The Provident Financial survey is distinguished by being the views of those working in corporate responsibility. Respondents were drawn (in descending order) from CR consultants, in-house practitioners, specialist third sector organisations, academics SRI analysts and the public sector. By tapping the best brains in CR, the survey is particularly helpful in tracking what’s hot and what’s not – a boon when considering materiality whether for reporting or strategic purposes.
In this third year of the survey, trends in issue prioritisation are emerging. Notable is the decline in businesses’ desire to work with Government to address social and environmental issues. On the other hand, the value of embedding stakeholders, such as employees, within business processes continues to become even more widely acknowledged. In terms of communications content, the importance on performance was seen to fall slightly (down 8%) perhaps suggesting a greater emphasis on ensuring good stories to complement performance data.
As well as considering business in general, the survey participants reflected on the financial sector. Here the focus has shifted sharply away from environmental issues, down 26% over three years. Issues rising up the sector’s agenda are less clearly defined. Ethical supply chains have rebounded in 2011 after a fall the previous year. A surprise for some perhaps is that although responsible lending remains the number one issue, its importance has decreased incrementally over the three years.
The survey also investigated communications practices and preferences. Asked for examples of companies with good CSR communications practice the survey confirmed the leading status of (in no particular order) SAB Miller, Unilever, M&S, Shell, Co-operative, Vodafone, Timberland. Ones to watch included Puma, Coca Cola and Sainsbury’s.
Support for on line reporting and independent assurance was consistently high (over 85%) but we could finally be reaching the end of the road for the hard copy CR report. Preferences for this slumped by over 40% last year (to 39%). More perplexing is a similar downward trend (from 79% in 2009 to 45% 2011) recorded for social media despite its growing presence. The significance of what some may see as conflicting trends will form part of a follow up study Corporate Citizenship are undertaking into the future of CR communications later in 2012.
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