Santa's 2015 SDG Report

With only four more shopping days to Christmas, the time is here once again to preview Santa's Sustainability Report. Reporting is a long Santa tradition. Check out Santa's prior reports:

Santa's 1750th Sustainability Report 2014

Santa's First G4 Comprehensive Sustainability Report 2013
Santa's First Integrated Financial and CSR Report 2012 
Santa's 1,747th 2011 Annual CSR Report 
Santa's 1,746th 2010 Annual CSR Report 
Santa's 1,745th 2009 Annual CSR Report 

Santa Claus Inc. 2015 SDG Report 

Leadership Message

Dear Stakeholders,

In a year when climate change has been on the agenda more often than leaked emails from Hillary Clinton, I have to wonder what all the fuss is about. My old friend Heraclitus, whose works I studied as a child, said "Everything changes and nothing stands still". He was so right. The only constant in our world is change. So, now that the climate is changing, why try to stop it? The leaders of the free world came together earlier this month to join forces to stop climate change. We at Santa Claus Inc. take a different approach. We embrace this change and look for opportunity in adversity. For example, the more people that stop stopping climate change, the more coal fires there will be. The more coal fires there are, the more chimneys we will have. The more chimneys we have, the more work we will be able to do, sliding down the chimneys to deliver Christmas gifts and cheer to the world's children. I implore the leaders of the world, for the sake of our children, let the climate be. Change something else. 

2015 has been another great year for Santa Claus Inc. Our revenues were up, our operating profit was up, our working capital was down and our spirits were high. (Non-spirits were placed on the lower shelves). We once again brightened up the world with LED lighting on our sleighs, made children happy with gifts bought in bulk from a Taiwanese toymaker with very few human rights abuses and supply chain irregularities, and engaged our employee elves and reindeer through enlightened human resources policies including embryo-freezing, 14 day paid parental leave for anyone who knows anyone who became a parent and a new policy to enable employees to contribute to their community by working as much unpaid overtime as they want. We couldn't have hoped for a better year. And to top it all, a special new customer was born in May 2015 - Princess Charlotte, daughter of William and Kate, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. Amner Hall, their residence, has several chimneys so delivering our gifts for both Royal Kids will be a doddle. The problem is that we are not sure if the 1.5 mile no-fly zone over their house applies to me, my sleigh and my reindeer. If you hear reports of a decline in reindeer population and/or I do not publish a Sustainability Report next year, you will know we were shot out of the sky. 

Business Development

In 2015, following years of doing well what we do best, we decided to diversify in order to enhance our contribution to happiness in the world and make more profit by doing things that we do not do best. Our first attempt at diversification was to balance our workload throughout the year, and not just at Christmas time, to provide our elves and reindeer with meaningful activity instead of them just lazing around waiting for the continuation of season 12 of Grey's Anatomy. We started a joint venture with a leading global drug company to increase accessibility to life-saving drugs for children in emerging economies. The plan was to have our elves and reindeer make all-year-round direct-to-home discounted deliveries of benzodiazepine to help families address panic disorder, general anxiety disorder and insomnia in children between the ages of 2 to 49. The program started well and we were able to provide tranquility to many households. However, when several elves started to have convulsive epileptic seizures we knew something was wrong. Investigation revealed a benzo black market resulting from elves skimming benzos from each delivery and selling them to Cuban drug cartels. The cartel chiefs threatened the elves if they did not increase drug deliveries to meet their growing demand. As a result, the elves were so agitated that they started ingesting the very benzodiazepine they had earmarked to sell. Following a review of this new business approach, we realized our risk management program had failed to identify that elf stress, theft, drug abuse and drug trafficking could be possible outcomes of this new business initiative. We have therefore decided to cancel our risk management program and go with our intuition. In this case, with hindsight, it was not such a disaster as, while it lasted, we made more profit from this initiative than we have done in the past thousand years and the Santa Claus Inc. Santa Retirement Fund is now well padded. In future, we will deliver only placebos so that if the elves are tempted, they will only think they are having seizures. 

Board on Board

In 2015, we made a concerted effort to onboard the Board of Directors of Santa Claus Inc. following new guidance published by the UN Global Compact. "The Global Compact Board Program is the first of its kind to align and support Boards of Directors to effectively oversee and drive a strategic approach to corporate sustainability....." This year, we decided that our Board must play a more active role in supporting our efforts to improve society and the planet. In addition to making personal contributions to the Santa Claus Inc. Santa Retirement Fund, each Board member has personally committed not to fall asleep in discussions about our sustainability program. Moreover, each Board member will engage in stakeholder dialogue. Fortunately, this is something they can do during their afternoon nap as most are prone to talking in their sleep. In fact, if you can catch what they are saying in between snores and grunts, it's actually more intelligent than what they say when they are awake. We feel sure that our valued stakeholders will not know the difference.  

Sleigh Emissions

Following the scandal regarding auto-maker Volkswagen who was found to have been systematically cheating regulators about vehicle emission levels through the use of an electronic device that falsifies emissions test readings, we decided to ensure we are not exposed to such a risk. Aside from a small number of electric sleighs, all our sleighs are run by reindeer power whose emissions levels are, well, restricted to natural bodily functions that involuntarily cause greenhouse gas emissions into the environment. We performed a check by an independent third party to ensure that no electronic devices are implanted in any of our reindeer to interfere in any way with the recording of reindeer emissions. The check involved an internal examination using ultrasound and rear-end visual inspections for all reindeer over the age of six months. While we did not find any emission-related devices, we were amazed at what we did find in our reindeer. In addition to old coins, chewed toy parts, several undigested hamburgers from McDonald's from the 1980s, millions of cigarette butts, an array of candy wrappers and chocolate bar foils, and quite a few old socks, we managed to salvage thousands of iPhone parts, laptop keyboards, earphones, flash drives and cables. As a result, we have created a new for-profit initiative to retrieve reindeer stomach contents and repurpose them for sale. In our first year, we generated a very significant supplemental revenue, most of which was diverted to the Santa Claus Inc. Santa Retirement Fund while the remainder went to fund a new recreational facility for in-service reindeer in the hope that they will swallow even more valuables in their spare time.

Sustainable Development Goals

In 2015, we undertook an intensive mapping analysis to identify where the activities of Santa Claus Inc. contribute to the 2030 Agenda and the global Sustainable Development Goals. This report therefore forms our first report against the SDGs and we expect to continue our reporting in line with the SDG framework. Enough of G4 and CDP and everything else. We are converting totally to SDG reporting. By doing this, we express our support for this UN-led initiative and hope to gain a reputational point or two that will help reduce our cost of capital so that the Santa Claus Inc. Santa Retirement Fund will enjoy an improved return over time. The problem was, that in reviewing the SDGs, we didn't actually find anything that we could align with. 

All the SDGs are about things we do not have a direct impact on and therefore we recommend an 18th goal. We will call this goal: 18: Make Santa Happy

We believe that the world will benefit immeasurably through ensuring Santa is happy. When Santa is happy, good cheer is spread and kids around the world smile and are more motivated to do well at school and help their parents with household chores. The world becomes a more harmonious place and society is enriched. With a happy Santa, you know that you can sleep easy at night as crime and violence will reduce and there will be more food to enable everyone at the bottom of the pyramid to live in comfort. The elderly will be cared for and poverty will remain a word in a dictionary, bearing no resemblance to any real-world situation. In other words, making Santa happy is the key to achieving all the other Sustainable Development Goals.  Here are the targets we recommend: 

• By 2030, eradicate extreme poverty for all people everywhere, currently measured as people living on less than $1.25 a day, and ensure that people who now have all this extra income will make regular donations to the Santa Claus Inc. Santa Retirement Fund
• Implement nationally appropriate Santa protection systems and measures including security, cyber-security, and free health care for Santa, elves and reindeer everywhere 
• By 2030, ensure that all men and women, in particular the poor and the vulnerable, have equal rights to gifts from Santa 
• Ensure significant mobilization of resources from a variety of sources, including through enhanced development cooperation, in order to provide adequate and predictable means for Santa to source gifts and toys for the world's children at significantly discounted prices and with elevated commissions for the Santa Claus Inc. Santa Retirement Fund
• Create sound policy frameworks at the national, regional and international levels, based on pro-poor and gender-sensitive development strategies, to support accelerated investment in the Santa Claus Inc. Santa Retirement Fund.

Not only this, along with many other global corporations, we have made a pledge to achieve a science-based target. The target is to reduce our carbon emissions by 40% per total elves and reindeer employed by 2030 using 1843 as a baseline. In order to achieve this, we will gradually eliminate baked beans and green cabbage from our reindeer diet and demand that elves keep their iPhones on low-power mode at all times.

Elf Healf and Safety

Every year we intensify our efforts to ensure our elves and reindeer remain safe on the job. We don't care about them off the job. In 2015, we held several training activities to enhance the awareness of safety hazards. One of the most significant risks for elves is sliding down chimneys where fires are still burning. This has resulted in so many bottomless elves over the past hundred years that their lack of behinds almost looks like a genetic mutation. In fact, three elf babies were born without bottoms last year which saves on diapers but gives rise to concerns about how elves will manage to sit on our sleighs as we travel the world delivering gifts and good cheer. We are now ergonomically redesigning all our sleighs to enable standing-only. This is not so bad as it means we can cram 23% more elves onto each sleigh, which means we travel fewer overall kilometers which reduces the resource burden on our planet. For those elves that lost their bottom in 2015, we commissioned bebionic to create a unique multi-articulating, pearlescent design prosthetic bottom made of  post-consumer recycled stainless steel covered with multi-layered variable hardness material lined with fabric mesh. The bottoms look and feel so real that beneficiary elves can lead a perfectly normal life and sit and s*it wherever and whenever they want. They are so happy with their bottoms that, on World Toilet Day, they volunteered to take part in the global #wecantwait efforts by performing true-life demonstrations of toilet-use in refugee camps in Ethiopia. 

Supporting the Sharing Economy

In an attempt to modernize our services, improve global wellbeing and generate new revenue streams, Santa Inc. has finally joined the sharing economy. As you may know, the sharing economy is a new business model based upon peer-to-peer-based sharing of access to goods and services (coordinated through community-based online services). Alongside Uber, AirBnB, Zipcar, Bookmooch and ParkAtMyHouse.com, we have decided to make Santa a sharing Santa. Sign up online at SharingSanta.com to make use of anything that we have and pay for it. For example, book taxi rides by sleigh to any global destination, hire an elf to clean your house or babysit your kids, or borrow one of Santa's red suits to supplement your party wardrobe. We also offer, at a modest rate of $4,000 per night, a place to sleep - Santa's bed in his Lapland home. Of course, Santa sleeps in the bed 364 nights per year, so you will have to share it. If you need earplugs to silence Santa's snores there is a small extra charge. If you need a noseplug for various involuntary odors that Santa emits, there is a small extra charge for that too. If you'd like to be woken up by a live elf alarm system, we can make our elves available in all shapes and sizes, also for a small extra charge. So far, in 2015, the sharing economy has generated more than $1 million in revenue for Santa Inc. Actually, this is not so much from the sharing we offer for use of Santa facilities, but more from the sharing of other's facilities with us. We decided that the many households we reach around the world through our toy deliveries should have the opportunity to share their economy with Santa too. During each visit, we help ourselves to cash we find in wallets, handbags and kitchen cookie jars. This has proven to be a major success as on more than 84% of visits, our beneficiaries have shared more than $100 with Santa. We think this sharing economy is a fantastic idea and kindly request that households make it slightly easier for us to find the cash they wish to share by leaving it on the mantlepiece in an envelope marked Sharing with Santa. 

New Mentoring Program for Elves

In response to last year's employee survey, where elves expressed a desire to receive guidance relating to personal growth and development, we hired several mentors to help elves grow. Of course, by nature, elves are short. Helping them grow requires several innovative techniques and ongoing coaching. In order to provide relevant role models, we hired top players from the Chicago Bulls, the Los Angeles Lakers and the Seattle Supersonics. Each player was paired with an elf and charged with teaching him how to overcome his height-challenged physique related issues during a period of six months of intensive mentoring. During this period, elves learned how to spring-jump, walk on stilts, use electronic arm extensions, hover 15 centimeters above ground using kinetic energy, and extend their neck muscles using yoga techniques. Regrettably our elves are still short. Therefore, in a final attempt to meet the personal growth needs of our very important elf stakeholders, we purchased a set of distortion mirrors that reflect you back in triple height. All our elves now think that they are three times taller than they actually are and are completely satisfied. The only problem is that they all applied to join the Bulls, Lakers and Supersonics and couldn't understand why they were rejected.  

Combatting Santa Counterfiets

As we report each year, we maintain our ongoing battle to delegitimize Santa branded products that are not approved and licensed by Santa Inc. Although we failed to have the Talking Naughty Farting Santa Doll we reported last year removed from the market, we did succeed in receiving royalties of 50% on each sale. We are now working on the same thing with another product that came to our attention this year, the Chantilly Lane Rip Von Kringle - Singing Farting Santa.  As all these Santa functions in doll form appear to delight our customers all around the world, we adopted the "if you can't beat them" philosophy and created our own Santa doll. We call it the Talking Naughty Farting Singing Dancing Twirling Belching Jogging Screaming Humming Skipping Spitting Punching and Praying Santa. Check it out now on Amazon.com to get your delivery just in time for Christmas. We have also adopted a similar collaborative approach with app developers. For example, while the Personalized Phone Call from Santa app may not feature the real me, we have come to believe that this kind of application can support our mission and help spread the Santa message. Unfortunately, this app is free, so our 50% royalties amount to 50% of nothing. Therefore, we successfully negotiated to become the sole and exclusive provider of in-app purchases where all profits go to, yes, you guessed it, the Santa Claus Inc. Santa Retirement Fund. So far we have developed several in-app purchases: a slurpy kiss from Santa ($50), a Santa fart (using the Talking Naughty Farting Santa Doll) ($100) and a Santa indecent proposal ($500). As you can imagine, the last app is the most popular, although several customers asked for a refund when they discovered that the indecent proposal was a copy of the 1993 move starring Robert Redford and Demi Moore which can be rented from Amazon.com at $3.99. We are now considering more sustainable options.  

Feedback on this report
We will be happy to receive your feedback on this report, as long as it's positive.


In the meantime....

 We Wish You and Everyone in the World 

a Happy Holiday Season and a 

Happy New Year

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 first / next Sustainability Report? Contact elaine: info@b-yond.biz  

Santa's 1,750th Sustainability Report

This is the time of the year when we preview Santa's Sustainability Report. Once again, this report is a G4 report, in accordance with G4 comprehensive level. Reporting is a long Santa tradition. Check out Santa's prior reports: 

Santa's First G4 Comprehensive Sustainability Report 2013
Santa's First Integrated Financial and CSR Report 2012 
Santa's 1,747th 2011 Annual CSR Report 
Santa's 1,746th 2010 Annual CSR Report 
Santa's 1,745th 2009 Annual CSR Report

Santa Claus Inc. 2014 Sustainability Report: Leadership Message

Dear Stakeholders,

I am delighted to present our Sustainability Report for 2014 covering the way we have advanced our economic, social and environmental performance during the last year. While we are proud of what we achieved, there is much more to be done. Although we were faced with another challenging year, we were able to deliver record profits and increase our presence in more than 180 countries. At the same time, we remain true to our values and have continued to invest in our sustainability programs. 

This is just one example of our commitment to recycling. The first paragraph of this opening letter was copied from most other sustainability reports. Why create your own opening letter when recycling others will do? 

However, I do feel the need to be a little more specific about Santa Claus Inc.'s progress in 2014 because it was certainly an eventful year. 2014 was the year in which we continued to do everything we always have done. Although, to be honest, I came very close to handing in my resignation in 2014. I was in the middle of costing my externalities and suddenly I realized that I hadn't accounted for absolutely all of my natural capital. I had lost thousands of CO2e emissions. "Where could they have gone?", I asked myself. And then the penny dropped. After I had picked it up, I answered. We had thrown a party for long-serving elves in the early part of the year, and had promised to offset the emissions caused by fuel-assisted sleigh travel to the venue. According to the figures I received from our Elf Transportation Manager, we offset 4,309.5 tons of CO2e by planting trees in the Sulawesi rainforest. Unfortunately, the amount of CO2e emissions we generated in getting to Sulawesi and back with all our shovels was greater than the emissions we offset. Hence our externalities are now greater than we accounted for and this created a big gap in our environmental profit and loss account. In order to close the gap, I created a special insetting program based on use of reindeer manure as fertilizer for growing muscovado sugar used to make Christmas Pudding. Unfortunately, in order to create more manure, we had to feed the reindeer triple quantities of food and this further exacerbated our externality accounting gap. In the end, I decided that I would not longer account for externalities and revised our accounts to include only internalities. All our reindeer are now on diets and our environmental profit and loss account is in the black. In addition, we are promoting sugarless Christmas Pudding as a healthy alternative to counter growing levels of obesity which is a pressing world problem.   

Business developments
During 2014, Santa Claus Inc. made record profits due to the culmination of several trends we have been seeing during the past few years, and our ability to capitalize on these trends:

More toys: More parents are giving more toys to compensate for bad parenting habits. Not only this, but the toys that parents are purchasing are higher in value. Whereas battery-operated Daleks and a Barbie Dolls were the most popular toys some years ago, today, Sony Playstations, iPads, tablets and lifetime supplies of retalin are today's most popular gifts.

More Chinese: As purchasing parity in Asian markets is increasing and disposable income in China is approaching that of Western standards, we are seeing a rise in Christmas gifts which are now given in addition to Chinese New Year gifts. In order to cope with this demand, we have set up a special Santa station in Shanghai, with a locally relevant Santa image holding chopsticks. To get into the spirit of things, we started importing chow mein in to Lapland. We don't serve it for breakfast but you should see our chopstick technique.

More eco: As the IPCC continues to predict our planetary predicament with greater science-based certainty, we understand the importance of going green. This year, we distributed only green toys. Barbie now has a green face but there is a limit to how many toys we could convert to green. We therefore substituted many toys with artificial lawns. The kids love it. Instead of playing in the home, they can now play outside on a lawn and enjoy breathing polluted air.

All of this has had a positive impact on our business results and we had our most profitable year in 2014. We are looking to creating shared value, aligning with future trends and adopting the new post-2015 agenda global sustainability goals. We are sure that, as the only truly globally positive corporation, we can make a difference where it counts. And make even more profit.

Stakeholder Engagement

This is the year that we decided to really push the boat out on stakeholder engagement after listening to the webinar organized by the 2degreesnetwork that included prominent practitioners and thought-leaders.  We really wanted to engage with our stakeholders and hear what they are saying about the way we do business and how it affects them. Of course, we used the most popular stakeholder engagement tool, SurveyMonkey. We emailed our questionnaire to all our stakeholders around the world. Basically this is the entire population. We received 34 responses of which 14 were incomplete so we discounted them. Of the 20 complete responses that we received (19 were filled in by me and one by my mother), all confirmed that the most important contribution we can make was to improve Santa well-being and long-term prosperity. We therefore updated our materiality matrix to include this one issue, and have developed a strategy to improve our performance in this area with a target to ensure Santa lives in luxury for the rest of his natural life. You can help make this happen. Send your (large) cash donations to the Santa Claus Materiality Fund via the CSR-Reporting Blog. Do it NOW! 

Elf Healf and Safety

This year, in our Elf Healf and Safety Program, we had all our elves vaccinated against the Elfbola virus at great expense to the Santa Claus Inc. Healf and Safety Fund, despite the fact that we paid only half-price for the vaccine which is still in experimental stages. 9,000 elves were vaccinated and 3,411 developed full-blown Elfbola symptoms as a result of the vaccination. As the symptoms are extremely similar to those associated with imbibing excessive quantities of alcohol, which is considered fairly normal for many of our elves, we didn't actually realize that the vaccines were causing the problem until the affected elves didn't show up for work. Once we realized this, we continued the vaccination program because, actually, having the elves off sick is a good way to cut our labor costs which have been rising over the past few years due to aggressive demands from the elf union - the National Elf Representation Directorate  (NERD). We therefore continued to vaccinate a further 15,000 elves and 5,000 more got sick. This is such a positive program that we are considering sabotaging further research into Elfbola prevention and cure, so that we can reduce our labor costs every year without NERD complaints.   

Elf Future Leaders Program
As a leader in global elf employment, and an organization that takes investment in elf talent extremely seriously, we continue to find new ways to raise the awareness, motivation, commitment and capabilities of our elves in all matters regarding good elf citizenship and saving the planet. This year, we created an innovative program for high-potential elf talent - the Sustainability Elf Well-being Empowerment Retreat (SEWER). The program teaches elves all about sustainability principles during a five-day program in which they are fully immersed in the SEWER. After they complete the program, they become SEWER champions and are accountable for advancing sustainability in our organization. Unfortunately, not all elves made it out of the SEWER with acceptable results and were required to take the retreat once again. Regrettably, we realized that, for some elves, being in the SEWER was actually preferable to coming to work (due to the free unlimited supply of ice cream), and they deliberately failed the SEWER test in order to go back again. Therefore, we took a decision to cease sending elves to the SEWER for a second time and now, if they fail the SEWER test, we send them to the Don't Underestimate Materiality Program (DUMP).

Gender Optimization
We were planning a program for all Santa Claus Inc. female elf employees to be able to freeze eggs and give birth when they are at pensionable age. But we were influenced by the article by Crane and Matten about the problematic ways in which this plays out for women who work at Apple and Facebook. So we decided to take a different route. At Santa Claus Industries Inc., we offer to freeze any body part and even full DNA so that female employees can clone themselves as soon as they start to feel that a new body would be in order, without even missing a single day of work. We have created a special deep-freeze store room for frozen parts and pieces, and hundreds of female elves have already started to create their own stocks of self-parts for future use. Furthermore, we have established a mix'n'match option, so that female elves can swap body cells and parts among themselves, in order to create new bodies that are made up of only the best bits. In fact, this has been so popular that many of our female elves have already started putting this into practice. 43% of our female elves are now not recognizable as their former selves and 24% of them resemble Britney Spears.

Photo credit: people.com

Reindeer Rights

Unfortunately, our reindeer workforce halted work for three weeks in strike action before the Christmas rush this year as traces of reindeer meat was found in frozen 100% beefburgers marketed by a leading retail chain, mentioning no names but every little helps. Our reindeer were so outraged that their meat was being passed off as cheapo beefburgers that they created a global protest campaign on social media. The Reindeer Protection Committee set up a Meat And Nutrition Undermining Reindeer Ethics (MANURE) campaign where reindeer were asked to post a video of themselves pouring a bucket of frozen beefburgers over their heads and challenging three other reindeer to do the same thing. This quickly went viral. Thousands of reindeer participated. Unfortunately, given that packets of frozen beefburgers are actually quite heavy, most of the participating reindeer ended up in hospital with concussion and beefburger lacerations. This disrupted workflows completely and by the time we were ready to do the Christmas Eve rounds, half the reindeer workforce was incapacitated. However, the campaign was a resounding success and now, only horsemeat finds its way into beefburgers.

Partnering for Quality of Life 

In 2014, we engaged in our first Public Private Partnership to advance world prosperity. We joined forces with the Bill and Melissa Gates Foundation, the Clinton Foundation, Oxfam, the United Nations Development Program, the World Bank and government agencies of several emerging market countries to help enrich the quality of life for disadvantaged children. The program provides a personally-inscribed Christmas Book from Santa on Christmas Eve for every single child between the ages of four and four and a half. As partners in this program, we created a special Christmas Book, signed by Santa, which describes the way Santa Claus has contributed to the spread of goodwill and cheer during the festive season in different ways around the world over thousands of years. The book is inspirational and includes quizzes and fun activities for the children. I wrote it myself in Laplandish and used Bing to translate it into English and all other languages. Regrettably, Bing translation is not so accurate and most of the books were returned due to profanities in local languages, and other odd turns of phrase. For example, "Santa brings love and affection into people's homes" was translated as "Santa opened a new home-based brothel initiative", and "Santa gave up everything to devote his life to making children happy" was translated as "Santa went bankrupt after being accused of child molestation." After recalling all the books, all our partners in the program decided to back out and we were left with several million copies crowding out our warehouses in Lapland. To avoid sending the books to landfill, we held a big open bonfire over several days to keep people warm in the freezing Lapland winter. This melted all the local ice and caused a tidal wave which precipitated floods in the Baltic Sea which drowned out most of Sweden and the Baltic Countries and all their inhabitants. Although, socially, this was a big disaster, we can take credit for immediately reducing the world's population by 15 million people and easing the environmental resource burden on the planet. In this way, even without the Santa book, we contributed to enriching the quality of life for everyone else. 

Crowdsourcing through Kickstarter

This year, instead of sourcing our toys through conventional channels, we decided to exploit the opportunities of the digital world and set up a Toy Sourcing Project through Kickstarter which is a vibrant community of people working together to bring new things to life. We asked citizens of the world to pledge money to support the cost of this year's global Christmas Gift burden. We were overwhelmed at the response. In addition to money, people sent used sleighs, second-hand elf socks and thermal vests, used cellphones, first aid kits for frostbite and chimney burns and a range of used board games. To deal with all of this, we set up a complex sorting program using volunteer elves from the Northern Lapland region. While this was highly productive and enabled us to start a new for-profit business for sorting and upcycling trash, providing valuable employment for local elves, a new climate-smart project for our insetting initiative and profit for the Santa Claus Well-being Retirement Fund, it did not really help us meet our global toy demand for 2014. Next year we will create a more specific Kickstarter project asking for funds to support local volunteer-based toy assembly workshops in 143 countries. We figure that if we can get the children involved as volunteers in making the toys that they will eventually receive on Christmas Eve, we will save sourcing and logistics costs while providing meaningful volunteer work for million of under-age vandals, thereby solving some of the world's most pressing problems in one fell swoop. 

Anti-Bribery and Anti-Corruption

In 2014, we updated our Santa Claus Inc. Code of Conduct. We have included a clause that prohibits elves from taking or receiving gifts. Unfortunately, as most of the work of the elves involves distributing gifts, we had to discipline all our elf population for breach of our Code of Conduct. Disciplinary action included unpaid overtime, special Santa duty rostas (making coffee for Santa, combing Santa's beard and giving Santa neck massages) and donating half their elf monthly salary to the Santa Claus Well-being Retirement Fund. As a result, the update to our Code of Conduct was highly profitable and we are now considering adding another clause that prohibits breathing at work. 

Fighting Counterfeit Santas

We have been particularly disturbed this year by the growing instances of counterfeit Santa Claus dolls available on the market. We have an army of elves gainfully employed in the manufacture of life-size Santa Claus lookalike dolls here in Lapland and they are all modeled on me. Every doll is unique and captures my exact facial expressions and body position at the time of manufacture. I have to pose for days on end in order to allow the elves to capture the exact position of my arms, legs, eyebrows, and eyeballs. Fortunately, the dolls do not emit sound as on Thursdays, I pose for doll-modelling after our regular Thursday very large lunch of baked beans, a rare delicacy in Lapland. When this happens, all the elves wear earplugs and nose-grips so that their creative talents are not interrupted by unwelcome sounds and smells over which I have no control. The elves suggested we produce a Santa Claus Total Reality Doll version, as a special edition, and we had just begun to work on this when, to our surprise, we noticed the Talking Naughty Farting Santa Doll available on Amazon.com for $12.95. We believe this is in direct violation of our Santa Products registration rights and have taken out an injunction to prevent further sales. In the meantime, if you really want to hear Santa fart, you are invited to Lapland after lunch any Thursday. After this experience, Santa will have a whole new meaning for you and your family.

Disowning Santa Impersonations
Another worrying trend continues this year with people getting dressed up as Santa Claus in order to stage protests of one form or another. This year it was a crowd of Santa impersonators protesting at trade deals between Europe and the U.S. The TIPP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) negotiations are getting people worried and it seems that dressing up as Santa Claus helps get the message through. While some might find this mildly flattering, I wish to assure Santa lovers and supporters everywhere that Santa does not take part in protests, lobbying, activism, public campaigns for political change or mass demonstrations of any sort. Protesting trade agreements in the name of Santa is not-acceptable. But, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. We are now planning to stage an even bigger protest campaign of our own by delivering a six-pack of Coca Cola  to all world leaders with the message: Santa: the Real Thing. The six-packs are set to self-destruct causing a fair amount of damage if a Santa impersonation is detected within the vicinity.

In addition, we have also witnessed a rise in the unauthorized use of the Santa name in campaigns such as #TextSantaKodakMoment where celebs take a picture that has something to do with Santa and Christmas and post it on the internet in order to drive charitable donations. We have no wish to spoil everyone's fun, and if the donations were routed to the Santa Claus Well-being Retirement Fund we would have no objection. As it stands, however, Santa Claus has not agreed to be part of these celeb moments and we are considering recourse to illegal action if such campaigns continue.

Awards Received

Every year, we are delighted to be acknowledged by our stakeholders for the (very) positive contribution we make to the world and we love accepting the many awards that are bestowed upon our organization and its people. In 2014, we were honored to receive many awards: 

First Prize for the Best Workplace in Lapland: Our elves feel extremely privileged to work for Santa Claus Inc. Not only have we had no unfair dismissal complaints for three consecutive years, nor have (almost) any elves committed suicide, the results of our employee survey shows that elves are 46% engaged, 51% committed and 57% supportive of our mission, vision and values. 99% of elves believe we make a positive contribution to world peace, but only after we agreed to supplement survey month pay-packets with double wages for positive responses to this question. Still, I am sure they believe it. 

Lapland's Chamber of Business Most Profitable Company Award for 2013: We don't make a lot of profit, but we do make more than any other business in Lapland, being by far the largest corporation and employer in the region. The Chamber of Business recognized this, as our membership is dependent upon our donating a portion of our profits to the Chamber, This year, our donation funded new thermally lined ear-muffs for all Chamber officials as well as a year's supply of Santa Claus Inclusive Woolly Socks for One-Legged People. 

The 2013 Universal Award for the Most Eco-efficient Christmas Gift Distribution System: This award was particularly important to us, given our efforts to move to hybrid sleigh distribution with part-animal, part-electric reindeer, and our new solar powered robot elves. We have moved to green energy for all of our toy assembly operations and we have found a way to turn the Lapland snow into biogas to fuel our office generator. It doesn't generate much heat but it gets the elves shoveling snow away from our sleigh runways. 

The Global Award for the Best G4 Sustainability Report of 2013. We were honored to receive this award for the best G4 sustainability report, reflecting our material issues with focus, clarity and relevant transparency. It is no surprise that we won this award. Dr. Sustainability gave us some great tips! 

Feedback on this report
We will be happy to receive your feedback on this report, as long as it's positive.


In the meantime....

 We Wish You and Everyone in the World a Happy Holiday Season and a Happy New Year.

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).  Check out our G4 Report Expert Analysis Service - for published G4 reports or pre-publication - write to Elaine at info@b-yond.biz to help make your G4 reporting  even better. 

Santa's 1,747th Annual CSR Report

True to form, Santa has sent me her 1747th CSR Report. (See prior reports here: 1,746 and 1,745). But yes, you did read that correctly. This year, Santa is a WOMAN. She was appointed after a nomination by the Santa Claus Inc. (SCI) Board of Directors Nominating Committee and approved at the SCI AGM. This is a first for SCI. Not only is Santa a woman, but she is a single mom, she's of Chinese origin, has a personal disability (a wooden leg) and was abandoned by her parents at birth, only to be found in a garbage dump by concerned citizens who prayed for her welfare. After finding home in a series of orphanages, Miss Santa applied to the Vocation Elf Training Academy in Lapland, believing that distributing gifts to children would make the world a better place. From Day One she was mentored by senior SCI Managers, offered several leadership development programs, provided with flexible working options so that she could be home for her children in the afternoons. Miss Santa is paid exactly the same as her male counterparts. Graduating from the elf program with distinction, Miss Santa quickly rose through the elf ranks and became a significant influence at SCI. When it was time to appoint a new Santa, she was not considered as a leading candidate because she is a woman. Santa has never been a woman. However, Miss Santa did a good thing. She personally talked at all the members of the SCI Board of Directors and promised to behave like a man. They accepted, and the rest is history. Follow Santa on Twitter at @Santa or visit Santa's Facebook page.

As I usually do, with permission, I will share with you the CEO statement.

Santa Claus

The Shared Values Report 2011

Dear Stakeholders,

As you all approach Christmas 2011, I urge you to be conscious consumers. I know how tempting toy stores are at this time of the year. Blinking lights, massive colorful displays, new improved versions of all your favorite toys, all screaming at you "Buy ME, Buy ME, Buy ME!" I say to you, conscious citizens of the world. UNITE! Join together in a spirit of sustainability. Don't buy! Instead, donate the money you would have spent to the Retired Santa Foundation, which ensures that all prior Santa's can continue to live in a way to which they have not yet become accustomed. 

2011 has been a year of ups and downs. Yes, we reached new heights and experienced new lows. In this 1,747th CSR Report, I will share with you the heights. You can work out the lows for yourself. The theme of this report is how Santa creates Shared Value. We do this by continuing to do what we have always done, but calling it Shared Value. In sustainability terms, we have made notable progress and have been accepted by the Dow Jones Sustainability Index as a Super Sector Leader for the very first time. (Actually, there is no other company in our sector, so leadership is a POC). We have also joined the United Nations Global Compact, mainly because of the problems of corruption we see in our industry. We have already started a campaign to prevent local in-store Santas promoting toys from sponsored links.

Reinforcing our Values: One of my first acts as CEO was to review our Santa Claus value statement and bring it into line with our modern world. When Santa started out over 1,700 years ago, the world was a very different place. No internet. No cell-phones. No Chunky Monkey. No electric sleighs. No robot elves. Today, the world is full of technology and people have become addicted to Facebook and iPhones, leaving little time to experience the true meaning of relationships, the love of nature or the optimism of the human spirit. Our new values at SCI aim to reinforce our contribution to this modern world. Following a process of consultation with our Board of Directors, the Elf Representation Committee and selected external stakeholders (reindeer farmers, toy manufacturers, Greenpeace, children and moms, chimney sweeps), we believe this now best represents our core:

Mission

To perpetuate the love of Santa

Values  

Faith in Santa

Disabled-Access Chimneys

Elf Emancipation

Reindeer Rights

Children's Universal Right to Gifts

Santa World Domination 

Sleigh Energy Efficiency: As reported last year, we were considering moving to electric-powered sleighs, but we delayed this program due to lack of sleigh charging stations. We are disappointed to report no progress in global electric sleigh infrastructure, but we have commenced a pilot with solar power. We charge up our sleighs all summer in sunny Lapland and this provides enough energy to run the sleighs during the Christmas period, provided we use power-saving driving techniques. This saves over 463,000 tons of carbon emissions every Christmas season. The downside is that some sleighs run out of power before returning to base. If anyone has identified the whereabouts of 473 sleighs which have been lost somewhere over Iran, Ivory Coast, Philippines and New Zealand, please contact the SCI Sleigh Recovery Department.

Transportation Safety: All sleighs have now been fitted with tachometers, global GPS tracking and safety devices that monitor the driving techniques of elves and report problems online. In 2011, there were 225 sleigh accidents, mostly due to elves tweeting and texting while sleigh-driving. These resulted in only one fatality: a life-size inflatable Marilyn Monroe doll, destined for a home for motherless children. Instead, we supplied a life-size Powderpuff Girl. We have issued a new policy that forbids distractions when sleigh-driving and any elves which cause more than 3 accidents are demoted to toy-sorters in the Lapland warehouse.   

Toys Sourcing, Packaging and Recycling: This year, Santa is distributing toys which have certified conflict-free mineral content, contain reduced levels of packaging materials and only paper and carton from sustainable sources. Every toy is recyclable because it contains a special label: "Recycle this Toy - give it to a friend".  Our experiment two years ago of distributing only recycled toys was not sustainable. Children rejected used toys due to missing parts, torn-off doll limbs and protruding nails and screws, despite our rigorous QA process. When children complained of having received a horse on a stick without the horse, a BeyBlade without the blade and a Justin Bieber doll which sings out of tune, we felt it was time to review this policy. (We are still checking whether the Justin Bieber issue is actually a fault).  

We have also banned certain toys from our distribution list this year:

• Swearing policeman toys - we value plain speaking but not bad language.
• Jo-Ann Stores Rubber Ducky Garden Collection - toxic levels of lead paint are not in line with our safety policy
• Paintball Guns - unintentionally flying paint cartridges are not pretty
• Barbie - due to rainforest destruction - even Ken couldn't stomach it

Elf Freedom of Association: This year, we have made significant progress by acceding to elves' demand for representation, collective bargaining and freedom of association. Of the 342,400 elves in our employ, 17 have joined the Help Elves Live Longer (HELL) Union. HELL ensures a living wage for elves and protects their pension rights. The reason that only 17 elves have joined HELL is that unauthorized union-busting activity has apparently been more successful that we are able to admit.   

Impact Evaluation Program: This year, for the first time, we concluded our first Impact Evaluation Study, aiming to show what value Santa adds to social cohesion all over the world during the holiday season. It took us quite some time to figure out how to measure this, but ultimately, with the support of the Toys for Global Spiritual Growth Association, we undertook the widest survey ever of children between the ages of 6 and 9, and parents between the ages of 23 and 24. This is what we found:

99.3% of children confirmed that receiving a toy from Santa contributes to their motivation to achieve higher grades in school. The 0.7% who disagreed are employed year-round, cotton picking in Uzbekistan and making tablecloths in factories in Guangzhou. 

78.9% of children confirmed that playing with toys helps them form positive relationships with siblings. Those who did not, have no siblings. Those who confirmed positive relationships say this is due to the fact that, when they are playing with their toys, they are not interacting with their siblings and therefore have no time to quarrel.

100% of children confirmed that receiving toys helps them understand important social issues such as global warming, global poverty and gender equality. We think this is probably because the questionnaire did not have a negative response option.

93% of parents confirmed that their children love them more after they have received a toy at Christmas time. Quite how parents measure this is not clear. However, in parallel, records show a reduction of parental violence and child-beating in many countries. We can only conclude that our toys are contributing to strengthening positive bonds between parents and children.

99% of parents confirmed that children received toys from Santa that they would otherwise not have bought. This is because most parents prefer to spend on food, education and medical care. By reducing the burden on parents to budget for Christmas toys, our impact is undeniable: happier, healthier, better educated children who will save our planet from enironmental destruction.

As a result of this highly positive Impact Evaluation, we re-launched our Support Santa Fund. Please support us. Donations are welcome via the CSR Reporting Blog (who takes only a small percentage handling fee. Not more than 42.5%).

A+ Level Report: Finally, we  are proud to announce that this is a self-declared A+ Level report, prepared in accordance with Santa's very own Reporting Framework. Actually, there is only an A+ Level. We prefer not to confuse people. We decided not to have our report assured this year in order to ensure that no-one picks up on our errors. However, we will consider making fewer errors in future years.

Wishing Everyone A Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and A Happy New Year !

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, an inspired CSR consulting and Sustainability Reporting firm)

Santa's 1746th CSR Report

Ho! Ho! Ho! Its the time to rejoice and be merry. Santa has a long tradition of reporting and is about to publish his 1746th CSR Report. (See his 1745th report here). Santa sent me his report for a pre-publication review (a service I offer to all corporate reporters - haha - PLUG!). I couldnt resist sharing with you  Santa's introduction to his 2010 report (with permission, of course!) .

Santa Claus

The CRAP Report 2010

(Corporate Responsibility And Presents Report)

Dear Stakeholders,

It is that time of the year again when the bells jingle, the carols carol, the elves work overtime and the reindeer suffer from torn ligaments. Also, at this time, I aim to publish my assessment of my sustainability impacts during the past year and communicate them transparently to all my billions of stakeholders all over the globe. I have been doing this now for the past 1745 years, and each time I sit down to write a sustainability report, I get that familiar warmth that comes from the knowledge that I am simply a wonderful corporate citizen (and even if I weren't, I wouldnt say).

This year has been a particularly difficult year for Santa.. The effects of the Global Financial Crisis have reduced the disposable income of many who bought lavish gifts for distribution at Xmas, the failure of major global economies such as Iceland have led to decommercialisation of  Santa merchandise and the BP Oil Spill Aftermath promises to make for a slippery arrival in the Gulf of Mexico. Instead of snow-hooves, I have had to purchase oil-proof wellingtons for the entire reindeer fleet. You will be pleased to note, however, that these are indeed made from 100% recycled post consumer organic waste. I just hope the reindeer don't eat them. 

Despite the difficulties, I have remained committed to Santa Values of giving, giving and giving and to my favourite colours - red and green. Red is of course the traditional symbol of the Santa cult, and cheap impersonations of Santa in purple, orange or hot pink have not gained much ground, I am pleased to note. Green of course is the colour of the environment, without which we wouldn't have, well, an environment.  I have also remained committed to my stakeholders: my workforce of 501,380 elves (down by 14% in 2010 after a difficult downsizing program - we tried to downsize by putting all the elves on a lettuce diet, but four died, so we reverted to standard redundancy letters), my  fleet of 103,000 reindeer (and no, despite the persistent approaches by Better Place, I will not consider moving to an electric reindeer fleet until Shai Agassi can guarantee battery exchange stations in every chimney and department store), the billions of children who receive my gifts (and some are very BIG children), and environmental activists (who recommend downloadable Xmas gifts powered by Google's sustainable servers). I was particularly pleased to note the recognition given by Gap Inc to my reindeers, even though they didn't include me in their reindeer movie. 

This year, I decided to establish a Santa Sustainability Steering Committee to ensure we progress on all fronts. The Committee is chaired by myself and includes the CSE (Chief Sustainability Elf), the CTE (Chief Technical Elf), the CRRE (the Chief Reindeer Relations Elf), and the CERE (The Chief Elf Resources Elf). I thought about including the Chief  Corporate Communications and Compliance Codes Elf (CCCCCE) but the number of C's in this elf's title was a problem for my secretary, who maintains that the C key on her keyboard has now ceased to function. The Steering Committee has established targets for 2011:

• Reduce carbon emissions by 43%  through reindeer methane emission avoidance  (by modifying reindeer feed or purchasing cork anal-wind blockers)
• Increase distribution of recycled toys to 97% (by offering incentives to kids who donate toys to the Santa Toy Recycling Center in Lapland - each will receive a Green Santa Certificate of Distinction)
• Improve working conditions for elves (new ergonomic inspections of chimneys to reduce orthopedic stress during delivery operations)
• Increase gender balance in the elf workforce (by demanding that female elves put on weight so that their average weight is in balance with the average weight of the male elves).

Feedback from external stakeholders on lat year's report through my Santa.net website was double that of previous years. Two people gave input. The first congratulated Santa Inc. on an outstanding report. The second was from one of the Big Four, asking if we intend to assure the 2010 report. My position on assurance remains as in previous years. If you don't believe ME, then why should you believe anyone else?

Finally, it remains only for me to wish all the Citizens of the Universe  a wonderful joyous and happy Christmas. Remember to spread a little goodwill this Christmas - donate (a lot) to Santa.net.

*******

Happy Christmas and Happy Holidays to all!

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, an inspired CSR consulting and Sustainability Reporting firm)