Corporate responsibility strategy
It is clear that, in the current economic environment, we will need to manage our financial performance more prudently than ever. And yet, it is our view that in the current age a responsible company cannot be led anymore by focusing on its financial performance alone. In order to perform well, to attract and motivate the people in our workforce, and retain our licence to operate, we need to broaden our focus on all company stakeholders.
Corporate responsibility strategy
For this reason, we have reviewed and updated our corporate responsibility (CR) strategy. Corporate responsibility for us combines sustainability, which focuses on the environment, and corporate social responsibility, which deals with our people, our customers, our investors and society as a whole.
Our CR strategy builds on the achievements and recognition the company has obtained in recent years. We published our first CR report, which was then called social responsibility report, in 2004. Since then, we have been working hard on implementing management systems and standards throughout our operations. We are continuing our efforts to integrate our standards into our supply chain and we benchmark our corporate responsibility practices. For the past two years, we have led the Industrial Products and Services super sector in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index with the highest score of any company.
We have built a reputation of CR leadership through special initiatives, such as our innovative corporate partnership with the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP). Another initiative that has helped build our CR reputation is Planet Me. Launched externally in 2007, Planet Me aims to reduce the CO2 emissions of our activities globally, for which we need to create awareness amongst our staff as well as pursue a policy of continuous innovation and development of systems and process.
No matter how pleasing some of the recognition for our CR work is, there are also clear points for improvement, especially in aligning the priorities in our CR strategy with the areas where we make the biggest impact: our employees and the environment. Our review concluded that responsibility for health and safety and CO2 management must be firmly embedded in the operational areas of the TNT organization. We will also prioritize the development of a framework that establishes the CR standards for our subcontractors. Details of the assessment and the way forward are described in the ‘Reassessing the strategy’ case included in our CR report.
Together, these priorities recognize that TNT’s greatest potential is to contribute by performing its transport and mail business in a responsible, sustainable way. This in turn will add value to TNT’s divisions.
Stakeholder dialogue
The outcome of these dialogues shows that there are many differences in priority between the top five material issues across the various stakeholder groups. However, there are also some commonalities such as compliance with legislation, reducing CO2 emissions and employee health and safety. TNT acknowledges these results and has used them as direct input for this corporate responsibility report.