Do you trust Sustainability Reports?

This follows my post about trust and the Top 100 Thought Leaders in Trust. Which got me thinking.

There are some questions that are apparently very simple to ask but not so simple to answer. Do you trust Sustainability Reports? Of course, there are reports and reports. Maybe you trust part of what's written in a report, and maybe not other parts. Bottom line, however, if you don't trust it all, you don't trust it.

What makes sustainability reports trustworthy? We often talk about credibility when referring to Sustainability Reports, and this is defined as "the quality of being worthy of trust". So I guess it boils down to the same thing. Do we believe what we read? If yes, trust is the outcome. If not, mistrust is. But it's not quite as simple as that. Reports are not just about what is written. They are about who is writing them. When you pick up a report of a company that you don't trust, the credibility start-point of that company's Sustainability Report is already in the red. The report has to work much harder to be believable. But it's not quite as simple as that. One report doesn't do it. I have often said that what makes sustainability reports credible is the fact that they are one of a series ... one report is a drop in the ocean, a series of annual Sustainability Reports that display consistency over time is what builds trust. Consistency is a big trust differentiator in reporting. But it's not quite as simple as that either. Here are some more factors that influence whether we trust reports.

The CEO: Leslie Gaines Ross, with whom I had the honor to share a stage in Berlin last year, says that the reputation equity of a company is influenced by the reputation of the CEO at a level of 50%. When you get a CEO or a senior leader that makes non-trustworthy statements, this has a direct impact on the Sustainability Report credibility of the company. When a company's Chairman makes a public statement which is anti-gay, as in the case of Barilla, you have a hard time believing anything that is written in the company's Sustainability Report. When a CEO openly discriminates about people who do not match a beauty stereotype, as in the case of Abercrombie and Fitch, you are likely to have a hard time believing the Sustainability Report. Write whatever you want in your Sustainability Report, if no-one trusts your CEO, no-one will trust your report. 

The Bits you Leave Out: Reporting is often as much what you don't report as what you do report. If you have had a major scandal, major restructuring or major crisis, and this is not referenced anywhere in your report, what IS referenced in your report is treated with suspicion. One of the first things I generally ask my reporting clients is: what do you not want to report? Every company has these. Every company wants to minimize the negatives. Yet it's these very issues that create credibility and trust in your report. After the big celeb scandals in the UK, the BBC did not avoid reporting the impact on its organization.

After the horsemeat scandal in Tesco frozen beefburgers, Tesco did not shy away from referring to its actions to increase food trust in the 2013 Tesco and Society Report.

The bits you leave out are the bits everyone wants to read. There is a likelihood that there is even an expectation that you will report  on exactly those things. Not doing so erodes trust in your reporting and in your company.

The Reporting Ecosystem: GRI was devised to create a common platform for reporting so that we would have a measure of comparability that would also make it possible to know which reports are green-washing and which are serious about reporting the issues that matter. While comparability has never truly been achieved, the overarching framework of GRI sets an expectation of the scope of reporting and the basic elements of a report that are considered to meet the needs of a wide range of stakeholders. Reporting whatever suits you, without referring to a broad set of stakeholder expectations can often erode trust, as readers believe that you are reporting what's easy or shiny and not what matters. 

The Buzz Ecosystem: Whether you trust a Sustainability Report can often be influenced by the buzz on the street and not the report itself. When the buzz about your company is negative, your report has to work much harder to generate trust. So, for example, companies such as Walmart, Gazprom, Chevron and a range of other companies that feature in the Public Eye Hall of Shame have to overcome gross mistrust before they can build trust. Reports such as Behind the Brands expose the issues that companies are addressing, or not, in their supply chains, and these can influence the way you read the reports of the companies reviewed. On the positive side, we might argue that rankings and ratings (if they themselves are credible) create a more positive disposition regarding whether you are prepared to trust a company's report. The DJSI rankings are often held to represent a solid guide to sustainable corporate practice and high-rankers tend to gain a head-start in trust.  And lets not forget the Twitter community and other online forums, bloggers and commentators. They all create the reporting buzz ecosystem and influence the way you relate to a report by setting expectations, positive or negative.  Managing your buzz ecosystem is part of managing trust in your Sustainability Report. 

The Quality of the Content: Reporting quality impacts the way we trust reports. If we get past the trust barrier and actually read the report. If the content is poorly written, if the report is poorly constructed, if there are many errors in the report, if the data is not clear, if there are gaps in data presentation... everything influences how you read a report and how you trust it. Also, companies that translate their reports into English are to be commended, but if that translation is just awful, it reduces our trust in the report and the company.  

The Timing: Who trusts a report that is published more than 12 months after the end of the reporting period? Enough said.

The Person Behind the Report: Behind every report is a person who created it. Often there were many people involved in the creation of the report. But there is always one person who has the ultimate responsibility for a report and its contents. If we trust the person, we trust the report. Very few people put themselves on the line and admit to writing and being responsible for a report and very few people who are reporters allow us to get to know them. I say that reporters in companies should make themselves more accessible, identify themselves with the reports they have created and be available to the report-reading public. These days, there are many online opportunities to get to know corporate sustainability reporting leads, with CSRChats, webinars and so on. A couple of examples spring to mind - Kathrin Winkler of EMC puts herself out there - she is often interviewed, writes a great blog, and generally helps us get to know her and what she stands for. Before I even open EMC's sustainability report, I am inclined to start with a bag-load of trust. Dave Stangis of Campbell's is another great Sustainability Officer who lets us get to know him. And Nikki Kelley King, who leads the Campbell's CSR Report compilation, tells her story in the latest report. Getting to know Dave and Nikki through their willingness to talk about themselves and what's important to them is a big plus in the trust scale for Campbell's reporting.  

These are just a few thoughts about Sustainability Reports and trust. It's not an exhaustive list and I am sure there are many other factors that impact the way we trust Sustainability Reports or otherwise. One of the key takeouts is that reporting is just part of your corporate reputation and your corporate communications. Reporting is not everything. It is part of a holistic approach to sustainable and responsible business behavior that must be reflected across all stakeholder touch-points. The downside is that, even if your report is super-trustworthy, people may not trust it. The upside is that when you manage your reporting as part of an integrated approach to sustainability communications and aligned corporate behavior, it can contribute significantly to positive reputation, credibility and yes, trust. 

elaine cohen, CSR consultant, Sustainability Reporter, HR Professional, Ice Cream Addict. Author of Understanding G4: the Concise Guide to Next Generation Sustainability Reporting  AND  Sustainability Reporting for SMEs: Competitive Advantage Through Transparency AND CSR for HR: A necessary partnership for advancing responsible business practices . Contact me via Twitter (@elainecohen)  or via my business website www.b-yond.biz   (Beyond Business Ltd, an inspired CSR consulting and Sustainability Reporting firm).  Need help writing YOUR Sustainability Report? Contact elaine: info@b-yond.biz   

Three Big Ambitions at Tesco

I love retail. It's fascinating - so varied, so full of so many different ways of impacting and influencing our lives. So many different priorities and so many opportunities to drive change. The retail sector is highly visible and constantly in the public eye. Not surprisingly, as most of us interact daily with the retail sector for the products we consume, ranging from food, to personal care, clothes, home appliances, furniture and almost everything else. The choices that retailers make affect millions of lives each day.

The retail sector is no stranger to scrutiny and it's probably true that corporate responsibility and sustainability leaders at the large retailers have a job that is anything but boring. Such is the case with Josh Hardie, Group Corporate Responsibility Director at Tesco. Today is one of those totally non-boring days:

First, Tesco announced it is to remove sweets and chocolate from checkouts across the full range of its stores by the end of the year. Tesco found nearly two thirds (65%) of customers said removing confectionery from checkouts would help them make healthier choices. Just over two thirds of parents (67%) told Tesco that confectionery-free checkouts would help them make healthier choices for their children.

Second, Tesco released its annual corporate responsibility communication, the 2014 Tesco and Society Report. More about that later. First, I was pleased to have the opportunity on this non-boring day to chat to Josh and hear his insights about what made today not boring. Josh has been in his role for around 18 months, having managed Tesco UK Community activities for three years prior to that.

Me: Well done on getting rid of sweets at the checkouts.....
Josh: Yes, we believe we are the first in the industry to do this. It's an absolute fit with our approach to helping people manage their health, and their family's health, by not creating temptations that don't support a healthy lifestyle.

Me: And this on the day you publish your Tesco and Society Report...
Josh: We are working all the time to advance our objectives and make a positive impact. The news is not the publication of the report. It's about how we are fulfilling our role in society. This is a fundamental change. In the past, it was all about the report. Anything you wanted to know about CR at Tesco, you would have to go to the report. Now we are trying to make this much more of a continuous communication, updating our website, much more real-time. While the report is important, it should not be the only way we communicate.

Me: CSR at Tesco has been changing  ....
Josh: Essentially, around 18 months ago, we realized that the way we were approaching CSR wasn't really doing the job, and was rather fragmented. Apart from carbon management, where we had done some great work and achieved impressive results, our overall CSR activity was not having the measurable social and commercial impact that we aspired too. Therefore, we took a long, hard look and what was going on and tried to reframe how to move forward.

Me: And Tesco and Society was born....
Josh: Yes, we learnt from what we did in the carbon area. It had been entirely embedded in the business, and all parts of the business had a role to play. It was managed integrally, rather than just being a project lead by community managers. We decided to take a proper look and adopt a more issues based approach, focusing on the issues Tesco people care about. We had hundreds of conversations internally and externally, and came up with our three big ambitions around reducing food waste, improving health and creating opportunities. These issues truly resonate with Tesco employees and they also meet pressing social needs.

Me: But that's not all ....
Josh: Of course not. But the rest is completely non-negotiable. Trading responsibly, reducing our impact on the environment, being a great employer and supporting communities - these aspects of doing business are now so fundamental that they are just part of the way we work. We need to maintain and improve our performance in all these areas. However, the three big ambitions are the areas where we can take a leadership position, given the size, scale and impact of a business such as Tesco. This can lead to truly meaningful change.

Me: And a culture change......
Josh: Yes, this is the hardest part. You can't change culture in a day. It takes time in an organization like Tesco. Refocusing the way we think about these issues, and our role in advancing solutions, and truly embedding them so they become part of the work that people do all the time and not just a project here and there is a really major transformation for our business.

Me: Aligning with global directions in sustainability...
Josh: We have learnt from what other companies are doing in sustainability, especially the companies that have broken the mold such as Nike. Our approach aligns with the way materiality is driving big change, based on a more holistic view of our role in society. We have flipped the way we are thinking, and this is the start of our new journey.

Me: But I didn't notice any targets...
Josh: Work in progress. Changing the way we think and identifying the big issues we will address has been the focus of our energies so far. Also, setting targets in some of these areas is a real challenge. How do you measure the impact we have on customers' health? Do you look at the healthy content of shopping baskets, or calorie content, or something else? We are reviewing the way we can measure our impact across all our CR performance areas, especially our three big ambitions, and plan to have firmer targets developed by the time our next report is published. We have a new advisory panel that is helping us in this area as well.

Me: I also didn't notice G4 showing up...
Josh: We take guidance from the Global Reporting Initiative framework, but we have chosen not to apply the framework in full. We feel that it's a very useful guide and has challenged us to improve our materiality and disclosure, but prefer the flexibility to do this in a way that is specifically relevant to our strategy.

Me:  What else isn't in there?
Josh: All the answers. We have tried to reflect our approach and performance in a modest way, focusing on the issues, expressing the start of a journey and the challenges ahead in a more realistic way than just saying how wonderful we are. One of the most difficult things is going out to the public with a declaration that we plan to do something in the area of food waste, health or anything else, when we don't have all the answers. Whatever we communicate triggers a debate. With this report, we have had to have the confidence that we mean what we say and that we will work toward delivering our promises, even though we can't provide all the detail today.

Me: And the next report
Josh One thing we might do better in the next report is reflect the different pace of progress in our three ambitions. In this report, we have given all three fairly equal weighting when in practice, we are far more advanced in the area of food waste, we are starting to motor just now in the area of improving health, and in the area of creating opportunities, we have some way to go. In the next report, we should try to reflect this in a way that gives each issue a more appropriate weighting.

Me: Not going to be a boring year, then...
Josh: Anything but.

And now.. to the Tesco and Society 2014 Report 

As Josh Hardie mentioned above, this report is designed around the Tesco and Society approach that was developed last year and introduced in the 2013 report. Despite this not being a G4 report (you all know how I love G4!), the report has a priority-issues-based structure that enables us to clearly navigate to what Tesco is doing in the areas that matter.

The three big ambitions take center stage, and are well explained. At this point, as it is still early days in the "scale for good" journey for Tesco, it's as much about intention as it is about performance, and time will show how Tesco progresses in future reports. This report is very appealing to a wide readership - clear narrative and infographics galore - it might even appeal to Tesco customers. Maybe Tesco should place copies of this report at the checkouts instead of sweets :) Haha. Just joking. I think.

For the more professional reader, the report is rather light on 2013 performance data in areas I would expect a large company sustainability report to cover, such as, for example, employee diversity (other than gender), health and safety, and water performance relative to prior years. Also, while the focus on the three big ambitions is valuable, other issues that we might expect to be discussed in a corporate responsibility report of a major grocery retailer didn't hit the radar - socio-economic impact of store location and placement, construction and green building, sustainable agriculture, supplier diversity, sell-by dates, product labeling and all the other businesses that Tesco is involved in from mobile phones to banking services to petrol filling stations and more. However, the Tesco website contains a wealth of additional information including a catchy business model animation and deeper dive reports into specific issues.  

In the meantime, Tesco is doing more than reporting. It's driving a culture change throughout its business, and that's infinitely more challenging. This, of course, is what will make a difference to the lives of the half a million employees of the company, and the many more millions that go to Tesco to shop in several countries. Reporting about it reinforces and leverages that culture change. I am cautiously optimistically looking forward to the next report already. 

elaine cohen, CSR consultant, award-winning Sustainability Reporter, HR Professional, Ice Cream Addict. Author of Understanding G4: the Concise guide to Next Generation Sustainability Reporting  AND  Sustainability Reporting for SMEs: Competitive Advantage Through Transparency AND CSR for HR: A necessary partnership for advancing responsible business practices . Contact me at www.twitter.com/elainecohen   or via my business website www.b-yond.biz   (Beyond Business Ltd, an inspired CSR consulting and Sustainability Reporting firm)

Sustainability Reporting in the Year of the Horse

The Year of the Horse should be extremely promising for Sustainability Reporting. In the coming year, Susan Levitt tells us what to expect: "In Chinese astrology, Horse year is considered a fortunate year that brings luck and good things...... Energy is high and production is rewarded. Decisive action, not procrastination, brings victory. But you have to act fast in a Horse year. If you are not 100% secure about a decision, then don’t do it. Events move so quickly in a Horse year that you don’t want to gallop off in the wrong direction.....Keep in mind this year that Horse energy is free spirited, wild, willful, and independent. ...... Horse year is time to act fast, buy that home, launch that business, travel the world, make a big purchase, get a promotion at work, have a breakthrough – take a leap and fly."

In the Sustainability Reporting world, that means.... publish your first Sustainability Report, move to G4 reporting, get a great new reporting consultant :). 

I love Chinese astrology, it's really quite interesting.  I was first introduced to it by a French friend when I was living in Paris as a student. That was when I first discovered I was... wait for it... yes... of all things... a PIG. I became quite proud of being a pig. And I am a rather typical pig. Especially when I am eating ice cream. Consequently, I am looking forward to a wonderful 2014, as the pig in the Year of the Horse is by all accounts supposed to fare fairly well. This means I will be writing lots more Sustainability Reports, and having lots more after-report parties. 

Anyone who keeps horses may be interested in green horsekeeping. Or you might want to take a leaf out of the book of D’Arrigo Racing Stables, established in 1990, a thoroughbred training and racing farm in Cumberland County, N.J. D’Arrigo Racing Stables has demonstrated superb environmental best management practices such as minimizing storm water run-off, establishing controls to reduce soil erosion, maintaining a low stocking density, and meticulous pasture care - and even won a sustainability award. And if you are passing by the University of Oregon, you might make a short detour to visit the Sustainable Horse Demonstration Farm.

As a tribute to the Year of the Horse, I did a quick PDF search on CorporateRegister.com to come up with reports that talk about horses. You may be surprised at the number of different ways horses appear in sustainability reports, most of them without really being horses. 

The first result that came up was the Jaguar Land Rover 2012-2013 Sustainability Report. What have horses got to do with Jags? See this:

A super-sustainable hybrid Jag with 502 brake horse power. Wonder if they'll take my train pass as trade-in?

The next Sustainability Report to hit the horse radar is the Growmark 2013 Sustainability Report.

GROWMARK, Inc. is a regional agricultural cooperative based in Bloomington, Illinois. GROWMARK is owned by local member cooperatives and provides those cooperatives and other customers with energy products, crops nutrients, crop protection products, seed, structures, equipment, and grain marketing services. The only mention of horses is in the community section, where an animal shelter owner takes in dogs, cats and horses and was thrilled to receive food donations to help feed them. No horse photos, though.

SanLucar goes even further in their community activities with horses.

The SanLucar 2012 Sustainability Report references support for the therapeutic center “Pferde Stärken”, where therapy with horses for people with special needs is applied.

Horses are also involved in sports and gaming and Ladbroke's 2012 Fair Play Report notes the economic contribution derived from a contribution to sport through advertising, sponsorship, and media rights payments and support for the horse racing and greyhound industries through taxes and voluntary funding.

Another equine reference can be found in Consol Energy's 2012 CR Report, in the performance highlights of Consol's Central Appalachian operations. Reclamation activities are conducted alongside mining activities, and Post Mine Land Use (PMLU) requirements of Consol Energy's permits require Hay and Pastureland PMLU’s that support local farmers and landowners that raise horses and cattle. So, if ever you are in the Central Appalachian region, expect to see plenty of horses enjoying life to the full.

I was intrigued when the Vestas Wind Systems report for 2012 appeared on the list of reports with a horsey mention. Where do horses and wind power come together? Did you know, for instance, that horse latitudes are "two belts of latitude where winds are light and the weather is hot and dry......The term horse latitudes supposedly originates from the days when Spanish sailing vessels transported horses to the West Indies. Ships would often become becalmed in mid-ocean in this latitude, thus severely prolonging the voyage; the resulting water shortages would make it necessary for crews to throw their horses overboard." I thought that the Vestas report might even make reference to the Wind Horse. "The wind horse is an allegory for the human soul in the shamanistic tradition of East Asia and Central Asia. In Tibetan Buddhism, it was included as the pivotal element in the center of the four animals symbolizing the cardinal directions and a symbol of the idea of well-being or good fortune."

Imagine my disappointment when I realized that the horse reference in the Vestas Report is not really a horse reference at all. Rather it is part of the name of a School of Engineering which appears in the resume of one of the executive managers.

I couldn't finish this horsey post without a frustrated reference to the Tesco and Society Report for 2013. 

Although the Brits find humor in most situations, as demonstrated by my post of January 2013, when the Tesco horse meat dressed up as frozen beefburger scandal hit the grills, there wasn't actually anything terribly funny about the appalling lapse in quality standards of food products hitting the Tesco shelves. The Tesco 2013 report doesn't avoid a mention of the issue:

And there are a couple of other references to the unacceptability of Tesco products being anything other than perfect. However, what I fail to find in the Tesco report is a clear description of specific actions taken as a result of what The Guardian called  "the biggest food fraud of the 21st century", and specific plans to prevent recurrence. While it's good that Tesco admits to completely misleading customers regarding the content of certain food products, and completely botching certain supply chain quality processes, I personally find the glossy Tesco rhetoric in the 2013 report to be lacking in depth and accountability and transparency. People deserve better, and so do horses.

So, in the coming Year of the Horse, in which Sustainability Reporting will flourish, beefburgers will be beefburgers, horse power will drive us forward, and horse therapy will help those in need, we pigs will apparently know great prosperity, and we hope you will too. With great respect for horses, I wish everyone a wonderful Chinese New Year.  

elaine cohen, CSR consultant, winning (CRRA'12) Sustainability Reporter, HR Professional, Ice Cream Addict. Author of Understanding G4: the Concise guide to Next Generation Sustainability Reporting  AND  Sustainability Reporting for SMEs: Competitive Advantage Through Transparency AND CSR for HR: A necessary partnership for advancing responsible business practices . Contact me at www.twitter.com/elainecohen   or via my business website www.b-yond.biz   (Beyond Business Ltd, an inspired CSR consulting and Sustainability Reporting firm)

What they said at the CSR conference

Here I am back from the Ethical Corporation Reporting and Communications Summit held in London on 25th and 26th November. Promising to provide answers to whether one-way CR Reporting is dead, what integrated reporting means in real life, whether stakeholder engagement adds value, what good CR practice looks like online and more, this conference presented an array of CSR practitioners from the best of companies such as Vodafone, M&S; JS Sainsbury, Sony and more. Below is the conference in quotes which I have tried to reflect fairly and not take out of context (much). These are things that I wrote down. There were many more insights to be gained from listening to the entire presentations and debates, but this should give you a bird's eye view. Background on the speakers and companies can be found at the conference link in the first line of this blop.

Andy Wales of SABMiller
"Sustainable development is part of everything we do"
"For every job we create in Uganda, 100 additional jobs are created"
"I remain unconvinced that analysts are looking at the long term issues "
"Less than 10% of people [visiting our site] download the [CR] report"
"People have a completely bizarre view of how our bisiness works"

Chris Burgess of Vodafone
"It's very difficult not to report these days"
"The main value of sustainable reporting is more of an internal one"
"We're not really clear who reads our reports"

Rowland Hill of M&S
"The best reports are considered to have a compelling story to them"
"A report should be the tip of an overall communications iceberg"
"A report has done 90% of its job by the time you've got it signed off"
"Our employees have never been as engaged as they are now.. but when we gave the [sustainability] report to our employees, it hit the recycling bin faster than we could say something short."
"Key external opinion formers are the target of our reporting"
"An Ipsos Mori survey in September 2010 showed that when asked "Which sustainability reports have you read?", 40 respondents from the NGO and CR expert community responded M&S (68%), Tesco (65%), Coop (65%) Sainsbury (55%), Next (8%) Debenhams (8%) " (actually this was more of a slide than a quote but it's close enough:)
"Integrated reporting is an interesting thing"

Marcelo Esquivel of Anglo American, Chile
"The first challenge [of writing reports] is to make sure they are read"
"I definitely believe integrated reporting is the immediate fture"
"We are proud of the net positive impact we generate in communities"

Simon Braaksma of Phillips
"Sustainability is part of our company strategy"
"Our report is not written by one person, it's a military operation"
"[Our report] helps employees understand the business strategy"

Judith Moore of the World Bank
"Stakeholder engagement and feedback [on our report] is disappointing"
"[Reporting] has actually made our job a lot easier  - it creates a lot less dissonance in our work and makes it easier to raise money in capital markets"

Louise Tyson of BP
"You get caught up in a discussion about share price and environmental issues - but is important to remember that 11 people died"
"Most crises are much shorter .. this one lasted several months"
"Targets we set for the next BP report are transparency (using accessible language), balance (not being defensive), commitent to the Gulf of Mexico and a roadmap for BP and the way forward"
"The big challenge is who's going to read our report "

Chris Harrop of Marshalls
"The UNGC is a very good roadmap to organise our own sustainability actions"
"We use the UNGC framework to fame our discussions with stakeholders"
"Our CR report is easy to write"

Toby Webb of Ethical Corporation
"cutting edge" "authentic" "genuine"  (talking about the Patagonia CSR website)
"Timberland talks about issues they don't know how to solve"

Marjolein Baghuis of the GRI
"Stakeholders need to see results from their inputs"

Emily Nicholl of Sony
"First forget social media .. this is about being social..."
"We have to shift from smiley baby reports to development and data-heavy and rigorous reports"

Jeffrey Oathan of Centrica
"Reporting can be prety boring"

Revital Bitan of Intel
"Our localised CSR reports create a link between Intel and national issues"
"A CSR report is like a reference guide"
"Think integration not subsitution"
"Be prepared to engage"
"Employees are trained in blogging but blogs are not censored"

EDF Energy (marketing slogan) (I love this)

If we save today, we can save tomorrow. 

Finally, the only thing I was hoping to hear but unfortunately was not articulated even once during this informative and  thought-provoking two day conference was:

"And now it's time for an ice cream break - free Chunky Monkey for everyone!" 



elaine cohen, CSR consultant, Sustainabilty Reporter, HR Professional, Ice Cream Addict. Author of CSR for HR: A necessary partnership for advancing responsible business practices Contact me via www.twitter.com/elainecohen  on Twitter or via my business website www.b-yond.biz/en  (BeyondBusiness, CSR consulting and Sustainability Reporting firm)

Women in the supply chain squeeze

A report launched in February this year - cashing in - from cleanclothes.org (which i recently picked up from Eldis ) is quite a sight - or should i say quite a fright.(Ok, so Emily Dickinson i am not!) It's about the way 5 major global retailers such as Walmart, Tesco, Carrefour, Lidl, and Aldi drive prices down by pressuring suppliers ,using their mighty purchasing power. Who pays the price ? The women caught up in this supply chain squeeze.

One thing we perhaps don't realise is that these major global retailers are not just about groceries (and ice cream) A large portion of their revenue is from clothes and their contribution to the global apparel industry has transformed availability, pricing, sourcing , quality and supply chain squeezes. In a previous post i talked about the Intel ripple (meaning the indirect impacts of their business activities). Well, these retailer guys have some big ripple. They account for $54 billion clothes and footwear sales - 6% of global market total. In the UK, 25% of clothing is bought from retailer groceries.

The report shows that the higher the share of the retail market a retailer has, the lower the price paid to suppliers. Is that what's called economy of scale ? It also refers to how these retailer "giants" have confirmed (in their impressive CR reports) commitments to uhpolding human rights in their suppy chains and to ethical business. The report goes on to discuss actual working conditions in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Thailand and India. In each of these countries, the garment industry represents a significant proportion of their GDP and economic welfare. There is a significant discussion about wages, as you might expect, and the difference between a legal minum wage and a living wage - disheartening figures are reported relating not only to avoidance of paying legal minimum wage (including adding unpaid or low paid overtime hours,, fake payslips etc) to complete lack of attention to the fact that even the mimimum wage is not enough to provide basic needs. Other aspects of worker exploitation such as opposition to freedom of association or employment of contract workers on long term temporary contracts are discussed at length.
Finally we get to the real squeeze: 80% of garment workers are women.
"Far from lifting women out of poverty, the Giants are cashing in on it. " the report concludes.

The report's recommendations to address these issues are pretty straighforward: enhance, expand and enforce auditing, legislate, take responsibility. But isnt that something we already understood ? Will this create change ? One area the report fails to address is the power of consumerism. As long as we want fast fashion, retailers will continue to compete using fast fashion rules which dictate low prices, fast response times, poor quality, low wages, abuse of human rights.

Is this what consumers want ? What made Nike turn its operations around over 10 years ago? Was it an activist response to little 12-year old Tariq who was employed in inhumane conditions appearing on the cover of Life Magazine ? Did consumers drive the change ? Why don't consumers demand change ? Why don't consumers force a retailers to reassess of the relative elements in supply chain costs for greater equitability ? Does anyone care if women are in the supply chain squeeze ? Do other women care ?

We should all care - the plight of women such as these costs the world economy trillions of $$. Exploitation and depression of women is not a women's issue - its a citizenship issue affecting men, children and all of us, whatever gender. Because women, responsibly employed, are the world's wealth generators. As you can probably tell, this is a subject i am passionate about, and could write hundreds more blog pages about this. But instead, in order to avoid the risk of boring my avid readership (thank you both!) , i took a look at Tesco's recently issued CR report, published in May 2009. 6 pages on supply chain and ethical trading (of a total 59). Not surpisingly, there is nothing about repeated concerns expressed to Tesco about supply chain abuses and the Tesco response to these. Overall non-food represents 8.8% of Tesco revenue, worth 12.5 billion sterling and is an area of strategic growth. Of this, clothing is probably a small fraction, so it is probably not material to Tesco, right ? Especially when there are over a million women directly involved in subsidizing this growth. And many more on an indirect basis.

Wow, what a long post this turned out to be. if you got this far, you win the csr-reporting blog stamina award. What's the prize ? You guessed it. A week's supply of Chunky Monkey.
(But you have to buy it yourself....)

elaine cohen is the joint CEO of BeyondBusiness, a leading reporting and social-environmental consulting firm based in Israel. Visit our website at: www.b-yond.biz/en