The things I love most about doing what I do are the amazing people I get to meet, no two days are even close to being similar and the exposure to a countless stream of world changing ideas.

I’ve always been a natural connector and constantly looking to learn from new and strange sources. The Coethica  social media rollercoaster of the last few years took me from a pretty isolated laptop to a whole new global community of friends, colleagues and connections – all with that similar values set that I’d craved for so long. It’s only now comfortably coming to terms with how to have a productive relationship with so many people!

Occasionally though, it takes a perspective on the entire planet to stumble across fantastic people and concepts much closer to home.

Meet Chris Arnold (@CJASmallerEarth), a Liverpool based entrepreneur that is responsible for Your Big Year, amongst other projects and businesses. I”d heard about Chris and his role as Founder of Camp Leaders through a local non-profit I was helping, and whilst impressed with the apparent success of Camp Leaders I didn’t know much else. I really noticed Chris at an event I’d attended to hear Philip Blond (author of Red Tory and head honcho at Respublica)  speak at not long after the ‘Big Society’ concept was unleased on the UK politcal stage by David Cameron. At this grand event held at Liverpool’s architecturially stunning Anglican Cathedral (the traditional looking one not Paddy’s Wig Wam) Chris was the side act promoting something called Your Big Year.

Chris is a seriously cool guy; understated, driven and very focused. Upon finally catching up with Chris to say hi and find out more about our parallel missions I was amazed to hear what Smaller Earth, and in particular, what Your Big Year actually was. Chris is big on leadership, entrepreneurship, education and citizenship – abundantly clear through all of his projects.

Whilst Chris’ resume is impressive, Your Big Year stands out a mile, or to be more accurate, 25,000 miles. YBY is a competition run through Smaller Earth to offer a year long trip across 5 continents to meet community and world leaders. As prizes go, I can’t think of a better one I’ve seen anywhere.

The latest competition has seen over 60,000 applicants from 221 countries (that’s more countries participating with us than the Olympics and the UN), Chris and Smaller Earth have built an inspiring competition to positively impact the world.

2012 also sees the final of the YBY event integrated into the Global Entrepreneurship Congress which includes Sir Richard Branson and Sir Terry Leahy to be held in Liverpool in March.

Last year’s finalists were spectacular individuals aged between 18 and 51, with the two winners (Carielle Doe from New York and Michael Teoh from Malaysia) having just rounded off their trip. Read about their life-changing year and the incredible and sometimes famous people they have met, and the rewarding projects they have worked on.

I also would recommend checking out Michael’s Facebook pages including his appearance on CNN and meeting Ted Turner!

The story begins again for the new winners on March 15th and I’m already jealous.

www.yourbigyear.com

This week for no reason in particular my attention has been gravitating towards football. It may well be a returning passion after recovery following eight years worth of burn out. Behind the media hype  I’m constantly on the look out for any beacons of hope in the form of CSR related developments to really begin to justify the overused ‘Power of football / sport’ cliché. One such emerging gem may well be Responsiball.

My football radar started pinging last week with Gary Speed’s sad and untimely death through what appears to a result of depression, then watching a resurgent Liverpool FC remind ex-team mate Fernando Torres what a good team is against Chelsea FC in the Carling Cup, next I saw the news break about a former Everton FC colleague, Communications Director Ian Ross, departing the club in strange circumstances, then it was a formal yet enjoyable discussion about Coethica steering a to remain unnamed Premier League Club toward a more strategic CSR path, and finally rounding things off today just in time for the Euro 2012 draw.

But the highlight of my footballing diary this week had to be the conversation with Daniel Cade at Responsiball.

I met Daniel about a year ago as he was touring English football organisations to research the field (apologies for the pun) and garner support for the concept they were developing. Football as an industry is not unlike many others from a CSR perspective, that is, there is work very much still to do, but football does live behind a greater veil of hype and superficiality than most. Whilst there are impressive pockets of excellent community engagement there is little strategic understanding of business in many cases never mind CSR. Responsiball is one initiative that aims to provide a platform for all those in and around football to connect, share best practice and hopefully accelerate the development of a more inclusive, socially and environmentally aware industry.

Responsiball is a free to all platform that aims to be

the first point of reference for responsible football clubs.

The brainchild of Schwery Consulting, the platform aims to share best practice in an environment that professionals within football feel comfortable away from the at times overwhelming public expectancy as the beacons they are in their individual communities. The two main roles it plays are as an open database of best practice for global football CSR and a social network for practitioners and

For a whistle-stop video tour of the Responsiball website check out the video below…

Recently Responsiball published their findings of their first ever European Social Responsibility League Ranking.The headline findings include:

• The top club had a social responsibility score of 83%
• 29 out of 400 clubs scored 0%
• The average score was 19%

Jason Morgan (CEO, Charlton Athletic Community Trust): “Given its offering of good practice and guidelines and the know-how to build meaningful programmes, practitioners should have an invaluable resource that adds greater credibility to this field.”

Find out more at www.responsiball.org or on Twitter at @Responsiball or Facebook at www.facebook.com/responsiball

Head over and sign-up to check out the best CSR football has to offer.

Post updated 18 January 2012

photo via The Guardian

Rest in peace Gary Speed MBE, I hope you’ve found the tranquility you were looking for.

Gary was a great professional player, national team manager, true ambassador for the sport of football and an incredibly humble and genuine person. Football will remember and miss you deeply.

Petulant prima donnas, designer labels and glamorous girlfriends usually dominate popular perceptions of an industry more than happy to revel in its position as the world’s most popular sport. How can anybody on the surreal wages commanded by top players possibly struggle with mental illness? Depression has yet to be positively confirmed as an element of Gary’s death, but for a 42-year-old fit and healthy man to be allegedly found hanged at home surrounded by his family, has to suggest a deeply troubled, if apparently successful role model of a professional athlete.

I was lucky to have briefly met Gary a couple of times during my days at Everton FC, and also a certain Paul ‘Gazza’ Gascoigne. Of the two I can’t think of anybody that would have bet a single penny on Paul out living Gary, but the world is a crazy place sometimes, often making no sense. The solitude of depression and its ability to completely debilitate outwardly appearing robust people should never be underestimated.

The Secret Footballer wrote in Friday’s Guardian Sport Blog, a scarily premonitory post about the “darkness behind the limelight” offering a glimpse into a hidden world of mental illness in an alpha male world.

The sheer scale of the shock and devastation across sport may lead to Gary being remembered as much for the cause of his final moments as his sporting talents.

The European Union publishes 2011 – 2014 strategy on CSR

The new definition of CSR in the eyes of the European Union is

The responsibility of enterprises for their impacts on society.

It’s only a fifteen page document and well worth a read as another stake in the ground for the accelerating development of CSR as a core business consideration. It never goes as far as many stakeholders would have liked it to, but then again it never was. For me it’s a pretty well balanced carrot and stick approach that owes much to work already done for ISO 26000.

There is one particular paragraph that sums up the ethos of CSR beyond the above definition:

To maximise the creation of shared value, enterprises are encouraged to adopt a long term, strategic approach to CSR, and to explore the opportunities for developing innovative products, services and business models that contribute to societal wellbeing and lead to higher quality and more productive jobs.

…which sounds scarily like my usual description when defending CSR.

The rest of the document outlines the alignment with global standards, recent economic challenges, business of all sizes (corporate to SME) and other complimentary developments such as the Social Business Initiative (SBI).

For me, actions speak louder than words, so here’s a collated and abridged list of the specific “Agenda for Action 2011 – 2014″ listed in the strategy:

1. Create in 2013 multi-stakeholder CSR platforms in a number of relevant industrial sectors.
2. Launch from 2012 onwards a European scheme for CSR partnerships between enterprises and other stakeholders.
3. Address the issue of misleading marketing related to the environmental impacts of products (so-called ‘greenwashing’).
4. Initiate an open debate with citizens, enterprises and other stakeholders on the role and potential of business in the 21st century.
5. Launch a process in 2012 with enterprises and other stakeholders to develop a code of good practice for self and co-regulation exercises.
6. Facilitate the better integration of social and environmental considerations into public procurement.
7. Consider a requirement on all investment funds and financial institutions to inform all their clients about any ethical or responsible criteria they apply.
8. Provide further financial support for education and training projects on CSR under the EU Lifelong Learning and Youth in Action Programmes.
9. Create with Member States in 2012 a peer review mechanism for national CSR policies.
10. Monitor the commitment made by European enterprises with more than 1,o00 employees to take account of internationally recognised principles and guidelines.
11. Work with enterprises and stakeholders in 2012 to develop human rights guidance for a limited number of relevant industrial sectors.
12. Publish by the end of 2012 a report on EU priorities in the implementation of the UN Guiding Principles.
13. Identify ways to promote responsible business conduct in its future policy initiatives towards more inclusive and sustainable recovery and growth in third countries.

Within the Conclusion there is a clear call to the business community to take rightful leadership for CSR development:

The Commission calls on European business leaders, including those from the financial sector, to issue, before mid 2012, an open and accountable commitment to promote, in close cooperation with public authorities and their other stakeholders, the uptake of responsible business conduct by a much larger number of EU enterprises, with clear targets for 2015 and 2020.

 

Congratulations to @Tom_Dodd et al!

Click here for the full document at the European Commission

 

What is your business going to do?

Smaller businesses are the lifeblood of any vibrant economy. Small is not only beautiful, it’s essential.

Last week at Coethica we created a new CSR for SMEs LinkedIn group. The main reason for this was an overdue project to better facilitate discussion for a too often overlooked sector when considering responsible business. There was also an ulterior second reason.

Coethica recently lead an application by a consortium bid (with partners Liverpool Vision and Appreciating People) to a EU tender asking to address “Networking for better CSR advice to SMEs”. An engaged LinkedIn group was a perfect opportunity to begin crowd sourcing the widest possible understanding of the biggest challenges and opportunities for CSR in smaller businesses.

With nearly 100 members and over 60 high quality comments within a week the group is already looking like a valuable resource for anybody participating in the small business space.

Current hot discussions include:

• What are the biggest CSR issues / opportunities for small businesses?
• In your experience can you think of can you give an example of the best CSR work you have seen or undertaken?
• From the perspective of a SME how would you want to work with a charity?
• What would you call CSR for small businesses?

The vision that created Coethica was to stimulate scalable CSR advantages across a huge potential audience for hopefully significant overall improvements in social and environmental impact. We hope that by working together with Liverpool Vision and leaders of Open Space Technology and World Cafe techniques, Appreciating People, and combining our individual strengths with the exciting upcoming Global Entrepreneurship Congress heading to Liverpool in March 2012 we get the chance to deliver something uniquely innovative.

Here’s a few previous SME posts to whet your appetite and stimulate your suggestions:

• Small Business CSR Mistakes
• 10 Top CSR Tips for Smaller Businesses
• 5 Reasons Against CSR from Smaller Business

If you’re a European based CSR adviser to SMEs watch this space. We find out in December if we were successful and we’ll be looking to invite 100 advisers to Liverpool for a fantastic knowledge sharing event.

Regardless of EU application success, we hope that we can all use this group to further develop a deeper awareness, appreciation and active engagement throughout the millions of SMEs across the world.

Head over to the group (below) to check the latest discussions from a rapidly growing community of active leading practitioners and small business themselves.

Click here to join in the conversation in the CSR for SMEs LinkedIn Group

When the economic crisis hit many more than a handful of people became harbingers of CSR and Sustainability doom, how wrong they were. Not only has the disasters at the hands of financiers and governments cemented the responsibility agenda at the heart of mainstream business philosophy, it specifically lit the fuse on a new group with one thing on its mind.

Today the International Integrated Reporting Committee (IIRC) launches it’s ‘landmark approach to corporate reporting‘, and calls for feedback on their Discussion Paper called Towards Integrated Reporting - Communicating Value in the 21st Century.

The IIRC is a group of global businesses, investors, academia, civil society, UN leaders and His Responsible Highness The Prince of Wales (see video below) aiming to update the way businesses demonstrate their accountability.

What is Integrated Reporting you ask?

Integrated Reporting brings together material information about an organisations strategy, governance, performance and prospects in a way that reflects the commercial, social and environmental context within which it operates. It provides clear and concise representation of how an organisation demonstrates stewardship and how it creates and sustains value. An Integrated Report should be an organisations primary reporting vehicle.

It could very well be another next step forward toward validating  the apparently elusive (to some) business case for CSR

According to the press release:

The development of Integrated Reporting is designed to enhance and consolidate existing reporting practices to move towards a reporting framework that provides the information needed to develop the global economic model to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century. Integrated Reporting will be clear and comprehensible, providing a meaningful assessment of the long-term viability of an organisation, meeting the information needs of investors and other stakeholders, and supporting the effective allocation of financial, manufactured, human, intellectual, natural and social capital.

If reporting is part of your day job please take the time to read and feedback on the Discussion Paper and also pass on to through your networks and to your colleagues.

Visit the IIRC website at http://www.theiirc.org/

I love technology; always have, always will. After all it could help save our planet one day, ably abetted by passionate real people of course.

When I was three (according to my parents) I took apart my first clock to find the tick-tock. Some things haven’t changed in 36 years. Last week I spent 5 minutes on the Dell support website then had my laptop open to clean it. Yes it needed cleaning but that wasn’t my reason for opening up my ageing trusty workhorse. I even took a degree in Technology Management on my meandering career path just for the pure tech geek in me.

As I get older and more comfortable with my inner geek, my adventures in CSR increasingly gravitate toward tech related issues and last week’s #CSRchat format Twitter event with Best Buy promoting its sustainability wares was an event I wasn’t going to miss. I forcibly wedged the Livestream session into a maniacally crammed Outlook calendar and also agreed to a conference call with the Best Buy video stars of the webcast the following day.

For those who haven’t taken part in a Twitter chat, especially the #CSRchat, you should; they can be an exhilarating combination of intelligent comment, foresight, learning and fun – if you can keep up the conversation threads that is.

Before the live video & chat I set off in search of an updated understanding of Best Buy and their version of  sustainability. If you want to read their full report yourself click here to be taken to the Best Buy Fiscal 2011 Sustainability Report website and provided with a clear and well presented report, if a little light on raw data to interpret yourself. Not an integrated report by any means and nothing earth shattering impressive but a decent commitment delivered in an accessible manner. The school report would say ‘good but must try harder’.

Now to try another route into the world of sustainability at the $16.25 billion income world’s largest consumer electronics retailer. Here’s the Best Buy UK sustainability page. Notice anything different? Or should I say notice anything the same? Try clicking on the ‘Enterprise Sustainability Programme’ link at the bottom. Let me know if its fixed yet. The gulf between the two sites really pisses me off and set me off on a different investigation (where did I leave that cigar? – < pats jacket pockets >)…

With a new set of eyes now looking beyond the imminent live performance another elephant in the corner of the room began making noises I couldn’t ignore. Check out either of Best Buy’s US or UK landing pages. What do you see? I saw two similar traditional retail websites selling electrical goods and technology. Sustainability does get a grayed out link at the bottom, but apart from people like me (and I’m guessing some of you) who will ever click on it? I’d love to know their web traffic stats. I promise not to get started on my peeve about the term ‘sustainability’ meaning absolutely nothing to 99% of consumers to make that link even more worthless.

My geekiness also takes the form of regularly visiting Best Buy, not because of any sustainability event I was aware of, only my enjoyment of window shopping for the latest technology and often visit the nearest site only a couple of miles away – and my 4-year-old  son (not me honest) loves the big televisions and games consoles! Although my visits are those of  an average consumer, who admittedly struggles from ethical fatigue in nearly every shopping choice I make, I had subconsciously noticed the lack of any sustainability presence at all apart from a couple of electric scooters in the front window, generally happy Blue Shirts (the employees) and a very, very vague recollection of a point of sale recycling promotional sign somewhere.

As I began putting all this together (does this sound like  Lt. Columbo to anybody else or do I need more sleep?) I was beginning to feel an impression of a business where sustainability isn’t genuinely hitting the highest priorities internally.

I applaud Best Buy for their approach in utilising such innovative communications channels, especially those that provide a accessible level of transparency. The combination of live video link – professionally managed by the knowledgeable @AmanSinghCSR - and #bbycsrchat worked well to facilitate an honest interaction between the online audience of many of the usual online CSR / sustainability suspects and Leo Raudys (Senior Director of Environmental Sustainability), Hamlin Metzger (Senior Manager of Corporate Responsibility) and Mary Capozzi (Senior Director of Corporate Responsibility).

It felt like the scene at the end of all the episodes of  Columbo I can remember where there were a few questions about the detail of the report and activity, but for me I had to delve into the core ethos of the business. Best Buy are a huge retailer of consumer goods and I wanted to understand their official line on sustainable consumption. After only a few minutes I was tired of the word recycle. Yes, Best Buy have excellent recycling initiatives including their Buy Back programme, but in relative isolation that misses the point. So in true Columbo style I asked:

#bbycsrchat – As a huge retailer how can BB balance its role as a promoter of consumption of products against #sustainability ethos? #csr—
David Connor (@davidcoethica) July 21, 2011

The answers ranged from the possibly knee-jerk yet scary ‘we can only react to consumer demand’ defence to a far more credible offering from Leo Raudys about engaging with global partners to fully understand sustainable consumption and the role retail plays. I know people can respond in various ways to being in front of a camera etc but the initial reaction was not from a sustainability leadership position, especially when there is so little evidence of activity to educate, challenge or encourage consumers to act in a more sustainable manner with their wallets. I had to probe further during the 45 minute conference call the next day and I felt far more reassured that Mary, Leo and @KellyGroehler were on the ball and fighting the good fight internally to the best of their ability. The problem is I don’t believe their seniors are.

We also discussed how Best Buy is enforcing their sustainability agenda in the Chinese market for example with their ownership of 5 Star branded stores, but again the financial growth aspiration doesn’t appear to correlate with the sustainability commitment.

How about improved sustainability labelling of products beyond compliance of energy consumption? Telecomms company Telefonica own o2 in the UK offer individual eco ratings for mobile phones on their website for example. How about FREE guides to extend the lifespan of products available online? Why not promote offers on products with better environmental performance? How about a schools programme to educate children about product  life-cycles? How about even putting sustainability front and centre on the websites? Do more! I’m certain there is much more that could be done without alienating a customer base who at the moment only want the latest tech at the best price. If it’s not your problem whose is it? Stop passing the buck.

In short, I hope / don’t think it will be acceptable for long for Best Buy to pass on its sustainability guilt to consumers. They like many, many other corporate giants need to address the essential core issues of sustainability that need to be strategically aligned to a slower business growth financial model. Am I the only person that is scared that far too many retailers are waiting for consumers to dictate the sustainability revolution?

I wanted Best Buy to be so much more.

I’m currently re-reading Paul Hawken’s Ecology of Commerce. Maybe I should send a few copies to the board at Best Buy.

When you’re asked to judge six entries in a student technology competition it could be easy to not relate to the more than 350,000 first round entries from across the entire globe. Wait a few hours and throw in appearances by the Salesman Mayor of New York, Mike Bloomberg and Eva Longoria and the cream of student technological innovation at an extravagant Awards finale and you really aren’t able to miss the big picture.

The Imagine Cup is Microsoft’s student competition encouraging innovation through technology  in order to solve the world’s toughest problems. This year following feedback from students themselves the Millennium Development Goals were offered as inspiration for the teams to focus their efforts on.

I’d agreed to take part in judging the finals in New York City and ended up seeing the Imagine Cup world the wrong way around. I arrived in to cast my eye on the best and then got to see the rest of the 400 invited students at the event Showcase at the Lincoln Center the following day.

I’ll always offer whatever time I can to support or encourage young people of every circumstance to strive to make an impact for a better world. It also usually a fantastic environment for perspective and inspiration. I recently participated in a very similar event as a judge for Societe Generale’s Citizen Act, but with more of an obvious financial focus. I will guarantee that a social impact leader will emerge from either if not both events, and most others like them.

The Imagine Cup 2011 goes to the winners in the Software Design category, my judging task, and was awarded to Team Hermes from Ireland (pictured right and in the video below) with their approach to improve road safety.

Regardless of the strict scoring criteria, how on earth can you rank the potential of social impact of such diverse projects? The technology may be similar but the scale and variety of impact vary immensely. Team One Buzz’s malaria eradication was incredibly appealing and reinforced by a very impressive presentation; Team Note Taker’s use of technology and the specific benefit to partially sighted students; Team OaSys’s clever adaptation of available tech (Wii remote) to help quadriplegic people access communications;  but Team Hermes was felt to be the most complete all round, especially against a back drop of rapidly accelerating global car use.

Each team may or may not push on to create successful businesses or products but the learning experiences gained by all will shape the future for many.

Microsoft also announced the launch of a new $3 million grant fund to further help the participants realise their goals. Ideas are great but it’s finance that helps all fledging businesses get their products to the audience they want to serve.

For a full list of the Imagine Cup 2011 winning Teams click here.

*One parting environmental (& visitor satisfaction) tip for the amazing city of New York – turn the bloody air conditioning down! I was frozen solid between judging  in one room at the Marriott Marquis and every other building I went in.

I’m glad the news is out as I’m no good at keeping secrets!

3BL’s CEO, Greg Schneider, has a powerful entrepreneurial drive to make a commercially successful company in the niche area that CSR is, and hopefully beginning climbing away from into bigger ponds. This to me demonstrates a step change in the maturity of CSR communications specifically in the social media channels, i.e. the first substantial consolidation within a profileration of smaller news / opinion sources and portals.

I was a fan of Justmeans when it launched, and even short time CSR Editor (for a whole month) so it’s personally fulfilling for me to be so involved with the integration and future development of both organisations. The combined strengths and the additional opportunities that this deal creates will be keeping us all busy at 3BL for many months, if not years to come.

Without doubt this move consolidates the clear water lead between 3BL Media and all the other players in the CSR content distribution field. The challenging debate internally is how 3BL strategises the exploitation of the newly gained additional assets into new complimentary and profitable channels. Watch this space!

In addition to the technical assets and new client base Justmeans CEO Martin Smith joins 3BL as Chairman reinforcing the depth of the strategic management team.

The announcement of the deal has already generated a strong positive response from the online and client communities with audiences of both companies very being supportive, if maybe initially a little surprised.

My first task is to take over the reins of Justmeans’ Ethical Sourcing and Certification conference in London on September 16th. Please take a look at the microsite and get signed up for the first public event from the 3BL / Justmeans combined team.

Here’s a link to this mornings press release if you’d like more of the details.

I would be really interested in your opinions of what this market needs and how 3BL Media combined with Justmeans can service those needs?

They have 66,000 employees, sell 161 products every second in 130 countries and produce 5.4 billion products every year.

Yesterday saw L’Oreal step up its sustainability engagement with the first of four planned global stakeholder engagement forum events, with the first held in London.

My expectations were similar to those before the Microsoft Accelerator Summit I was invited to last year, i.e. not huge due to minimal information sent beforehand, me being a busy 3BL Media bee and L’Oreal never over energetically communicating their activity, all against a backdrop of a couple of  slippery issues including animal testing and the acquisition of Body Shop part of their history.

Much more information on their sustainable development approach is available online here, but I’ll give you a brief perspective on the event and some of the key issues below.

The headlines include the company looking to double their business by 2015 whilst reducing CO2 by 50%, waste by 50% and water use by 50% (across the period 2005 – 2015).

L’Oreal are keen to use the term “sustainable consumption” (always brave) in their latest report and push an aspirational luxurious brand image; add the above mentioned scale, alongside historically challenging product testing practices and you could consider placing them near the top of the corporations to pick on list. Let’s put sustainability aside for one moment, it is easy to miss the link between the abundance of cosmetic products sold to consumers and the reality of our human ancestral use of natural dyes and colourings to define tribal groups and to communicate. In other words lipstick is a central part of civilisation and has been around in one form or another for thousands of years and is not going away any time soon.

Okay, back to the stakeholder forum…

Following a charismatic presentation from Francis Quinn, Director of Sustainable Development,  the conversation veered quickly toward communication. After seeing the ambition of their sustainability targets it surprised myself and others that such boldness seldom extends to the communication function companies, again like Microsoft. Yes, both organisations have reputation skeletons in the closet and you can almost see the inertia preventing them sticking any heads above any parapets, but taking some risk, especially when so much is at stake, is what leadership is about.

The conversation centred on challenging L’Oreal to fully embrace its leadership position to explore various communication channels and how to break through any perception of potential brand damage by becoming too overtly sustainable. How can a mainstream brand educate and raise awareness without losing its mainstream consumer base? I personally don’t think they would, they’d only gain those who appreciate the bigger picture but I can understand the reticence, after all they’re not my profits to lose. Regardless, when your consumers are responsible for 58% of the carbon emissions within the life-cycle of your products against 5% from your own operation, businesses have to start pushing harder.

One surprising barrier to improving sustainability communications was cited as the high turnover rate in marketing/communications personnel. Surely if all new employees receive responsible marketing training, even with a high turnover rate (which is a question in itself) there has to be a robust level of understanding and no real excuses; maybe the training needs overhauling if it isn’t working? I would suspect it has more to do with those at the top of the communications hierarchy than those toward the bottom.

Away from communication, a key element of the organisation’s operation is how it uses resources. They have thousands of ingredients across their product range but buy most of these in relatively small quantities, product volume. It did feel at one point that this was used as bit of a cop-out. In one example of the procurement of palm oil Francis said it was difficult to get suppliers to provide the qualities they needed in the relatively small quantities – I get the point but take this problem and innovate – support / create a smaller company (a social enterprise perhaps?) to provide a niche service to a guaranteed purchaser?

Brendan May (@bmay) asked the question about palm oil being so low on L’Oreal’s relevance axis. Francis was happy they had done pretty much all they could and ticked all the boxes expected of a corporation taking a leadership approach to the agenda. Brendan suggested that even though they had ticked the box today, that was only at the latest state of development of the certification standard (Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil – RSPO), which like many standards and labels is still immature and will continue to evolve over time, and therefore probably a more liquid risk and not as consistently low as they appear to be presenting (see diagram above).

If there is one element of their sustainability approach you look at, I’d check out Solidarity Sourcing. ”Fairtrade is not really sustainable at all” was a bold statement by Francis, but backed up by evidence from 20 years of experience via The Body Shop and Solidarity Sourcing is L’Oreal’s new approach to a truly socially and environmentally sustainable procurement function launching this year (see diagram below & click image for more information).

After the formal proceedings during drinks Brendan suggested Francis started blogging and I for one wholeheartedly believe more people need to hear from both L’Oreal as a company and Francis as an engaging champion for sustainable business.

Overall: Not perfect (but nobody is); good performance across the board; maybe more women on the Board; some exceptional best practice, but yet another corporate needing to communicate much, much better and rise to adequately fill their sustainability leadership potential.