How and why M&S has updated its 100 point sustainability plan - Plan A 2025

10 years 5 months and 16 days (not that we are counting!) since we launched Plan A (because there is no Plan B for the one planet we have) we are updating it, for the third time, it’s now Plan A 2025.

https://corporate.marksandspencer.com/documents/plan-a/plan-a-2025-commitments.pdf

A simple sentence but there’s lots packed into it: 296 social and environmental commitments completed; the Plan A baton safely exchanged between 3 CEOs; 10 Performance Reports published all of which have been independently assured; a global financial crisis navigated; existential change unleashed in how people shop with the rise of digital; and 240 awards won.

Yet through all this change Plan A has been a constant for M&S. The proverbial ‘words running through the stick of rock’. Updates were needed in 2010 and 2014 as old commitments were completed and new issues emerged. But the basic hypothesis, that we need to change dramatically in the face of unprecedented economic, social and environmental disruption, has remained unchanged.

Plan A has provided us with a ‘North Star’ through all this change, a constant to move toward and for that reason this update won’t be the last. But this update does feel particularly important, the point at which we shift, in the broadest sense, from being a ‘less bad’ business, to one that is fundamentally ‘better’ for all, for customers, communities, colleagues, shareholders and planet.

You will find another 100 commitments in the updated Plan A 2025, many of them old friends such as energy efficiency where existing targets are tightened. Others are a recognition that societal expectations have moved on, for example ethical compliance has become a much more expansive commitment to human rights. Many are joined together to create a bigger whole. An approved Science Based Target brings together all our activity on climate change from fields to factories and stores to customer’s homes. In communities we are linking together the many individual activities our stores undertake (creating jobs for those facing barriers to work, donating surplus food, fund raising and volunteering) so that they are truly transformational for their local community. Similarly with waste and resources, a bold goal to become a truly circular business creating zero waste from one end of our value chain to the other. We are committing to systemic sustainable change for every product we sell and site that supplies us too. New issues are addressed as well, particularly on wellbeing where action on the growing issue of emotional wellbeing needs to complement our decade of work on physical wellbeing.

Whilst many of these commitments are very bold, you would hope that these issues were addressed after all that’s what previous updates did. But there’s a key differentiator about Plan A 2025 and that’s our desire to engage our customers. Many of you have challenged us over the years, ‘love the technical breadth and depth of Plan A but why don’t you tell your customers about it?’ And of course you were right, we haven’t.  

When Steve Rowe became CEO last year he demanded we put our customers at the heart of Plan A. His timing was impeccable, not just because you were getting bored with asking us to do it, but also for systemic reasons beyond M&S.

We live in turbulent times. Politics, society, technology are all being disrupted constantly. Yet it’s less than 2 years since we seemed to have the global consensus that we needed to build a very much more sustainable society and supporting economy. The Paris Climate Agreement and the UN’s 17 Global Goals painted a demanding but logical pathway into the future that individual countries, companies and communities could follow. Today it is not quite that clear. Multilateralism isn’t dead but it’s certainly very troubled.

In the face of this challenge an intriguing coalition has formed. China and India seem determined to displace coal with renewables. Cities are taking on the burden that some nation states have dropped. And crucially many businesses have stepped up and committed to go beyond what the increasingly confused policy systems that surround them asks for.

Let’s not be too starry eyed about this, many of the world’s ills can be traced back to the consumption system we all participate in today. But let’s also be clear that right here, right now in 2017 business is an incredibly important shoulder to the global wheel of sustainable change. It’s never been more important that companies demonstrate very publicly that they are socially useful with a purpose beyond just creating shareholder value.

Why is this? Partly it’s a recognition that policy systems do go through periodic shocks and by 2020 there is a reasonable chance we’ll be back safely on the ‘Paris Path’. There’s the reality of extreme weather patterns disrupting production that demands business action now not in a decade’s time. There’s the growing availability of hyper transparency technology for civil society to hold companies to account. And then there’s the big one, the allure of new markets forming where customers want products and services that are brilliant for them but also great for people and planet too.

And it’s this tantalising marketplace, a world of Tesla and Nest, of wellbeing and sharing that is powering businesses efforts to shift from ‘less bad’ to ‘better’ business models. Done right, and that’s a big qualification, you enter huge new markets early, wait too long and you are locked out of a rapid, asymmetric re-arrangement of the global economy.

So putting our customers at the heart of Plan A 2025 is not just us playing catch up, it’s us preparing for the decade (2020-2030) of new sustainable business models, not peripheral but central to the global economy.

We’ve started to put our customers at the heart of Plan A 2025 via our new Spend it Well campaign. Through marketing to celebrate our achievements from the first 10 years of Plan A. Via our Sparks Card that enables us to personalise the difference that 6 million of our customers can make individually. We are grounding our stores more deeply in the communities we serve, giving people more reasons to use them. There’s a strong commitment to their personal wellbeing. We will build on our 2020 goal to ensure all the products we sell have at least one Plan A story (attribute) to having multiple ones. And a commitment to engage our customers in more sustainable living.

So whilst you’ll still see a strong 100 commitment ‘engine’ powering Plan A you’ll also see three bold goals that we want all our customers and colleagues to engage with:

1. We will help 10 million people live happier and healthier lives
2. We will help transform 1000 communities
3. We will become a zero waste business

Only by engaging our customers at every level of our business, from a brand level, to buying a ready meal and a dress; from a smile in a Café to knowing your tuna is sustainably sourced; from fund raising for your local girl guides group to being rewarded for buying the very best products can we become a truly sustainable business.

@planamikebarry