A RESPONSIBLE BUSINESS
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is about how we behave as a business, whether we trade ethically, how we influence the way other organisations manage themselves and the efforts we make to reduce our own and the industry’s environmental impacts.
Companies are increasingly evaluated by their shareholders, customers and employees on non-financial measures such as CSR metrics. We continue to see year on year improvement in our performance in the Business In the Community (BITC) CR Index. In 2009 our overall award increased from silver to gold, and we maintained our platinum award for the environment.
We also maintained our gold mark from the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) for our Give As You Earn (GAYE) scheme. We also continue to value our inclusion in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index and FTSE4Good Index.
In last year’s report we outlined how we had further integrated our corporate social responsibility initiatives into our day-to-day business. This year, to highlight the success of this alignment, there are case studies in each business review section explaining how our charitable involvement reflects our broader corporate strategy.