Book review: Sustainability Reporting for SMEs

Sustainability Reporting for SMEs: competitive advantage through transparency by Elaine Cohen was sizzlingly hot off the press when I bought a limited-edition hard copy at the Smarter Sustainability Reporting conference last week. 

Published by DōSustainability, the book is intended to be downloaded as a DōShorts 90-minute e-book for your commute.

As one half of an ethical micro-enterprise that has been publishing CSR reviews for the past six years, I was instantly attracted to the title. At last, a respected name in the industry was providing advice for people in my position. Also, Elaine Cohen runs her own SME, so she knows exactly what she’s talking about.

That said, I agree with her assertion that the book would be equally valuable for sustainability managers in larger companies whose success depends on the transparency and accountability of their supply chain – a very hot potato in the UK food chain right now! Anyone wanting to encourage their SME suppliers to report on sustainability issues would do well to start them off with this book.

Elaine gives clear descriptions and definitions that would be helpful to SMEs doing this for the first time, along with real-life case studies and practical how-to guidance. One of the things I found most illuminating was the fact that the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) framework and the UN Global Compact Communication of Progress were tools that could easily and usefully be used by SMEs.  I’d always thought they were for large companies, not one of my size.

The ‘Roadmap to Transparency’ chapter is my favourite and I’ve gleaned many ideas that I want to put into practice to take our sustainability reporting onto a higher level. I also got a lot out of the ‘Guidance for Developing a Sustainability Report’ chapter. 

My only concern is whether the book’s title is appealing enough for a more mainstream SME audience? Elaine talks about the importance of giving sustainability reports an eye-catching title and says she wanted to call this book: ‘Make More Money: Sustainability Reporting for SMEs’. I think she should have gone with that if she wanted to reach a wider variety of SMEs, way beyond those of us who are already converted to the cause.

To read an extract of the book, or to download or rent a copy, visit: www.dosustainability.com  

Debbie Griffiths www.idealCSR.co.uk   

10 things I learned about Social Enterprise in the West Midlands

What type of business can become a social enterprise? As Melanie Mills, Chief Exec of Social Enterprise West Midlands, said in SEWM’s ‘Enterprise Future’ event in Birmingham on 7 Feb: “There is no fixed mould.” The day was about services to children and young people, but the diversity was astonishing.

We heard about Made By Young People – a printing company teaching young people how to be enterprising, legally. The Positive Youth Foundation aims to provide opportunities for young people to reach their full potential, using sport, leisure, creative education, mentoring and cultural programmes.

The aim of Start Again is for young people to develop their personal, spiritual and social sides. 20 year-old MD of Fourth Wall Theatre Network, Dan Bridgewater, spoke eloquently about life as drama, creating top quality drama with young actors and actresses, improving their confidence and social wellbeing and developing the region’s top future artistic leaders and practitioners.

Jean Wilson couldn’t get the kind of service she needed for her severely disabled daughter, so she set up New Hope, supplying support to three families. Two years on, New Hope is helping 60 families with respite care in relation to their children with disabilities – as a social enterprise, helping children gain new experiences in ways similar services seem not to have considered.

For all concerned, there’s a journey from idea to successful business. Social Enterprise West Midlands is a fantastic support network for anyone considering setting out on such a life-transforming venture. The free event, at the Signing Tree Conference Centre in Birmingham, was run very effectively by Melanie Mills, Claire Reynolds and Marika Beckford. As well as a business support video surgery, participants could attend two excellent workshop sessions by Dynamic Marketing and Development in Social Enterprise. Over 50 social enterprises and wannabes got the benefit of all this.

Ideal Word was there to network and offer support to fledgling organisations looking to define their market positioning, name their company or services, work out their key messages and generally communicate more effectively. I took away many thoughts...

Being a social enterprise is not enough in itself. People will judge you on the products and services you provide, not whether you are a social enteprise.

Not many small businesses put the price range of their products and services on their websites? Why not? If you want to be relevant to your target market, it’s an important piece of information.

What should form part of the key messages a social enterprise communicates to its target market? People have to understand your motivation for doing what you do.

How do you know if you’re the kind of person for a social enterprise? Ask yourself the following question and answer honestly: What comes first for you, What I can offer or What I can get?

A social enterprise is a way of doing business, not just for profit.

Ultimately, it’s clear that there are so many ways to support children and young people to enjoy better, more integrated, productive lives through social enterprise. Nobody knows all the answers. If you’ve got an idea at 20, why wait until you’re 30 and have more life experience. Do it now, find people who can help, take it on. First, sign up to Social Enterprise West Midlands.

Mark Griffiths www.idealconsulting.co.uk

Green Deal, or No Deal?

By ‘Greenest Government’, does David Cameron mean the most naive? The way it has handled solar panels and household energy efficiency suggests this Government is either completely confused about supply and demand or totally uncommitted to developing a Green economy.

The Coalition has gone to lengthy legal ends to suspend the subsidy available to homeowners for installing solar panels, citing that the cost of installation has come down, so the subsidy should go. What happened? The market crashed and the industry bit back. A group of 17 solar panel companies announced in January 2013 that it is suing the Government for the disastrous way it handled changes to the feed-in tariff, leading to a rapid and dynamic fall in the number of people installing solar panels. Between them, the companies had to lay off thousands of workers in 2012. While the Government has now stabilised the feed-in tariff system and the solar market is picking up, it has not fostered any confidence in its ability to handle important new markets.

What has the Government learned from its solar fiasco? That, it can be dangerous to encourage too much demand in a fledgling market – what happens if people take up the offer?! So, with the launch of its Green Deal programme to encourage householders and businesses to ‘retrofit’ properties for greater energy efficiency, better not to mention it at all and keep demand low. That way, it won’t get into any more trouble with subsidies.

What’s more, the market’s view of the Green Deal is that, if it’s not good enough to promote, it’s simply not good enough at all. This Government is learning some harsh lessons about the law of supply and demand. Maybe it should take its green market stimulus notion to Dragon’s Den – Junior Dragon’s Den.

So, to hear David Cameron talking this week about the need to build the Green Deal up slowly sounds like post-rationalisation. When I attended the RetroExpo at Birmingham NEC back in October, it was plain then that very few energy efficiency companies understood what to expect from the marketplace. And the only reason for that was that the Government was not promoting its own scheme. By the turn of this year, shortly before launch, 4 in 5 homeowners had never heard of the Green Deal. Those who have cannot understand it. The general media reaction was ‘we won’t, would you?’

If you have to roll out Arnold Schwarzenegger to supplement your Green credentials, you can be pretty sure that nobody believes what you are doing to promote the Green economy, Mr Cameron.

The truth is that the British public is by and large far greener in its approach to life than this Government, which claims to be the ‘greenest’. In recessionary times, people need real, simple incentives. New industries must believe that the rug will not be pulled out from beneath them once they get up and running. The Green marketplace will not develop successfully by itself, certainly not if this Government continues to make cack-handed interventions either through callow confusion or ignorant indifference.

That said, when you strip out the political judgement on the Green Deal to be found in the media (left/right/green/mean), there is something to look at for the first time. The only person to have done this is Martin Lewis, Money Saving Expert. Of course, his only agenda is to save you money. If you’ve got a couple of hours to spare, read his lengthy, 20-point take on whether the Green Deal is worth it.

Mark Griffiths www.idealconsulting.co.uk

The End of Britain? Or Humanity?

Words don’t often fail me, but I had to calm down for four or five hours before I could say what I think about this rambling, chaotic, nihilistic piece of anti-social marketing junk from Money Week.

Whatever view you take of the world – and mine’s an idealistic stoicism – this article will push your buttons.

With the weight of words around us, I suppose I should congratulate writers that can have such a profound effect. Except I can’t, because the effect of Money Week’s The End Of Britain is profoundly depressing. You’d have to be Stephen King or Frankie Boyle to appreciate it.

After all the world has suffered at the hands of financial gamblers over the past few years, there are still people who think that they can play with numbers and that their dealings exist somehow outside any human considerations. And so Money Week promotes its Wealth Preservation Report with such dark insouciance.

Quite honestly, if you read this on April Fool’s Day, you wouldn’t believe it. It reads like a spoof. It’s so tongue in cheek that it’s no longer tongue in cheek. It’s a survivalist manifesto masquerading as a poorly edited piece of marketing fluff.
It’s not so much the doom and gloom of the financial scenario that ‘The End Of Britain’ predicts for Britain, although that is enough in itself to make you lose bowel control on the spot. It’s the sheer arrogance that, if you subscribe to Money Week and follow the wisdom of its business magnates and City Wunderkinder, you can avoid the inevitable fate that will befall the 99.999% of British sheep-like public in the coming years.

No, I can assure you that, if you’re prepared to read this, your blood will boil and you’ll be on the next anti-G8 demo in London. Not so much to find the Government officials who knowingly enact policies that make no difference except to their polling ratings. But to raid the offices of Money Week so that you can tear from their seats these utterly indifferent and obscenely selfish people who think that they can profit from everyone else’s misery by advocating such barbarism. It’s the sheer naked inhumanity of the Money Week position that induces such despair. One that blames bankers and politicians and never the greedy investors who bet on failure and chaos and permanently unsettle the world.

No doubt, the journalists concerned will be disingenuous. But you don’t have to read between the lines on this article about how to profit while Rome burns. If there’s one redeeming consequence of the depressing scenario Money Week depicts, it’s that its savvy investors will not be able to enjoy their sequestered wealth because there simply will be no world left to enjoy it in.

But, as I said, I’m a stoical idealist. My diary is full of events to attend like EcoBuild and Sustainability Live. I have no wish to separate myself from the fate of the people of this country, to invest ill-gotten gains in an offshore fund on Mars that’s financing the next war in North Africa. It may seem like a cliché, but I do want to be part of solutions, not problems.

Mark Griffiths www.idealconsulting.co.uk

What the RSC can teach us about CSR

I felt privileged to get an invite from the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) to attend their Boris Godunov blogging event the other night. Playing in rep at the Swan Theatre until 30 March, Boris is the directing swansong of Michael Boyd, who magnificently recreates the era depicted in Pushkin’s play then brings it bang up to date with scenes and settings that parallel Putin’s Russia today. Very clever.

I went in with no idea what I would blog about. I came away with two blogs. Just like the actors we got to interview after the performance, I play two roles. As a sustainability consultant, you’d expect me to draw out some CSR lessons (see below).  But I also got material to write as my alter ego – i.e. founder of the Save Shottery campaign. Do take a look at my ‘Art of protest’ blog and please sign our petition, if you haven’t already done so!

A World Elsewhere
Boris Godunov is part of the RSC’s ‘A World Elsewhere’ triology, exploring classic plays from around the world. To accompany it, the RSC has also commissioned a fantastic photographic exhibition depicting contemporary issues including climate change, capitalism, protests, politics and ideology.

© Christo Geoghegan/courtesy Foto8 Gallery

A world elsewhere’ is a quote from Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, reminding Rome’s citizens that there are other countries and people apart from their own. This is particularly pertinent for sustainability and corporate responsibility.  As CSR professionals, it’s our job to open people’s eyes to the world around us and the global consequences of our actions (or inactivity). But from time to time, we need our own eyes, ears and minds opening to new stimuli too. Art does that beautifully.

Leadership and reputation

Boris reminds us about man’s innate need for leaders of the masses.  The same is true for CSR – the mass market needs leaders to look up to and follow. What no-one needs, but we often get in politics and business, are leaders who try to win people over with grand public gestures and philanthropy while ruling with self-serving policies.

Lloyd Hutchinson (Boris Godunov) Photo: Ellie Kurttz

In the play, Boris can’t believe that the people to whom he was once so generous, could blame him for all evil and natural disasters. How anything bad, however small, becomes a big deal that he’s suddenly responsible for.  The truth is, once someone starts abusing their dominant position and people get wind of it, they will turn against you. That lesson is as relevant today as it was hundreds of years ago – ask Starbucks.

You can’t buy respect, you have to earn it. A good reputation can be lost in an instant and take an age to rebuild. Look at BP - last year activists stormed the RSC stage to protest against BP’s sponsorship, claiming it was greenwash following the environmental disaster in the Mexican Gulf.

People have long memories, so acting responsibly across every aspect of your business is the best way to protect corporate reputation.  

Transparency and truth

The old priest in the play knows the truth about Boris’ crime, but knows it is dangerous to speak out. It takes a brave soul to expose that truth – enter the young Grigory who is up for the challenge.  

Patrick Romer (Nikolka Pimen)  Photo: Ellie Kurttz

Pushkin, and Shakespeare, lived in a world of censorship. People in Russia still do. But even in the West, where we enjoy free speech, it is still hard to be a whistleblower or challenge the status quo. Sticking your head above the parapet is risky business. Thank heavens for brave organisations like Greenpeace and Human Rights Watch who alert us to corporate misdemeanours and make it easy for us to put widespread pressure on the bad guys.

Humour and poetic justice

One of the best things about the play is the black humour. Apparently Michael Boyd’s mantra is ‘half comic, wholly serious’.  I think the average person gets turned off by CSR and sustainability because they find it too dull or too heavy. Using humour – and art - makes a serious message more accessible.

In Boris, the rhyming couplets – even after translation - are pure genius. So too is the comic timing. The poet is easily more likeable, persuasive and convincing than the politician or the police.

Brands that use humour to sell sustainability get my vote.  I like Innocent’s juice labels which say things like ‘We only use natural ingredients, but rather than go on about it, here’s a picture an animal doing something funny’.  It makes you smile, rather than choke on worthiness.  And the Solar Gangnam Style video by Solar Edge PV, which combines sustainability with humour and social media, is superlative.

Social responsibility

I still like the term CSR – corporate social responsibility – and think business could make more of social media to communicate sustainability.


The RSC understands the power of social media – using blogging events with exclusive access to actors talking candidly about what goes on behind the scenes and allowing me and others the freedom to write what we want about the play and the RSC. No censorship, no spin.

Photo: Debbie Griffiths 

Wouldn’t it be great if corporates followed suit and invited stakeholders to CSR events, projects or exhibitions and then got them to communicate what the company is doing through tweets, blogs and video?   If any company is interested, please count me in!


Debbie Griffiths www.idealCSR.co.uk

A dozen sustainability buzzwords

I didn’t expect a sustainability workshop by 2 Degrees and GACSO (Global Association of Chief Sustainability Officers) and my SWIB (Supporting Women in Business) Xmas party to be such complementary bookends to last week.  But both provided a fitting introduction and flourishing footnote to the Sustainability Leaders Forum, organised by edie.net and Forum for the Future.

I am a big fan of word clouds and using my notes from Monday and Wednesday produced big words that make up this sentence: “business people need better sustainability language.”

NickyPattinson talked passionately about everything but sustainability, and she definitely didn’t mind her language, but she left SWIBers in no doubt about the importance of words and the way you say something as a powerful tool to move clients and customers.

So, here are some of the words and thoughts that got me buzzing:

1. Language – every other speaker underlined how important it is to change the language of sustainability. It’s no good flogging the carbon reduction message. Money talks.  So when speaking to the CEO or CFO, the language needs to be about financial savings, growth margins and returns on investment. Consumers and SME suppliers speak in pounds and pence – very few talk the language of greenhouse gas emissions.  
2. Vision – we may think of companies like Coca-Cola, M&S and P&G as sustainability leaders, but they readily admit that they don’t have all the answers. But what they do have is strong vision that guides them towards a better future. It’s the modern equivalent of putting a man of the moon – nobody knows exactly how they’ll do it, but where there’s a will, there’s a way.
3. Value – from value chains to value creation, it’s what sustainability needs to be all about – not just within the company but through resources and the supply chain to the customer, all working together to improve the whole.
4. Personalise – if you want to bring people on board, don’t hide behind a corporate sustainability policy - make it personal. People make decisions, so recognise what issues people are facing in business and adapt your message to be relevant to their individual needs and help them fulfil their goals.  
5. Partnership – engagement is not enough, what’s needed is close collaboration across industry sectors and positive partnerships between businesses and all their stakeholders.
6. Innovation – sustainability is about thinking differently and is a real opportunity for people to work on solutions they’ve not addressed before and achieve breakthrough innovation.
7. Aggregate – we’re not talking about building materials, but building something bigger by working together. People need to understand that a small behaviour change by them will move mountains if everyone does it.
8. Freedom – you can’t dictate and you can’t control sustainability within business. Leaders have to create a framework and then let go, giving everyone the freedom to find their own definition and articulation of sustainability.  
9. Social – neither business nor governments can ignore social media, making it central to sustainability. It is changing the way people buy and boycott, the way they consume and campaign. Social media campaigners, such as Greenpeace, have become valued stakeholders for businesses like M&S, helping to improve transparency in the supply chain. And I loved Vodafone’s inclusion of ‘social ROI’ in every new brief.
10. Mainstream – to achieve the necessary scale, we need sustainable behaviour change for the masses, not just the deep green.  
11. Better - Kingfisher and Vodafone don’t like to use the ‘s-word’ as consumers and many others don’t get it. Creating ‘a better world’, ‘a giving world’ and ‘a positive difference’ are verbal carrots that help people see through all the doom and gloom surrounding sustainability.
12. Status – to get consumers on board with sustainability, brands need to make it inspirational, aspirational, motivational and fun.  It’s about finding the M&S or P&G ‘sweetspot’ that changes what corporates and customers do.

In summary: sustainability offers us great opportunities to be innovative and inventive, but that will only happen if we work in partnership with everyone from sourcing to selling. To do that, people need to understand how environmental and social sustainability can help them personally and financially. To persuade everyone on board, sustainability communicators need to become fluent and multi-lingual in the different languages and dialects spoken by a multitude of influential stakeholders.

 

Debbie Griffiths, www.idealconsulting.co.uk

Save Shottery – the business case

If you follow @idealconsulting on Twitter, you will have seen a deluge of retweets by us for @SaveShottery this week.  If you clicked on the links, you’ll know that Save Shottery is a campaign and petition to stop 800 houses and a huge spa road being built on pristine greenfield in Shakespeare’s historic Shottery - right behind the Grade 1-listed cottage and gardens of his missus, Anne Hathaway.

From one hubbie and wife to another … if you’ve had a look at ‘about us’ on saveshottery.com, you’ll have seen that me and Mark are the ‘husband and wife marketing’ team behind the campaign.

We’ve personally been campaigning against this development for years, on the grounds that it is economically, environmentally and socially unsustainable. The development puts the long-term economic future of a whole town at risk just so Bloor Homes and Hallam Land Management - both with poor social and environmental reputations - can quickly make millions to invest in another scheme in another community that doesn’t want them.

Shakespeare is the economic lifeblood of this town, drawing in millions of tourists and dollars a year – not just for the theatre and his properties, but for hotels, restaurants and shops.  The hamlet of Shottery already faces flooding issues, being at the base of the hill that Eric Pickles thinks is suitable for building on. When Shottery floods, it’s a sure bet that Stratford Racecourse will. The last thing that struggling business – and its suppliers - needs is to have to cancel race meetings.

Our business, Ideal, isn’t dependent on Shakespeare or local trade, so why have we set up Save Shottery? The main driver was anger and frustration at Pickles' disregard for local democracy. But we also had another motive. We’d been wanting to try out a new blog site and check out Pinterest for business, but they weren’t very high on our to do list. Also, I’d been asked about experience of writing for social media and didn’t have that much in my portfolio.

One sleeping beauty in the decades-long Shottery saga has been the Shakespeare BirthplaceTrust who own the land the developers need to build their road and houses. They have been ‘opposed to the development’ but have remained on the fence and repeated this annoying mantra for years.

 

When we heard about a trustees’ meeting on 17 Nov we saw it as a huge opportunity to raise the profile of Shottery beyond Stratford. And the only way to do that quickly and on zilch resources was to turn to social media.

Within 72 hours, we’d come up with the Save Shottery name and strategy, bought the domain, got a logo designed and emails, blogs, Twitter, Flickr, Pinterest and Facebook accounts set up. We created an online petition and then hit the media with the ‘Seven days to save Shottery’ campaign.  It was a steep learning curve – and we didn’t get everything right.  I cocked up on technology quite a few times and Mark got a bit carried away with his tweets!

But, in just three days since we launched the campaign, we’ve been top of the local news on radio and in print, we’ve taken the message of Shottery across the UK and to Australia and USA, we’ve widened the debate beyond NIMByism into conservation and community justice.

Twitter has been amazing – in particular the retweets by TV personalities with thousands of followers.  And we’re two thirds of the way there to hitting our target of 800 petition signatures (one for each house they want to build) before the SBT trustees' meeting.

We’ve also put into practice campaigning tactics I learned from Greenpeace at a CR conference last year. Namely, create a high-profile campaign to get the media and public on your side and your target organisation under the spotlight. But understand that real change will only come if you meet face to face and get together round the table.

I did that today. It was all very open and honest. The SBT understands that our aim is to get them to walk their talk on their stated position. And, that we’re ready to transform the social media platforms we’ve created to help them find more positive and sustainable ways to raise awareness and funds.

But we’re not out of the woods yet and if, like us, you think ‘preserving Shakespeare’s life and times’ means green fields not roads, sheep not houses and birdsong not noisy traffic, please sign the petition.

And next time you want someone to adapt your messages for different social media channels, I'll be using Save Shottery as my case study (but I recommend leaving the techie side to IT boffins!)

 

Debbie Griffiths www.idealconsulting.co.uk