's CR activities to be uncertain about where to start.

While annual reports speak primarily to investors, CR reports address the interests of customers, employees, governments, communities and social organizations as well. CR newbies will find themselves confronting an alphabet soup of organizations, each offering a unique methodology designed to establish and measure a company's individual CR performance. Welcome to the world of GRI (the Global Reporting Initiative), ISO 26000 (International Organization for Standardization 26000 – Guidance on social responsibility), UNGC (the United Nations Global Compact), FTSE4Good (not short for anything – that's the name) and DJSI (the Dow Jones Sustainability Index), to name just a few of the major reporting indices.

So, the good news is that while financial reporting demands that companies abide by well-established regulations and legal requirements, for the most part, such hard and fast rules do not dictate CR reporting. (Not yet, anyway.) Instead, there is an assortment of guidelines, such as the GRI. Increasingly recognized as the world standard, the GRI advises individual companies to adopt the reporting level, style and parameters that suit their abilities, capacity and position on the CR continuum. In other words, businesses are encouraged to develop a CR strategy and reporting program that fits with their culture and business goals. Many of the other major CR reporting schemes take a similar approach.

One of the most common views concerning CR is that the goal is not the finish line but the process of continuous improvement. So, while a company may get nailed for not living up to its stated CR goals (the letters "BP" come to mind), it can also get credit for taking its first steps and working toward improved CR performance. And the only way for a company to get that credit is for it to tell its CR story.

That might mean developing a working CR strategy or incorporating information, such as community giving or environmental sustainability practices, into an existing annual report. Or it might mean deciding to produce a more ambitious stand-alone report that will be modelled on the GRI guidelines.

Here's another piece of helpful news. If, even after reading this far, the only thing you're sure you know about CR is how it's spelled, don't worry. There is a rapidly growing assortment of credible organizations and consultancies that specialize in working with companies on their CR programs and communications.

For all the challenges that come with it, the most important thing to keep in mind about CR reporting is that it gives you a new way to reach out to stakeholders. It offers you a fresh platform, not just for presenting numbers, but for telling the story of how your organization connects with the world. And that's not just another assignment. That's an opportunity.

© 2010, The Works Design Communications Ltd.

Lorie Brière is a founding Principal of The Works Design Communications, a Toronto-based integrated corporate communications firm specializing in stakeholder communications, including CR reporting.

About The Works
The Works Design Communications Ltd. is an award-winning integrated communications company. Providing a full range of in-house communication services, including strategic counsel, writing, design, multimedia development and print production, The Works has developed IR and CSR communications for many of Canada's most well-known and well-respected organizations. We help clients define their objectives and then work with them to create compelling messages and breakthrough communications.

About worksmart©
worksmart is The Works' internal sustainability program. Managed by a committee of The Works employees, worksmart provides a formal structure for all of the company's sustainability efforts, including recycling, waste reduction and Carbon Neutrality.
Visit our website: www.worksdesign.com

For More Information
Contact: Lorie Brière, Principal +1 416.599.9991 x 221 brière@worksdesign.com

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Does Your Company Need a CSR Brand?

By Eric Johnson, Director, Strategic Communications, The Works

Letting people know what your organization has been up to is an integral part of Corporate Social Responsibility. But, as any marketer or IR specialist will tell you, the space for communicating with stakeholders is already jammed with competing messages stuffed together like commuters on the 5:15 p.m. subway.

However, a strong brand is still a powerful tool for focusing communications and helping a company stand apart from its competitors. With this in mind, in a cluttered marketplace of ideas, could a stand-alone CSR brand help your organization get its message out?

Early in 2010, The Works researched the ways that different organizations were communicating about their brands and their CSR activities. This included a special examination of the benefits derived from having a distinct CSR brand. We began by reviewing a Canada-wide group of companies in a specific sector, seeing how they represented themselves and their CSR activities. To get a more comprehensive picture, we also looked at four very different companies: a city-based credit union, a national quick food company, a national telecommunications firm and a multinational manufacturer of outdoor clothing. These companies are all known for their strong brands, effective communications and a commitment to CSR.

We made many interesting findings, but only one truly surprised us. Our initial assumption was that several of the organizations in our sample group, particularly those with a national or international scope, would have developed a distinct CSR brand. Instead, none of the organizations we looked at had a CSR brand. Not one.

Yet we knew such brands were out there. If you'd like to see an example, there's probably one pretty handy to you if you live in an area with paved roads, cable television and at least one Sushi restaurant. Just go into a Starbucks. Starbucks™ Shared Planet™ represents the coffee giant's commitment "to do business in ways that are good for people and the planet." Specifically, activities related to ethical sourcing, environmental stewardship and community involvement are all aligned under the Shared Planet brand. The brand provides a platform from which it can communicate about these activities. Shared Planet and also subtly reinforces the message that Starbucks' operations extend everywhere, from Seattle to Singapore.

A stand-alone CSR brand also puts some distance, however slight, between a company's CSR performance and the rest of its operations. Of the companies we looked at, the most effective communicators on CSR issues created compelling, memorable messages by leveraging values and associations found within their corporate master brands.

The local credit union had a long record of community involvement and activism, and it was able to build on this record to develop messages and campaigns directed at driving and guiding social change.
The Canada-wide quick food chain reinforced its strong connection to Canadians – the core of its brand – and drove home its commitment to CSR by highlighting all the community-level sports and activities it supports across the country.
The national telecommunications company drew upon its history to show how it conducted its CSR activities with the support and guidance of long-standing employee and pensioner groups.
The globe-spanning outdoor clothing manufacturer used breathtaking shots of people atop glaciers or in the middle of an African veldt to support stories, spanning every link in its supply chain, about the company's efforts to moderate the negative environmental and social impacts of its manufacturing activities.

These four companies did not need to package their CSR activities under a separate CSR brand. With all of them, CSR was, to use a favourite expression of The Works, "baked into the cake." That is to say, CSR was an integral part of their identity and the way they related to the world. For these companies, employing a separate CSR brand would dilute the essential qualities of their core brand – it would divide without adding anything.

This article starts with a bit of a trick question: "Does your company need a CSR brand?" Our answer is an unequivocal "yes," with the understanding that such a role is best filled by an organization's existing corporate brand.

© 2010, The Works Design Communications Ltd.

Eric Johnson is the Director, Strategic Communications, for The Works Design Communications, a Toronto-based integrated corporate communications firm.

About The Works
The Works Design Communications Ltd. is an award-winning integrated communications company. Providing a full range of in-house communication services, including strategic counsel, writing, design, multimedia development and print production, The Works has developed IR and CSR communications for many of Canada's most well-known and well-respected organizations. We help clients define their objectives and then work with them to create compelling messages and breakthrough communications.

About worksmart©
worksmart is The Works' internal sustainability program. Managed by a committee of The Works employees, worksmart provides a formal structure for all of the company's sustainability efforts, including recycling, waste reduction and Carbon Neutrality.
Visit our website: www.worksdesign.com

For More Information
Contact: Lorie Brière, Principal +1 416.599.9991 x 221 brière@worksdesign.com

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