Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

Business leaders have been talking about CSR for a long time and see it as a proxy for sound management. This perception is being reinforced by the rapid growth of CSR investments, newspapers affirming the business value, and organizations around the world talking about and focusing on risk and reputational management.

Increasingly, organizations are asking themselves do we have a vision and strategy that incorporates CSR and realizes our CSR objectives. The reality is that most companies are either making some progress or are beginning to explore how to incorporate CSR into operational activities.

Cadmus has provided a wide range of services to clients that fall under an overall CSR platform. Using our extensive CSR toolkit, we have helped our clients strengthen the links between environmental and social performance and CSR goals. Our in-house staff works in a collaborative fashion with both public and private sector clients to identify, evaluate, and select the best options and strategies for moving forward on CSR initiatives such as:

Developing policies related to the effective management of water and water scarcity issues,
Establishing and implementing energy efficiency programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption.
Reaching out to environmental organizations such as national or local watershed management groups to help understand and define the issues that shape public perceptions regarding organization’s commitment to environmental and social goals.
Establishing programs to recruit employees in communication outreach and dialogue activities to increase the CSR dialogue with local communities.
Examining emerging environmental, health, and safety issues from a risk management perspective and reviewing organizational alignment with international standards of performance.
Designing and conducting workshops for Environmental, Health, and Safety (EHS) professionals, senior management, and industry and trade association members.
Helping to articulate the business case for internal purposes to enhance implementation activities related to more effective management of compliance obligations, transparency, external reporting, etc.

Our approach is to ensure that our clients enjoy the value of our expertise, experience, insight, and tools well beyond the assignment for which we are retained. As a consequence, clients turn to Cadmus for assistance when striving for leadership, breaking new ground, or seeking to translate CSR visions into a shared view of how to take effective action.

Project Example: Review of an Environmental Assurance Program

Environmental assurance is the number one management tool companies around the world use to monitor their implementation of environmental sustainability practices and to report to senior management and boards of directors whether they are managing environmental obligations responsibly.

The Challenge

Stakeholders increasingly are asking companies to prove that they are making real gains in environmental performance as a function of their environmental assurance program. Cadmus was asked by a global pharmaceutical company to review its environmental assurance program to address this stakeholder need.

Our Approach

Cadmus’ approach to reviewing the effectiveness of our client’s environmental assurance program involved gathering detailed information about the design and implementation of program activities. We interviewed staff at every level of the organization and reviewed documents covering each stage of program execution. We evaluated the program relative to global standards and leading industry practices; identified program strengths, provided specific recommendations for improving or enhancing the program, and assessed whether the program was gathering the information necessarily to adequately conclude as to whether the company was managing its environmental obligations responsibly.

Our Success

We provided our client with a detailed report that clearly made the link between environmental performance and the structure and execution of an assurance program. As a consequence, our client could clearly and confidently report to stakeholders that the program was delivering value in terms of enhancing performance, exhibiting a level of transparency that would stand up to external scrutiny, and providing the data to substantiate that key issues characterizing the environmental footprint of the company were being managed in accordance with governmental and internal requirements.

Moreover, based on our broad industry experience, we provided our client with a professional opinion regarding the following program attributes: senior management supported the achievement of internal environmental sustainability objectives through the continued and sufficient allocation of both staff and financial resources to execute the assurance program; the company had an established process in place to identify emerging issues and resolve concerns; and the program was organizationally situated such that it strengthened the achievement of environmental sustainability goals.