Smarter Sustainability Vacations

And just in time, ahead of the start of the Smarter Sustainability Reporting Conference in London on Tuesday this week, a quick review of TUI Travel and the exciting world of sustainable tourism.

TUI Travel plc is one of the world’s leading leisure travel companies, with over 240 brands in 180 countries and more than 30 million customers. With an aim to "make travel experiences special", TUI Travel employs 54,000 people in 31 key markets.

TUI Travel is a seasoned sustainability reporter and has published five reports to date. The most recent is a GRI G3 Application Level C report and its a really interesting read. Apparently tourism accounts for 1 in 11 jobs globally, and 9% of global GDP, so this industry has a massive impact around the world. TUI outlines some groundbreaking work in the area of sustainable tourism. It's worth taking a look.

You can track the different ways TUI Travel supports sustainable tourism by going on a little sustainable holiday journey:

I managed to get some perspectives from James Whittingham, Group Environment Manager, TUI Travel, who will speak at the Smarter Sustainability Reporting conference on the subject of carbon emissions reporting.

James coordinates TUI Travel plc's work on reducing carbon impacts and other key environmental impacts and manages the delivery of the TUI Travel's  7 current carbon commitments that form TUI Travel's Sustainable Holidays Plan 2012-2014, and supports a wide range of activities including external environmental reporting. James has held the position of Group Environment Manager since the merger that created TUI Travel in September 2007 (bringing together the TUI Tourism businesses of TUI AG and First Choice Holidays plc). Before that, he was the Environment Manager for First Choice Holidays plc from 2004.

Tell us about your professional background and how you came to be Group Environment Manager, TUI Travel.  What specific experience prepared you for this role?

James: I went on a 6-month secondment to First Choice Holidays in 2003 from an Environmental Consultancy – basically, I never left! TUI Travel was created from the merger of First Choice Holidays and the tourism businesses of TUI AG in 2007 and I went from being the Environment Manager for a company with 14,000 colleagues to the Group Environment Manager at a company with 50,000 colleagues. Consulting was a good foundation for getting a broad range of experience in different business segments – construction, aviation, healthcare and more. The diversity of TUI Travel means that today I could be working on supporting our Airline Environment Managers and tomorrow helping one of our Cruise businesses – variety is the spice of life and all that!

What are your current priorities? And looking toward the next few years?

James:  To ensure we deliver as many of TUI Travel plc’s sustainability commitments called the Sustainable Holidays Plan by the end of this financial year, FY14 – year three of three. These commitments are arranged across four key “pillars”: carbon management, colleagues, customers and destinations and I tend to work primarily on carbon and destinations related commitments. These are three-year commitments [2012-2014] and they are scheduled to be delivered in a little over six months so I am supporting colleagues from around the business to deliver these and already looking at the next phase of SD strategy. In the next few years, the business will continue to focus on SD and I envisage we will be addressing carbon emissions, water, waste, biodiversity, supply chain and ongoing environmental improvements to destinations we take customers to as well as the source markets in which we operate.

Tell us a little about the key trends you perceive in sustainable tourism and the most important environmental impacts that are important to travelers?

James: There is a growing awareness among our customers about sustainability, such as the impact of carbon emissions from flying and the need to ensure that local people get a fair deal from tourism. Although these issues are not the major deciding factor for most people when they choose a holiday, it is in the interest of our destinations and the environment that it becomes a strong influencing factor. In several of our key source markets we have found a positive correlation between more sustainable holidays and customer satisfaction. We are encouraging holidaymakers to engage in sustainable tourism through our kids’ club activities, school education initiatives, customer donation schemes and sustainable tourism campaigns.

How does TUI Travel differentiate itself in this space?

James:  It starts with our core values – Responsible Leadership is one of these 4 values and we try to use this as a guiding principle. As one of the world’s leading leisure travel organisations, we need to lead by example. For the first time, in our FY 2013 Annual Report, one of the “reasons to invest in TUI Travel” related to our approach to tackle SD risks and opportunities. Sustainability is ingrained in our business culture, not just for our own future as a business but as industry leaders to set an example to the wider travel industry and beyond.

What have been your key achievements in this area over the past few years?

James: Our businesses have been facing up to this challenge for over a decade. For TUI Travel, responding to these issues means bringing sustainability centre stage, to build on the efficiency and resilience of our business and the services it provides. Our Sustainable Holidays Plan is a major step forward in our journey towards providing special travel experiences whilst minimising environmental impact, respecting the culture and people in destinations and bringing real economic benefit to local communities.  Some recent highlights:

• For the sixth consecutive year, TUI Travel was featured in CDP’s Climate Disclosure Leadership Index (CDLI) and was ranked in the top 10% of the FTSE 350 for our approach to carbon disclosure and governance. 
• For the third consecutive year TUI Travel was featured in the RobecoSAM Sustainability Yearbook which highlights the best performing 15% of companies who submit data to the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (the largest 2,500 companies globally) 
• TUI Nederland was the first major travel company to be certified to the new Travelife standard for tour operators 
• We were actively involved in the development of the industry’s first ever Global Welfare Guidance for Animals in Tourism, produced by ABTA – The Travel Association, and launched in June 2013 
• TUI UK & Ireland worked with blueContec and Responsible Hospitality Partnership to provide their differentiated hotels with dedicated environmental consultancy. Of the circa 40 hotels who participated, reductions in energy and water consumption have already generated cost savings of c. €2 million to date 
• TUI Nederland won the ‘Overall winner’ award and the ‘Best for child protection’ award at the 2013 World Responsible Tourism Awards 
• TUI Travel has been working with the Travel Foundation, a sustainable tourism charity, since it launched in 2003. 
• We are the largest industry supporter and donor which over the last 10 years has trained more than 10,000 local people in skills to boost tourism, reduce environmental impacts and improve customer experience – and also trained 800 hotels to reduce energy, water and waste. 
• We achieved our airline carbon reduction target of 9% (2008-2014) one year ahead of schedule with a reduction in our airlines’ per passenger carbon emissions of 3.2% year-on-year in 2012. 
• Fritidsresor, our brand in Sweden, was ranked most sustainable travel company in Sweden in the 2013 Sustainable Brand Index. 

We are committed to sustainable development and to making a positive impact on society. We know leadership has to be earned and we never take it for granted. We celebrate local differences and actively seek to contribute to a better world.

What are the most significant challenges for you in the sustainability reporting process?

James: As a business located and operating in regions all over the world, we need to ensure we can appropriately capture the essence of what progress is being made – both in the context of an increasingly mandatory set of requirements (EU ETS, Carbon Reporting, etc.) as well as the breadth of disclosure encouraged and expected – e.g. CDP. As a core team, the Group SD Dept. has 4 people working full time on SD matters – the challenge is to get the balance between “doing” and “reporting” and supporting our 200 brands to make this happen through our network of SD managers across the business.

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Thanks, James, you make a Sustainable Vacation sound like a really good idea. Perhaps, after chairing the Smarter Sustainability Reporting Conference, I might just deserve one. In the meantime, I am preparing a ton of super-provocative questions for our speakers and panelists so that all those attending will get great insights and not just more of the same-ole conference jargon that tends to do the rounds. Interested? There might still be one or two places left if you hurry :)

And if I don't see you there, let's meet up on my next sustainable vacation.

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)

Banking on Smarter Sustainability Reporting

Here I am again in the UK, looking forward to the third annual Smarter Sustainability Reporting Conference (SSR '14) in London next week. We have a fabulous line-up of speakers again this time around, so if you haven't already booked your place, NOW is the opportunity. The conference will take place on  25th February and we will be discussing all things related to the evolution of sustainability reporting with some of the best experts and practitioners around. Check out my posts about presenters from Tiffany & Co, and from The Crown Estate. 

In preparation for the conference, I checked out Lloyds Banking Group's latest report. Lloyds Banking Group is a UK-headquartered financial services group providing banking and financial services to more than 30 million personal and corporate customers through brands including Lloyds TSB, Halifax, Bank of Scotland and Scottish Widows. Lloyds Banking Group has over 92,000 employees.

With the financial services sector being the least trusted industry globally, according to Edelman's 2013 Trust Barometer, and with the UK down in the bottom third of the trust levels in the financial services league table, reporting becomes a critical tool to support business reputation, relationships, customer reach and employee engagement.

Lloyds Banking Group (LBG)'s 2012 Responsible Business Report is structured around the Group's Responsible Business Strategy which was developed in 2011. It focuses on the contribution of LGB to greater prosperity in the UK. That's going to be even more of a challenge these days, following the devastating  flooding in the south of the UK - just this month LBG announced a £250m fund to provide fee free lending for businesses and farmers, as part of a range of measures for businesses and individuals affected by the floods across Britain.

LBG's Responsible Business Strategy is set out in this way:

The priorities for LBG are clear, and the report includes specific performance targets and results for 2012 and new targets for 2013.

I was grateful for the opportunity to ask Caroline McCarthy-Stout,  Head of Strategy & Reporting at LBG, a few questions. Caroline will be presenting on "Innovative ways to outline the progress of your responsible business activities" at SSR '14.

Tell us about your professional background and how you came to be Head of Strategy & Reporting, Lloyds Banking Group. What specific experience prepared you for this role?
Caroline: I’ve worked in the field of sustainability and public affairs for several years. I started my career working in retail, managing the environmental and social management programme for B&Q across their store estate. Prior to leaving to join their parent company Kingfisher in 2005, I headed up a Community Development team and developed an award-winning 5 year Community Regeneration Strategy which, at that time, supported the UK Government agenda. I was also instrumental in producing B&Q’s first CSR report. I then joined Kingfisher to help further develop its international CR activity and build a sustainability-related public affairs function. Prior to leaving Kingfisher early 2012, I was seconded to Business in the Community to help it shape its ‘Visioning the Future – Transforming Business’ programme - this included supporting business company members in picturing, planning and building sustainable business models. I have been involved in a number of networks and forums over the years, including Cambridge University Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change, and chaired the CSR Experts' Group for the trade association Eurocommerce in Brussels. I was recognised as a Business in the Community ‘Game Changer’ in 2011 – an honour given to individuals who have changed business behaviour and advanced CR within their companies. I joined Lloyds Banking Group to lead Responsible Business (RB) reporting, investor indices and benchmarking work and help with the RB communications strategy. I participate in the RB Committee and have had a lead role in helping to shape the Responsible Business 2020 vision.

What are current your priorities in role? And looking toward the next few years?

Caroline: As part of our 2020 vision, we are launching a ‘Helping Britain Prosper Plan’ focused on the areas where the Group can make the biggest difference and where we can bring about change for the benefit of our customers colleagues and communities across the UK. Our Helping Britain Prosper Plan is simple but ambitious. It sets out seven key commitments and over 20 independently verified ’prosper metrics’ which cover the areas where we can make the biggest difference for our customers across households, businesses and communities. It directly supports our business strategy to be the best bank for customers. People across Britain are facing some big issues - a lack of affordable housing, the challenge of finding a job or escaping the problems associated with being financially excluded, planning for later life and the difficulties of starting or running a successful business in tough times. The Helping Britain Prosper Plan is our response to some of the issues we're best placed to help our customers tackle. Our Commitments include supporting more than 80,000 first time buyers in 2014, lending over £1bn to SME’s on a net basis in 2014, having 40 percent of senior roles filled by women by 2020 and donating at least £100m to the bank’s Foundations between now and 2020. A full set of commitments will be available in our 2013 Responsible Business report. We are the first bank to measure economic and social impact in this way and a big focus for us during 2014 will be to measure and report our progress and to continue to engage our colleagues to deliver against our Plan and bring it to life within our branches and across all brands. 

The reputation of the banking industry in general has suffered over the past few years. How do you view that and how does it affect your work?

Caroline: I think it’s important to say that I would not have joined LBG if I didn’t believe in the leadership commitment to this agenda. There’s a heritage of ‘helping Britain to prosper’ spanning over 300 years and a culture within the business of wanting to do the right thing. We recognise our past mistakes, of course, and know we need to rebuild trust in our business – our Helping Britain Prosper Plan will demonstrate and measure the ways in which we are going to try and achieve this. We must be able to provide meaningful commitments and allow ourselves to be independently measured against those. I believe our Helping Britain Prosper Plan measures can help deliver a positive step-change in regaining positive public sentiment and trust in our industry.

What are the most significant challenges for you in the reporting process? 

Caroline:  Responding to the requirements of all of our many stakeholders and reporting against the things that they expect to hear from us and meeting our regulatory requirements without creating 100 page documents. Integrated reporting takes us a long way but stakeholder demands mean we have to find new, innovative and simple ways to communicate. We have an independent stakeholder panel and work with verifiers to ensure the issues we report upon are reflected in a balanced way.

Who do you expect to be the main audience for your report? 

Caroline: The main audience has traditionally been the investment community. The analysts particularly use the report to profile the business. We've worked hard to ensure our reporting attracts other stakeholders and through our independent stakeholder panel, we’ve been able to get a better insight into what information people want to receive from us. We’ve also undertaken a comprehensive materiality review, and tried hard to find innovative ways of communicating both online and in summary format. 

How do you evaluate the effectiveness of your reporting process? 

Caroline: We evaluate hits on our website and we monitor the feedback we receive. Our stakeholder panel and wider focus groups, undertaken by them, enables us to understand the report’s effectiveness. Our report is also aligned to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) framework. Many organisations report on a yearly basis and then put it in the drawer for the next nine months. At Lloyds, the approach is very much a strategic one and the report needs to have multi-purposes as a management tool. For example, bringing our RB report forward in line with the Annual Report and Accounts not only supports an integrated approach, but also enables up to date information and data to be used to support key investment indices such as the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. This whole approach helps us to identify gaps and drive performance. We also believe in the importance of assurance and verification, giving readers the confidence that what is being reported is true and accurate.

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So, interesting perspectives and insights from Caroline. I am looking forward to asking her more questions next week and hope loads of CSR Reporting Blog readers will be there to do the same. In the meantime, thank you to Caroline for sharing thoughts and information to help whet our appetite ahead of the conference. Talking of appetite , wonder if Lloyds have any good ice cream companies among their clients? 

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)

5 ways to make a sustainability report sparkle

Who says that CSR doesn't sparkle? At Tiffany's it certainly does, in more ways than one. Just take a look at Tiffany & Co.'s third Corporate Responsibility Report covering fiscal 2012, and you will see lots of sparkles.

Sparkle 1: A cute sparkling monkey

Sparkle 2: An introductory message from a CEO who is committed to responsible practices.  Michael J. Kowalski is known in the industry as a driving force behind responsible mining and a chain of custody mindset. Take a look at this old but absolutely still relevant case study from Wharton back in 2004. 

Sparkle 3: Industry leadership in responsible mining, and a variety of engagement frameworks to advance the standardization of responsible industry practice, including a statement on hard-rock mining. This includes a very firm declaration: "If reforms are to succeed, we believe that taxpayers must be fairly compensated for minerals taken from public lands, protection of the environment must be enhanced and business certainty for companies and communities dependent on mining must be improved." 

Sparkle 4: An interesting section on how Tiffany & Co. supports beneficiation - a concept which doesn't find its way into too many sustainability reports as its rather sector-specific, but in the mining and minerals sector, it's well-known. There is a whole branch of economics devoted to beneficiation in South Africa, and a national beneficiation strategy. Essentially, beneficiation means adding processes which increase value - for example, cutting and polishing diamonds in the country of extraction adds local economic value and increases the value of exports, providing greater benefit to local populations. Tiffany & Co.'s operations in Botswana, Namibia and South Africa employ over 90% locals and in 2012, over $90 million was  added to these economies through beneficiation. 

Sparkle 5: This is three sparkles rolled into one. A GRI Index (undeclared level), a UN Global Compact Communication on Progress (Tiffany & Co. has participated since 2011) and a detailed Assurance Statement covering a range of metrics and detailed methodology of factors used in all calculations. A well-rounded set of reporting communications which demonstrate commitment and alignment with key transparency and disclosure frameworks. 

Tiffany & Co. will be featuring at the third annual Smarter Sustainability Reporting Conference in London on 25th February 2014. I will be there (yep, doing the chairing thing again), and am especially looking forward to meeting Anisa Kamadoli Costa, another one of Tiffany & Co.'s sparkles. 

Anisa Kamadoli Costa is Chair and President of The Tiffany & Co. Foundation and Vice President of Global Sustainability & Corporate Responsibility at Tiffany & Co. Anisa leads the global corporate responsibility and sustainability function at Tiffany & Co. and manages the annual philanthropic giving portfolio of $6 million of the Tiffany & Co. Foundation. Prior to joining Tiffany & Co., Anisa worked at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Anisa serves as Chair of the Board of the Environmental Grantmakers Association, a group composed of more than 220 foundations from the U.S., Canada and Europe representing over $1 billion in environmental grantmaking.

I asked Anisa a few questions in the run-up to the Smarter Sustainability Reporting Conference. She was very generous with her time and open in her replies. Read on.

Tell us about your professional background and how you came to be Vice President-Global Sustainability & Corporate Responsibility at Tiffany & Co. What specific experience prepared you for this role?

When I joined Tiffany & Co. 10 years ago, I came to the Company with a multi-disciplinary background, which has certainly fit into the global nature of our sustainability work. Factoring global perspectives into sustainability is critical to our efforts at Tiffany & Co. My graduate degree is in international affairs from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) and I have worked in both finance and private philanthropy. Through my dual role overseeing sustainability and philanthropy for Tiffany & Co., we have strategically aligned our philanthropic giving with our Company’s sustainability efforts. Strategic philanthropy is a key pillar of Tiffany & Co.’s sustainability work, with a particular focus on responsible mining and coral and marine conservation.

How is your CSR team composed?

Sustainability has always been a part of Tiffany & Co. and is central to how we operate as a luxury brand. Our commitment to sustainability was formalized in 2009 with the establishment of the CSR Committee of the Board of Directors as well as my department. I report directly to Michael Kowalski, Chairman & CEO of Tiffany & Co., who is extremely knowledgeable and passionate about the environmental issues that the Company addresses, such as responsible mining. The fact that our team has such strong senior-level support allows us to collaborate closely with internal and external stakeholders and to continue to lead our industry.

How involved is the Board CSR Committee in your work? Do you find this to be helpful? 

The CSR Committee – and in fact the entire Board of Directors – is committed to sustainability and continues to demonstrate that it is a business priority for the Company. This high level leadership emphasizes the importance of sustainability to our business. It is not just the right thing to do, but a smart business decision that I believe improves the long-term strength of our company and our industry.

What are current your priorities in role? And looking toward the next few years?

For many years, the focus of Tiffany & Co.’s sustainability work has been on responsible mining and the responsible sourcing of our raw materials, ranging from diamonds and gold to the paper in our iconic Blue Boxes and bags. Responsible Sourcing continues to be a key priority for us moving forward. There are two timely mining issues that we are addressing, that will be crucial over the next year or so.

Tiffany & Co. is a founding member of the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance (IRMA), which seeks to develop true third-party, multi-stakeholder standards for responsible mining. I have been involved in IRMA since 2006, and through this process we collaborate with representatives from industry, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), impacted communities, labor organizations and others, who are all equal participants in the development of the standards. IRMA’s draft standards will be released for public comment in 2014 and piloted in 2015. We value the role that true third-party processes play in raising the bar for our industry and believe in this process as critical to improving standards for responsible mining.

Because of our commitment to the preservation of the natural world, we are raising awareness of the risks associated with the development of the proposed Pebble Mine in Bristol Bay, Alaska. Bristol Bay is home to the world’s most productive salmon fishery, which would be devastated by one of the world’s largest open-pit gold and copper mines. We believe that Bristol Bay is a special place where mining cannot be done without forever destroying its wildlife, landscape, and community, and we have publicly declared that should the Pebble Mine be developed, we will not source gold from it. Additionally, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has authority under the Clean Water Act to block the mine, and they have conducted an assessment to evaluate the impact of large-scale mining on the watershed. The next year will be crucial in the protection of Bristol Bay.

Is there a conflict between luxury brands and CSR? Is this something that gets discussed at Tiffany & Co.?

I actually don’t see a conflict between luxury and CSR as it pertains to Tiffany & Co. As a luxury brand with a 177 year history, we believe that our customers put their trust in us to operate responsibly and to ensure that the jewelry we craft was created in an ethical and responsible way. We take that responsibility seriously and strive to live up to those expectations, ensuring that sustainability considerations are a part of our decision-making processes.

What's Tiffany & Co's record in responsible mining? Are you leaders or followers? Do you get many approaches from activists?

Under the leadership of Michael Kowalski, our Chairman and CEO, Tiffany & Co. has placed a priority on responsible mining issues for nearly 20 years. We source the majority of our precious materials from mines we know, and have traceability and control throughout our supply chain. In addition, we have a long history of collaboration with the nonprofit sector and strongly value the role they play in improving mining standards around the world and representing civil society’s perspectives in these challenging issues.

Who do you expect to be the main audience for your report? How do you ensure that your report gets noticed?

We have a very robust sustainability website, which we use to communicate our sustainability initiatives to all of our stakeholders. We launched our sustainability report in 2011. It is a web-based report, allowing access to a variety of audiences such as our customers, employees, investors, NGOs, the academic community, government and our business partners. The website offers different levels of information so visitors with varying interests can find what they are looking for on the site. We are committed to using the Tiffany brand to increase awareness about the issues we care about, and our website is one tool for that.

Thanks to Anisa, and to Tiffany & Co. for an education in beneficiation.

I guess I will be seein' y'all in London in a few weeks, then, right?



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)

A Crown among Reports

I am already getting excited about the third annual Smarter Sustainability Reporting Conference, which will take place in London on 25th February 2014. This year, we have a fabulous line-up of speakers and a great agenda addressing the critical issues influencing the Sustainability Reporting landscape, ranging from the emerging regulatory frameworks to the global versus local reporting, to reflecting material issues and more. There's going to be a BIG RUSH for places, so better book early :) (Contact me for a registration discount code.)

Each year, I try to engage with some of the key speakers prior to the conference, and also check out what they have been doing in the sustainability space. First up this year is Mark Gough. 

Mark is the Head of Sustainability at The Crown Estate, and is responsible for developing, delivering and driving innovative ways of embedding sustainability into the business. He is on the Natural Capital Committee (Landowners Group) and is a Sustainability Champion of the Scottish Public Sector Climate Leaders Forum (PSCLF). Previously he was the Global Environmental Manager at Reed Elsevier and has sat on a number of national and international sustainability committees, including the steering committee of the United Nations CEO Water Mandate, the Board of the Alliance for Water Stewardship and has chaired the publishing sector's Environmental Action Group.

The Crown Estate is a fascinating organization - not a typical publicly traded type of corporation. It is a diverse property business with a capital value of £8.6 billion, and a total property value of £8.1 billion. The property managed by the Crown Estate is owned by the Crown but is not the private property of the monarch. The Crown Estate is governed by an Act of Parliament and works supportively with government in Westminster, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and at a local level. In 2012/13, a net surplus (profit) of £252.6 million went to the Treasury for the benefit of the nation.

The Crown Estate employs approximately 460 staff, at ten different locations throughout the United Kingdom. The Crown Estate is formally accredited as an Investor in People (IiP) - a national quality standard which sets the level of good practice for improving an organisation's performance through its people. IiP recognises an increased focus on training, employee involvement in the business and communications throughout the organisation.

In 2013, The Crown Estate published its first Integrated Report. Prior to that, the Crown Estate had already integrated much of its thinking about sustainable business in alignment with the concept of Total Contribution. The Crown Estate published a first Total Contribution Report for 2011/2012 together with a detailed methodology description. This seems to me to be a great kind of SROI type of approach which looks at impacts and outcomes, rather than just activities. I recommend you all take a look! Here are some of the key findings:

The 2013 Integrated Report of the Crown Estate is one of the most interesting I have come across. Everyone knows I have not been a fan of Integrated Reporting, mainly because I have felt it focuses too much on the financial stakeholders and leaves all the rest behind. This report by the Crown Estate is a little more accessible to the non-financial genius, and creates many links between sustainability aspects of performance and financial outcomes both for the company and for society.

The report contains a description of how The Crown Estate creates value and a list of 14 material issues described in some detail. For example, the material issue of Attracting Talent is described as follows, and the narrative and data supporting the defined issue is located later in the report.

The material issues include elements relating to business performance, organisation and people, environmental impacts and customer relationships and more.

By the way, the 2013 Integrated Report of The Crown Estate is shortlisted in this years online CRRA '14 awards, in the Integrated Reporting category, so it you take a look, and think it's great, please vote!

Here is my interview with Mark Gough, a key member of the team behind the report. 

Tell us about your professional background and how you came to be Head of Sustainability at The Crown Estate. 

I started out in sustainability, as many people do, by noticing something was not working and trying to fix it. I was doing some part time work for a publisher while looking for a change in career. At the end of the working day, there was a big pile of paper and no recycle bin, so I took it home. The next week I noticed that every desk had a big pile of paper on it, so I put them into a white sack and carried them home. The next week I came in and the police were waiting for me. Some computers had been stolen and when they had checked the CTV they saw me leaving the office with this big white sack. They did not arrest me as I explained I was recycling. But I was told ‘you are a temp, we are not interested, and stop doing it’! 

After that, with some other like-minded colleagues, we set up a Green Team and found recycling solutions that the company could implement and started helping to develop a sustainability strategy. I started going to night-school to learn more about it. I continued to work for the publishing company, moving up to advise the head office and then the global head office where I became Global Environmental Manager. I stayed there for 13 years, working on several other projects including with the UN on the CEO Water Mandate and chairing the publishing industry Environmental Action Group. 

What specific experience prepared you for this role? 

In terms of the property industry, specifically, we had a very big global estate in my previous role, so I had spent 13 years working on improving assets. The magazine I was working on at the beginning was a leading property magazine, so I was familiar with the key issues relating to sustainability in property. But, I don't think it's about the product that a company deals in that makes you a good or bad Head of Sustainability. It is about helping develop a strategic direction, being able to identify trends, risks and opportunities and helping the company to become successful long into the future. 

You were appointed in early 2012. What have been your priorities in the first 18 months in the job? And looking toward the next few years? 

The first thing we did was to rip up our previous sustainability strategy. We have since been working to develop one single business strategy that has sustainability at its heart. Sustainability should not be a bolt-on but at the centre of decision making and we are clear that by doing this we will be more successful. 

So what is our approach? To have only one strategy with sustainability at its heart, to develop the tools to embed sustainability into decision making and to pass responsibility for delivery to employees rather than committee and experts like me. We are very clear that our ambition should be to fully integrate sustainability by the time our ten year vision concludes. 

How does the unique position of the Crown Estate lend itself to the sustainability agenda? And where are the conflicts? 

The Crown Estate is unique. We are an independent property company set up under an Act of Parliament. We hold some great assets. We also have a very clear commercial mandate, so like many companies we have to make commercial returns. The way we do this though can be different. We take a long term approach, recognising that making a positive impact in all material areas of our business is fully aligned with our commercial ambitions. We are keen to ensure that we create greater opportunities, not less, for a shared future with our partner, customers and our broader stakeholders. We have been looking at how we can measure the broader value we create through a process we call Total Contribution and this is helping us to redefine our approach. We are not allowed to borrow money so this raises some interesting challenges and has meant that we have had to work collaboratively on joint ventures with partners who share our values. Also, helping people to understand that we have this commercial remit to return all of our net revenue to the Treasury each year is something we are continually trying to get across. Proving then that sustainability increases this revenue is really important. 

This year you delivered an integrated report. In what ways did the development of the integrated reporting movement influenced your thinking? What have been the benefits for you in this approach? 

It has been great to be able to share ideas and thoughts with other brave companies who are attempting to grapple with integrated reporting. Being part of the pilot programme, testing out some of the ideas and helping to contributing to the framework has been an essential to our success. We also have worked with an excellent design company (Radley Yeldar) and a critical friend (EY) to make the principles of IR relevant to us. 

What are the most significant challenges for you in the reporting process? How do you ensure all sustainability issues are reflected in a balanced way? 

In the past we focused on reflecting all sustainability issues in a balanced way, but this created a homogenized approach where everything has the same value, which is just not true. One of the most important steps we took through working on an integrated thinking approach was to focus on what is material. For example already 98% of our waste is diverted from landfill, a great sustainability result from lots of hard work, but this is not material to our business, so you will not find this in our annual integrated report. You can though go online and find out more about it. It is after all integrated reporting and not just an integrated report so it should run through all of the communications. 

Who do you expect to be the main audience for your integrated report? How do you ensure that your report gets noticed? 

Integrated Reporting was set up with investors as the main audience. We don’t have investors in the same way as other publicly traded companies, but it is important for us to explain our license to operate to all of our stakeholders. Integrated reporting is a much better way of doing this. Let’s face it, very few people actually read our sustainability reports. The best compliment we have had is "I really enjoyed reading your integrated report".

Thanks, Mark!

So, don't delay, sign up RIGHT NOW for the Smarter Sustainability Reporting conference and come and hear more from the Crown Estate and many more fascinating companies. 

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)