Business in the Community is a unique movement in the UK of 700 member companies committed to improving their impact on society. BITC is an independent charity with 20 years experience of achieving our charitable objective "to create a public benefit by working with companies to improve the positive impact of business in society." The Co-operative Bank is an active member of BITC, and was Company of the Year in the Business in the Community Awards for Excellence 2001.
Introduction
In the year since Business in the Community (BITC) commented on the previous partnership report the words transparency and trust have echoed around the boardrooms, in the media, along the high streets and through partnerships more than ever. The bank continues to lead the way in many aspects of corporate social responsibility. Its ongoing commitment to publicly reporting on targets and results and the way in which it highlights its successes and failures must be applauded.
The achievement of most of the targets set last year demonstrates that the bank continues to deliver value to its Partners in a socially responsible manner. At the same time it highlights the importance of setting appropriate targets and communicating them.
Highlights
The inclusion of the finance opportunities declined by the bank on the grounds of its Ethical Policy, with the estimated income foregone is a meaningful addition to the report and one that BITC hopes other companies will learn from.
The bank has also made significant progress through ecological assessment of products and services it uses during 2002, and it is encouraging to see that the number of suppliers aware of the bank's ethical and ecological policies has grown. The bank however needs to understand why this has not prompted a similar shift on supplier belief that the bank is fully committed to these issues.
Notably, the influence and impact of the bank's encouragement of suppliers to be more socially responsible has been significant and demonstrates the positive influence of the bank's work beyond its own business despite in many cases representing only 1% of the supplier's business. This is an impressive legacy, of which the bank should be extremely proud and a feature of the approach from which many can learn.
The bank is achieving high standards with regards to gender and racial diversity of staff, performing well in the Business in the Community Race for Opportunity benchmarking programme and reaching gold standard in aspects of the Business in the Community Opportunity Now benchmarking survey. With regards to age however, it would be beneficial to consider the composition of workforce by narrower age bands. The bank should now look to better understand and monitor the impact its equal opportunities strategies have on the organisation and work design. This information will further underpin and strengthen the business case.
Understandably the bank is concerned to learn that 52% of its employees feel under inappropriate pressure at times. This is worryingly high. It is positive however that the bank asked this question of its staff and is implementing measures to combat this, whilst reporting on it publicly.
It is disappointing to see the reduction in the value of the bank's community support, and in particular the significant drop in staff volunteering from 6,130 days to 1,269 days at a reduction in equivalent value of £628,335 to £187,420. In part this may be due to changes in methods used for measuring staff involvement. It is critical for the bank to understand the issues behind these figures and put appropriate targets and strategies in place, such as further development of the Business in the Community Greater Manchester Cares model. This will help the bank report the number and value of days, alongside the number and profile of staff participating, as suggested last year.
It is encouraging that the bank is increasingly looking at funds that it can leverage. Truly holistic corporate social responsibility strategies involve companies using the power of their brands to leverage additional resources from stakeholders. At the same time developing systematic measures and accounting systems across the three types of outputs of community benefits, business benefits and leverage will be a valuable step forward.
Delivering value
The achievement of most of the targets set last year demonstrates that the bank continues to deliver value to its Partners in a socially responsible manner, based on the central premise of two-way stakeholder dialogue, target setting, measuring performance, transparent reporting and continuous improvement. At the same time it highlights the importance of setting appropriate targets and communicating them. Attention to the points raised in this commentary will help inform some of this improvement and help the bank move towards measuring the true impact of these measures and not just the inputs.
Sue Adkins
13th March 2003
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Sue Adkins, Director, Business in the Community |
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