Corporate Social Responsibility in Practice
Meeting the challenges of an increasingly complex and demanding marketplace As international efforts to better manage our complex environmental, social and governance issues increase, the expectations of business, government, and civil society are rising too. Transparency, accountability, responsiveness, and innovation are the means by which to build trust and prosperity for all stakeholders along your organisation’s operational chain of impact and value. Consumers, shareholders, and employees are all demanding raised standards in products, services and operations. Communities have never been as well equipped to challenge organisations and hold them to account. Organisations are under increasing pressure not only to deliver for their immediate stakeholders, but to act well for better outcomes for both business and society.
“People need confidence that organisations are acting well to be able to trust them.� Dr Leeora Black Managing Director ACCSR
Responsible strategies that benefit your organisation and your stakeholders Our planned approach to corporate social responsibility (CSR) helps your organisation adapt to the changing marketplace, to focus on the highest priorities for increased efficiency, and to build value for all your stakeholders. Gone are the days of just ‘going green’ or making philanthropic donations. CSR enhances business strategies through identifying and optimising impacts, lowering your business risk, unlocking new value for your stakeholders, and improving competitiveness. ACCSR can help you both set and achieve CSR goals that allow everyone to support and empower your business strategy.
“CSR is a very broad topic, as there is much to be considered.” Jonathan Dutton Non-executive Director ACCSR
> Develop and integrate responsible practices and strategies that drive value and achieve your organisation’s goals > Learn what’s material to your stakeholders and build engagement and trusted relationships > Introduce business innovations with positive social impacts > Attain a ‘social licence to operate’ that enhances and protects your reputation and access to vital resources > Identify, manage and reduce your socio-political and business risks > Weed out problems in your supply chain that could damage your profile and reduce efficiency > Implement ethical and sustainable procurement practices and stronger supplier due diligence standards > Make sustainable, timely and mutually-beneficial community investments > Understand and meet your human rights obligations > Produce strong, inspirational sustainability reports and communications that underpin your CSR objectives and profile > Build the CSR knowledge, capacity and capability of your team, enhancing productivity and loyalty. > Engage and motivate employees with powerful CSR campaigns > Build customer appeal and drive sustainable consumer behaviour > Strengthen your reputation as an employer of choice.
We’re specialised, passionate and responsive ACCSR is the leading independent specialist consulting firm in Australia that is solely focused on CSR and sustainability. We are a respected, research-driven consultancy dedicated to working responsively with our clients to help them identify and achieve their CSR and strategic goals. Working with ACCSR means you benefit from a firm that is big enough to understand the international context and the latest drivers, practice, standards, and tools in CSR, but small enough to ensure that you get easy access to specialist and passionate CSR professionals committed to high service standards.
“ACCSR’s work answered some key questions and enabled us to make evidence-based decisions about the governance of our charitable company. They produced a high quality piece of work in a very tight time-frame. It was a good experience dealing with them.” Ian Wood Vice President Community Relations and Sustainability BHP Billiton
“Wrigley Pacific partnered with ACCSR to produce our annual sustainability report using a robust assessment framework to review our impacts. Their expertise and service delivery were exceptional, leading us to deliver our best Pacific sustainability report to date and advance our measurement practices.” Sophie Hughes Senior Manager, Corporate Affairs Wrigley Pacific
“What ACCSR brings is specialist knowledge – ACCSR can show people a different way of doing things.” Merrill Gray Managing Director Syngas
Answers for any stage of your CSR journey ACCSR can help you at any stage of your CSR journey – from understanding your initial corporate social responsibility issues, to evaluating your established approaches. Or, realigning your strategy to build greater value, through to helping you achieve greater prominence in sustainability rankings. Engage us as a team or individual consultants to help you achieve larger goals or just to work on specific CSR projects. Either way, you and your team will be empowered by the latest CSR knowledge and our network.
CSR Strategy Answer fundamental questions about your CSR goals, strengths, and opportunities across your organisation and supply chain – and make a realistic business plan to get there in a way that aligns with your organisational mission and strategy.
CSR Assessments and Research Is your approach to CSR meeting best practice? How do your stakeholders see you? How do you rate against your competitors? What should you do to earn and maintain your social licence to operate? Do your strategies and reports pass the test of materiality? We use rigorous and proven approaches to answer key questions, through benchmarking, comparison to
standards and best practices, audits and materiality reviews, as well as quantitative and qualitative research.
CSR Training ACCSR is a Certified Training Partner of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and has successfully trained more people in GRI reporting than any other provider in Australia. We also provide training on many other CSR frameworks and practices. Through ACCSR you can access online courses for self-paced learning, attend public short courses on key topics, or arrange in-house private workshops, either off-the-shelf or tailored for your organisation. Please see the Training section on our website.
CSR Reporting and Communications Produce a best-practice sustainability report that conforms to GRI or other guidelines, measures your performance, drives improvements, promotes your achievements and can include
verification by Bureau Veritas. Or, simply let ACCSR produce reports and materials for you, and develop targeted and relevant content for you such as blogs, white-papers, articles or social media outputs and more.
“The research carried out by ACCSR gave us a baseline of our social licence to operate and provided unique insight into our stakeholders’ issues and connections.” Sara Parrott Manager, Community Relations Xstrata Coal (now part of Glencore)
“(ACCSR helped us)... to better structure, demonstrate and communicate our credentials as a responsible corporate citizen.” Tom Maguire General Manager, Corporate Services Teys Australia
Tap into the latest thinking As well as helping individual organisations with practical CSR solutions, we are at the forefront of the latest research and thinking. We produce the Annual Review of the State of CSR in Australia and New Zealand – now one of the world’s largest ongoing research projects on CSR. We are also leading research into social licence to operate, and have published a book authored by ACCSR Managing Director, Dr Leeora Black, on this subject. We are affiliated with a number of leading CSR and Sustainability organisations, and our team includes a network of Senior Associates who are acknowledged subject matter experts from around the world (see our website). www.accsr.com.au
ACCSR uses the latest sustainability tools, including the Stakeholder 360R and the Supply Chain Sustainability Tracker. Plus, you can access our online Knowledge Bank holding white-papers, presentations, reports, articles, blogs and more.
Global knowledge, local passion ACCSR’s Managing Director, Dr Leeora Black founded the firm in 2003 with the mission of supporting organisations to achieve superior social performance that helps drive business success. With both a doctorate and on-going publishing record on CSR, Leeora is an internationally recognised sustainability expert with more than 30 years’ experience in helping organisations adapt to their changing environments.
“As a team, we are deeply committed to ethical and honourable business conduct, and we strive for excellence in all we do. Nurturing client relationships through collaboration is vital, and our aim is to build the capacity and capability of your team with each and every project we work on.” Dr Leeora Black Managing Director ACCSR
2 ACCSR 2015 Sustainability Report
Her experience spans the mining, oil and gas industries, banking, insurance and superannuation, FMCG, agribusiness, retail and consumer brands, utilities, telecommunications, renewable energy, property, automotive, transport, and government sectors. A summary of the combined expertise of the ACCSR team can be found on our website.
Our clients do amazing things Our clients are doing some outstanding work in CSR and sustainability, and we’re proud to partner with them.
“We valued the high levels of engagement with ACCSR to work at various levels of the University – with executives, data owners and the Sustainability Committee. We couldn’t put just anyone in front of our executives to advocate for sustainability reporting.”
Visit our website to view a range of practical case studies, from how we’ve helped Kathmandu with their CSR strategy and reporting, to how we’ve helped ClubsNSW with a CSR Guide that helps over 1,200 businesses achieve better social impacts.
“The training program with ACCSR has meant our people have been able to increase their confidence and skill in responding to stakeholder issues and needs.”
Since 2003 we have worked for hundreds of organisations including global and local firms, government businesses and departments, and nonprofit organisations.
Linda Stevenson Senior Manager, Sustainability RMIT
Michelle Andrews Deputy Director General WA Department of Mines and Petroleum
“ACCSR was a catalyst to developing our strategy and provided essential advice and guidance throughout our sustainability journey so far. The Sustain the Dream Plan and Sustainability Report have contributed to increase stakeholder awareness of our strategy and improvements in our overall sustainability performance.” Paul Stern General Manager Business Development and Sustainability Kathmandu
Suite 212, 838 Collins Street Docklands VIC 3008 Australia T +61 3 9049 9500 F +61 3 9049 9555 E info@accsr.com.au www.accsr.com.au
The ACCSR Network
ACCSR also works with a wide range of partners and associates in the completion of their mission to help organisations with practical CSR solutions. These include a wide range of prestigious bodies with whom joint-projects have been completed recently such as; the Australian Human Rights Commission, Sustainable Business Australia, the UN Global Compact Network Australia, New Zealand Sustainable Business Council and the Global Reporting Initiative – for whom ACCSR are certified trainers. In addition, ACCSR has developed a network of international associates, all of whom are internationally recognised experts in some aspect of CSR.
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