A #CSR gift for the festive season

Probably the last thing you will want to do this festive season is sit down with a bunch of CSR reports, or even less, read about CSR reports ... but just in case you are at a bit of  a loose end and have nothing better to do.. the CSR Reporting blog brings you the solution. Here it is.... the first ever....

CSR Reporting Blog Book 2009 - 2010

Complete with spelling mistakes, it also contains all the photos and visuals, all the CSR reporting blog posts and comments since the start of the blog which was in late 2008. It's not indexed but it does have hyperlinks to all the 232 posts from the first until this one on 9th December 2010, and it's a searchable PDF so if you want to find out how many times I talked about H&M (39), or Starbucks ( 45) or Vodafone (62) or even how many times I mentioned Chunky Monkey (wait for it ... 117!), then you can do that with a quick click. 

The book is dedicated to "Everyone who  ever wrote a CSR report and everyone who ever read one. Most of all, it's for everyone who ever provided feedback".

I sincerely hope you have better things to do this Yuletide, but if you don't, well, the CSR Reporting Blog Book will inform, entertain, make you laugh from time to time and occasionally make you cry. All the ingredients for a good holiday (unfortunately, it will not be a substitute for turkey and Xmas pud!)

Happy holidays everybody, and thanks to all for reading the CSR reporting blog!

elaine cohen, CSR consultant, Sustainabilty Reporter, HR Professional, Ice Cream Addict. Author of CSR for HR: A necessary partnership for advancing responsible business practices http://www.greenleaf-publishing.com/productdetail.kmod?productid=3282 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)

Feedback makes CSR sustainable

This is the first of three posts about feedback to companies on their CSR performance and CSR reporting. Anyone who tracks my conversations around cyberspace will know that I talk a lot ( a LOT) about this. In fact, I think the GRI should include an indicator which specifically requests the number of individual pieces of feedback that companies get on their reports (currently clause 4.17 of the GRI framework refers only to the "key topics and concerns that have been raised through stakeholder engagement". For some companies, this might mean 3 stakeholders. For some companies, 3 is generous) . 

Feedback is  what makes CSR sustainable. The CSR Feedback Series will cover: (1) (this one) Report Reviews  (2) The way companies report about feedback (3) CSR Reporting and Employee Feedback. Stay tuned. Here's part 1:

I was delighted to notice in the Verizon CSR Report for 2009 the inclusion of a mention of my feedback in the form of an Expert Review of their 08 report published on CorporateRegister.com. Verizon noted the three external independent assessors who had reviewed their report: BSR, AccountAbility and Beyond Business, my consulting company. See a photo shot of the section in their report below:

This was particularly gratifying, not only to appear in such revered company as BSR and AA, but also because Verizon clearly reviewed my feedback and took it seriously. This, after all, is the way we influence companies to do better.

During the past 16 months or so, I have completed over 40 Report Reviews both for CorporateRegister.com and for Ethical Corporation (which I started with the May 2010 magazine issue with my review of the Bacardi report). 

The most recent reviews were H&M 2009 report, which I called "Good substance, bad style"  (I reviewed their report also in 2008) and IMC2  2009 report, which I called "Charm with outcomes" , reflecting a certain increasing maturity of their reporting. ( I reviewed both prior reports).

Report reviews are my way of providing considered feedback to companies about their reporting. A good throrough read of a report, even a shorter one, and a careful assessment takes some hours to compile. All in all, I calculate that my investment in formal reviews accounts for about 2  working weeks per year. In addition,  I write this blog, of course, which offers a lot of feedback on many reports, without the detail of a full review. I also write directly to many companies, some of whom respond, and I fill in feedback forms where provided by companies. There is nothing that makes me happier than companies who ackowledge and use this feedback. (All this is voluntary, unpaid investment in providing feedback. I am not including  here the paid service I provide to companies for pre and post publication  reviews of their reporting). 

Many Companies take the initiative write to me or engage me in informal discussion about my report reviews. Mostly, they are grateful to receive feedback. Sometimes I may have been a little more critical than they deserve, though, more often than not, modestly, they tell me that I have identified the gaps or difficulties they themselves were aware of. This is nice, because it shows that reporting issues do show up in reports, no matter how companies try to gloss over certain issues (for, perhaps, understandable reasons). More importantly, companies who engage in feedback about their report show that they are proactive about engaging stakeholder views and are open to hear things that may help them improve their presentation of their sustainability performance, transparency and accessibility of their reporting. This, for me, is the ultimate objective, as I repeat: Feedback is what makes CSR sustainable. (I kinda like that sentence.)

That's it for Part 1. Part 2 just as soon as I can get to it. In the meantime, I will be reviewing the current Verizon report mentioned above. Though the fact that they mentioned my last review in their report will not buy them any traction, I will be just as mean and nasty as I usually am hahahahahahahhahahahaha

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 or tweet me at www.twitter.com/elaiecohen

Thank you, H&M!

How do you learn ? You make mistakes. This is the lesson Swedish global fashion retailer H&M learnt this last week in New York, when an insightful and bold young lady Cynthia Magnus, a name H&M wont forget for a long time, found discarded bags of unwanted clothes outside H&M's store on 34th Street, New York. Clothes in the bags had been intentionally damaged to prevent re-use - gloves, socks, jackets, shirts - clothes which needy families could derive great benefit from. The story was first  reported by Jim Dwyer in the New York Times on Jan 5th, and did not omit to make reference to H&M's statements of commitment to Corporate Social Responsibility. Within hours, cyberspace was buzzing with anger, indignation, scorn, incredulity, cries for boycott, accusations of irresponsibility, analyses, commentaries, tweets and diggs and facebook posts. By Jan 6, Twitter was the number 2 trending topic. And H&M published their response.

A search for "H&M destroying clothes" on Google now brings up over 70,000 references. Actually, bags of discarded Walmart clothes were found too but H&M have born the brunt of the outrage.  All major news publishers took up this story. And it seems like everyone had something to say. Here are some more mentions from a variety of sources. 

Jan 6, a blog post from DemocraticUnderground.com ... followed by several responses
Jan 6, from NowPublic.com - on the full story
Jan 6, from Jim Dwyer again on the NYT blog - with a follow up and H&M response
Jan7, from the Huffinton Post - with pages and pages of reactions
Jan 7, from the Telegraph.co.uk - on the "storm of protest"
Jan 7, a blog post by WalletPop - retweeted 121 times
Jan 8, from the Mother Nature Network - on H&M's declared intention to donate clothes in future
Jan 9, post from the Party for Socialism and Liberalism - called "capitalism values profits not people's needs"  
Jan 10, from Shine on Yahoo - a summary and review of the story
and, funnily enough, a great analysis from the insightful Maya Forstater on how H&M should have responded popped up on my Tweetdeck screen as I write this very post.

H&M has actually come a long way in CSR. They have produced an annual CSR report since 2002, the last one being published in April 2009 covering 2008's activities. I actually reviewed this last report on CorporateRegister.com . All H&M's reports are downloadable from their website, as is their Code of Conduct in 25 languages and a range of other responsibility related materials.  The Company has made significant progress in developing sustainability strategy and was one of the first to speak out against Uzbekistan's forced labor and child labor in the cotton picking fields (though I must say that their position is a little ambivalent - "avoid Uzbekistan cotton in their products" rather than definitively banning it. The CSR Manager of H&M, Ingrid Shullstrom, maintains a blog on the H&M CSR home page. As chance would have it, she writes on 29th December, just a few days before H&M hit the headlines, that she will not be posting during January and February 2010 due to extended leave and "should something exceptional happen in the field of CSR during my absence, one of my colleagues might post an update in this column". What impeccable timing. So far, colleagues havent posted an update, but the headline "H&M donates clothes to charity" does appear in bold on the same page. Coincidental, or similar impeccable timing? 

Anyway, I wanted to draw attention to a few things:

Folks, it can happen to the best of us... embedding CSR in all levels of the business is a fantastic challenge (see former post about Deutsche Telekom) , and with the best will in the world, someone goofs. No excuse. You have to embed harder. H&M have learnt THIS lesson, now, I bet. 

In one of the articles I read on the subject, H&M is now rapidly scrambling to update all their policies and procedures relating to discarding and donation of old clothes. I suspect, so are all of the the retailers that have heard this story. Better late than never, right?

And of course, the power of the social media, and especially Twitter, to act as a catalyst for such a story. This vindicates my previous comment that Twitter has done more for CSR than some of the great thought leaders. Just by getting it out there, just by providing a platform for so many people to have their say, no corporation in today's world can expect to get away without responsibility, accountability and transparency. Either you proactively manage it, or, as H&M found out in this instance, it manages you. When you are on extended leave.


Should heads roll at H&M? No
Should we believe that H&M are an irresponsible retailer ? No
Should we boycott H&M ? No
Should we be outraged at this incident of destruction? Yes
Should we accept H&M's apology and give them time-out to revise their practices ? Yes
Should we be keep a close eye on H&M in the future ? Yes
Should we expect to see this incident reported in H&M's next CSR report for 2009, due out in a few months? YES

And as with everything, good emerges from bad. I suspect that every single fashion retailer will have learnt from this incident, and H&M top of the list. 

So thank you H&M, for your mistake , we have all learnt something. And I suspect that the world will be a (slightly) better place as a result.

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