Social Responsibility is vital to your EVP
Mark Johnson
Helping progress Australia’s best organisations | CFO Recruiter and Executive Search Specialist | GAICD
“Business historically had a close relationship with its community and understood its responsibility to that community. Somewhere along the way, big business stopped listening. That’s changing as business realises it can be a ‘force for good’ and do a lot of the heavy lifting to help society.” (Corporate social responsibility driving performance in emerging ventures, AICD, 15 March 2019 )
But first...
Adelaide’s drink shortage – a sign of things to come?
ADELAIDE HAS BEEN IS IN THE GRIPS OF A ‘MAJOR EMERGENCY’ AS THE CITY’S MOST LOVED DRINK DISAPPEARED FROM SUPERMARKET SHELVES.
Shocking photographs have appeared on social media showing empty supermarket shelves where the City’s favourite drink should be.
No, not Coca-Cola (oddly, Adelaide is reported to be one of the few cities in the World where Coke isn’t the most popular drink) – but our favourite brand of iced coffee.
The owners of Farmers Union Iced Coffee (FUIC) issued an emergency press release:
We’re feeling your pain... Unfortunately, there have been issues with some FUIC products being supplied in South Australia due to a shortfall in milk availability. Extreme weather conditions, including drought, have contributed to the challenges facing dairy production in Australia. We’ll get it back in stock as quickly as possible.
Droughts and changes to weather patterns are impacting more than our favourite drink in South Australia.
Recent dry summers have caused problems for one of the South Australia biggest export industries; the wine industry. One winemaker, who has been in the industry for 40-years, was quoted as saying that ‘the past 18-years have tended to be warmer and drier. "
‘What we are finding is that we are getting pretty similar characteristics in terms of aromas and flavours, but we are tending to find that in the past 20-odd years the alcohols have probably tended to creep up from around 13 to 13.5 to 14 per cent by volume. With the slightly higher alcohol you tend to get a slightly sweeter mid-palate and perhaps a little bit of a richer style of wine.’ (see ABC News: 21 November 2018).
So, higher alcohol in wine and a shortage of iced coffee. What next?
There is, of course, a serious point to all this.
Climate change is a ‘present reality’ (‘21 Lessons for the 21st Century:’ Yuval Noah Harari) and the literature on the topic makes scary reading. Sadly, the response of our national politicians is hardly awe inspiring:
'In the case of climate change there’s no sense of immediacy, no sense of priority commensurate with the dangers it poses to our future ability to feed ourselves, defend our largely coastal settlements and keep our children safe from harm.’(Our Leaders are Ignoring Global Warming to the Point of Criminal Negligence: Guardian Australia, 19th April 2019).
Big business also needs to take more responsibility.
Those who are slow to act will find it hard to resist pressure from employees, customers and action groups on the one side and government and investors on the other.
And clearly, it’s in their best interests. The link between sustainability and employee engagement / retention is getting stronger (see for example, ‘Most Millennials Would Take a Pay Cut to Work at an Environmentally Responsible Company:’ Forbes Magazine, February 14th 2019).
Forbes reports that:
More than 70% of respondents said that they were more likely to choose to work at a company with a strong environmental agenda. Millennials–who will make up three-quarters of the workforce in six years–are most likely to have done this; nearly 40% said that they’ve chosen a job in the past because the company performed better on sustainability than the alternative.
The message for big businesses is clear.
As much as sustainability planning is about making sure an organisation can contribute to reducing the impacts of climate change, it’s also part of the whole process of convincing employees to take the jobs that need to be filled. Any business found wanting in this area won’t retain employees for long.
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