The CSR Minute, now an icon in CSR news communications, is produced by3BLMedia and is 3BL Media's own daily video digest of the most relevant and timely CSR and Sustainability content all in about a minute. 3BL Media's own correspondent, the wonderful Emily Polk, reports on the latest CSR trends, topics, and breaking news every day. See all the daily videos since April 2009 here on the CSR Minute site. Using the weekday calculator, I reckon that it would take only around 182 minutes to view every single CSR Minute news video since the service started to bring you up to date with all the most important CSR headlines during the last 10 months. So get in some popcorn and Chunky Monkey and settle into your favourite armchair to become the most informed person in the CSR world.
For BeyondBusiness, alittle consulting firm who makes a big impact, being featured on the CSR Minute is a big deal and we are delighted. Thank you to all the team at 3BL Media for this great opportunity to show the world how small businesses can practice and advance sustainability and do so on a low budget.
Thank you also to McKesson Corporation, the largest pharmaceutical distributor in North America with a strong tradition of corporate citizenship, delivering healthcare to our communities, for sponsoring this edition of the CSR Minute.
The VRA is the New Big Thing in CSR report announcements. The first company to take advantage of this new service, the VideoReportAlert, offered by myself, together with CorporateRegister.com and 3BLMedia.com is Coca Cola Enterprises, the largest marketer, producer and distributor of Coca Cola products covering North America and Western Europe and selling 16% of Coca Cola volume worldwide. The Coca Cola Enterprises (CCE) report is their fifth CRS report. Yes, I did say CRS and not CSR, because CCE use Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability to refer to their approach and program. (though in this blop I will continue to refer to CSR, just because that's what I am used to!) CCE announce their report in the traditional way with ReportAlert, the leading CSR/Sustainability announcement service via email, and also using a VRA we specially prepared for them. The VRA video covers the key highlights of the report, though only a fraction of what I wanted to tell you about this report, as we didn't want to make the video too long. (After all, it's not Shrek 5). (Actually, before editing it was 11.5 minutes, so highly-talented 3BLMedia video-editor Gretchen had to trim it quite a bit. I could have done a feature-length video of this report, as it is packed with interesting information, so cutting down to a digestible 7.5 minutes was a real stretch.) Take a look here and then read on for some more insights.
CCE serves 421 million people across 8 countries in North America and Western Europe, with more than 70,000 employees working at over 400 facilities. In 2009, CCE sold 41 billion bottles and cans of beverages generating $21.6 billion in revenues. This report represents the first year of CCE's reporting against Commitment 2020, their long range plan to achieve goals in five social and environment commitments. This is the most comprehensive and transparent summary of their CRS work to date. In addition to points made in the video, the out-takes include the fact that CCE is a champion of hybrid electric delivery vehicles, having increased their fleet on 2009 by 196 vehicles, and now operating 336 hybrids that deliver Coca Cola all around the country – and this is the largest fleet of hybrid heavy-duty vehicles in North America. CCE have worked on their water footprint, having reduced water consumption significantly, but also calculating their water footprint in a study of the amount of blue, green and grey and water used to produce and deliver a bottle of Coca-Cola in the Netherlands. If you don't know the difference between all these different colour waters, take a look at the CCE report. To explain the complex methodology, they have developed graphics that illustrate the amount and type of water used in each step of the process.
Another thing I refer to very briefly in the video is CCE's Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability Action Week. This was a week packed with CSR activities designed to communicate CCE's CSR story, commitments, and goals to all employees and educate, inspire, involve and motivate them about the business, brands and CSR commitments of the Company. Employees and communities got involved in service projects, watched broadcasts of the Chairman and the CEO, John Brock, engaged in sustainability discussions, participated in virtual facility tours to see energy, waste and water sustainable practices. In Europe, there was a Carbon Challenge in which a group of employees measured and reduced their carbon footprint over a 4 week period and blogged about it, sharing tips for everyone. The power of digital communications and social media in advancing CSR clearly offers advantages. But the most significant thing from my perspective about this Action Week was that in a survey follow-up, 87% of employees said they knew more about CCE's CSR work, and 81% said they had a better understanding of what they could contribute to CCE achieving its 2020 commitments. It takes effort and investment to truly engage your employees. And with 70,000 people, and over 81% of them now confirming they will do more at CCE, it seems like this investment is worth the effort. I wish more Companies would be more proactive about engaging their employees - in fact, this is the subject of my book to be published in October and that won't be a minute too soon!(modestly:)).
As with any CR report, we want to know not only what the Company has done but also what the company will continue to do. Clearly, no Company can do everything all at once, and focus and prioritization is necessary. This report visibly demonstrates Coca-Cola Enterprises’ long range view, though it does lack a materiality analysis or details of how stakeholder feedback was processed overall to help create the five 2020 commitments. CCE does report having tested the materiality of these 5 focus areas which were found appropriate by stakeholders, and also specifically addresses stakeholder feedback received on the last report. CCE's 5 core commitments take them right through to 2020. There is still clearly a long way to go, but the information in this report shows that CCE is taking steps in the right direction.
CCE also produces several localized CSR reports as you can see here. I think it is important to ensure that local stakeholders in global or semi-global businesses can read about what affects them at local level.
In producing a VRA for any company, my focus is on announcing the highlights of the report, not providing a detailed professional critique or recommendations for improvement. There is ALWAYS something of value in ANY report, and I have no problem focusing on this value in order to help generate awareness and hopefully, encourage people to read and take interest. CCE's report is a GRI Level B and also serves as a UNGC Communication on Progress. My overall impression was that the report is comprehensive, clear, interesting and balanced. MBA students from Georgetown University review the report in draft and offer feedback to CCE, which is a great process which the Company has adopted now for the third year. However, this does not subsitute a formal assurance process and I think some form of external professional verification would strengthen credibility. It is true, that as most reports, this one does focus on all the positive things that CCE is doing, and it is hard to find content related to the challenges that CCE may not be adequately addressing, which is why external professional verification would help.
In addition, in this report, you can read about Plastic Fantastic with Carrefour, the Made in Wakefield campaign, the TMR process, the first global employee engagement survey, climate risks, zero accident rates in Pueblo Colorado, GLBT commitments, solar panels and pipes, motion sensors for equipment energy efficiency, levels of women in management (I ALWAYS look at that!) , Passport to Employment, Coachella LEED facility in California, how Peter Johnson at Sidcup saved 50 million liters of water and more and more. This really is an interesting report, and those of you who know me, will know that when I want to be critical, I don't hold back. But don't take my word for it, and don't hesitate to be proactive about telling CCE what YOU think.
elaine cohen is co-founder and co-CEO of Beyond Business, a leading social and environmental consulting and reporting firm. Visit our website at www.b-yond.biz/en
Disclosure: This is a bit of a sales pitch for a new service related to reporting. I wanted to make you aware of a new offering by CorporateRegister.com and 3BL Media, and myself. It's called the VideoReportAlert and as its sounds, building on the highly popular and effective ReportAlert sevice offered by CorporateRegister.com, it uses the innovative and attractive format of video to announce your sustainability reports to stakeholders in a format they can easily absorb via one of the most extensive distribution networks available.
You see, one of the things about sustainability reports is that you have to work very hard to get people to take an interest in them. No matter how fascinating, fair, balanced, well written or well designed your report is, it's not the Taj Mahal , the Leaning Tower of Piza or Stonehenge. People will not flock in their droves to get a glimpse of it just because it exists. They will not suddenly decide to descend on your website, click on the tab that says Sustainability Report , if there is one, and spend hours reading it online. They will not analyse your sustainability KPI's before doing their weekly shopping, and they will not take your report to the beach to read as they bask in the sunshine. Your report is a non-issue for them. With the exception of a few professionals who are in the know, for most people, sustainability reporting just hasn’t hit the radar. Despite the fact that over 6,000 companies report on sustainability around the world, the reach of sustainability reports is still not exploited to its full potential. Say the words CSR report to anyone who's not associated with reporting professionally and you draw a blank. Before you can get people to engage around you report, you have to get them to know that it exists.
So, what do you do? You have written your report, you are really proud and quite exhausted. All that is needed is for people to NOTICE it. Oooooops. Not happening. What next?
The question of "what next" is actually something you should plan long before your report is published. What to do with a report after it is published is the most important question you can ask, early on in the process, before you even start to write. Missed that ? OK. Fine. Now you have published, you issue a press release. A proportion of your target audience will notice. You send a few hundred (thousand?) copies to stakeholders. Fine. More people take note. You advise all your Facebook and Twitter fans and shoot a message over to Linked in. Brilliant. You're getting there. Nevertheless, at the end of 2009, youTube was getting ONE BILLION HITS per day. Clearly, this is where people are (also) (mainly?) going in order to hear about new stuff, get informed and entertained. And there are many other video hosting sites around too. Why not take advantage of this and bring your report to where one billion stakeholders are hanging out every day? Present your report using this massive network of video channels. This will enhance exposure to your report tremendously and will not only inform but be more effective in encouraging more people than ever before to take a look. BUT. It takes time and effort to produce a video. You are dead beat just producing the report. You didnt plan for additional expense of producing more communications materials. Here is where we come in. Let us do it for you. With this new service called VideoReportAlert, we prepare for you a short video highlighting the key points and personal insights from your sustainability report in a lively way, and actively promote the video throughout our extensive networks. We can put this together within 7 days at a very reasonable price that won't be too much of an obstacle even for smaller companies. If you want to know more, ask me, or write to info@corporateregister.com . Perhaps your VideoReportAlert could even go viral! But even if it doesn’t, you can be sure that it will enhance exposure for your report and the interest of a much wider range of stakeholders. Let us be the ones to start off the conversation about YOUR report.
In the meantime, see Paul Scott, CEO of CorporateRegister.com talking about VideoReportAlert (VRA)
Also, you can take a look at the VRA we prepared using the HP Citizenship Report for 2009.
elaine cohen is co-founder and co-CEO of Beyond Business, a leading social and environmental consulting and reporting firm. contact elaine at www.twitter.com/elainecohen or Visit our website at www.b-yond.biz/en
Practice what you preach! That's not a bad doctrine to live by, right? Which in my case, means, amongst other things, educating my kids about sustainability, and in particular, sustainability reporting. In recent weeks, my kids have been witness to me making video blogs for 3BLTV. Or should I say, making thousands of video blogs for the recycle bin for every single video blog that actually makes it to 3BL TV. (If I sold all my out-takes, I would be able to feast on Chunky Monkey every day till I reach the age of 324). If you havent checked out 3BL TV yet, the most exciting video CSR news and commentary channel available on the web, starring accomplished experts such as Christine Arena, Fabian Pattberg, Chris Jarvis and David Connor, then you should so so soon. The CSR Minute starring Emily Polk is a great way to keep updated whilst you are eating your sustainable cornflakes, and the CSRUnscripted and CSRReportchannels are exactly what you need to reactivate those tired brain-cells when you sense they are short on inspiration and new insight. If we dont make it to the Oscars next year, I may have to take up making movies about war and violence. To save me from that, please watch a great team of experts, and me, on 3BL TV.
Anyway, back to preaching. Sustainability Education begins at home. My nearly 12-year old daughter Eden is always keen to learn. See her first lesson in this short video. Very short. I think we will postpone lesson number 2 till she's 19.
elaine cohen is the joint CEO of BeyondBusiness, a leading reporting and social-environmental consulting firm. Visit our website at: www.b-yond.biz/en
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