Do you know BITC? I guess you do… if you are CSR-addicted. If not, this post might be useful to you. BITC (Business In The Community) is a unique independent business led charity whose purpose is to inspire, engage, and support and challenge companies, to continually improve the impact they have on society. With a current membership of over 750 companies, including 71 of the FTSE 100 and 82 per cent of the FTSE’s UK leading companies in their sector, together Business in the Community members employ 12.4 million people in over 200 countries worldwide, including 1 in 5 of the UK private sector workforce.
BITC It defines CSR as “a company’s positive impact on society and the environment, through its operations, products or services and through its interaction with key stakeholders”.
BITC released a interesting “guide to responsible business” in January 2007 and in collaboration with Accenture. It is a 11-page document explaining what CSR is, how to start, with tools and case-studies. You can download this paper free here.
The BITC index
Each year BITC conducts a self assessment survey on how companies are managing, measuring and reporting their social and environmental impacts.
For each of community, environment, market place and workplace assessment is made in terms of:
- Community issues
- Environmental issues
- Market place issues
- Workplace issues
Scores are given and a BITC index is produced
How the BITC measures CSR:
- Commitment to CSR is evaluated in terms of the extent to which:
- Responsibilities have been clearly defined at all levels
- Policies are in place to ensure responsible business behaviour
- Objectives and targets have been set to create improvement
- There are effective communications systems to share knowledge
- Training is provided to ensure competency and delivery of objectives
- A process is in place for stakeholder consultation and engagement
- There are monitoring systems in place to assess and report progress
- Key issues, targets and performance are reported quickly.
Here is a link to the Environment index 2006 survey document, as an exemple. 29 pages. quite complete!.
BITC Index 2006: the top 20
- Co-operative Bank.
- BAA.
- Barclays
- BT
- National Grid
- PriceWaterhouseCoopers
- CE Electric UK
- Scottish and Southern Energy
- Veolia Water UK
- Boots
- Co-operative Insurance
- HBOS
- Lloyds TSB
- John Lewis Partnership
- RWE Npower
- Tesco
- Reckitt Benckiser
- Rolls Royce
- United Utilities
- And joint 20th- BBC,M&S, Scottish Power, Severn Trent Water.
(Source :Sunday Times 7/5/06)