Sustainability Management

Global warming, shortage of resources, demographic changes – these are the major problems for which answers will have to be found in the future. The successful implementation of Corporate Responsibility is a strategic task. Business success depends increasingly on how valid, credible and transparent a company faces its responsibilities above and beyond statutory requirements.

Corporate Responsibility (CR) is an important component of corporate strategy. CR answers the question of which specific opportunities and risks a company is faced with in view of megatrends and social demands.

However, there are no generally valid statutory regulations (yet) for Corporate Responsibility. The fact is: only companies that completely embrace their Corporate Responsibility are also profitable in the long term. Financial markets even include this aspect in their rating criteria. Agencies specializing in CR ratings, as well as more and more investors, scrutinize the CR competence of companies and management.

Demands that could be made on a company in this respect are:

• strategy orientation,
• recognizability,
• continuity and
• comprehensiveness

CR is a cross-functional task. It calls for company-wide structures and processes in order to be able to plan, monitor and control the cooperation between the various CR-related task functions – whether environmental management, corporate citizenship, work safety, employee development or responsibility for the supply chain.

Placing the right questions when preparing the CR strategy

Sustainability experts at PwC assist and advise companies in overcoming these tasks successfully. They are available for clarification of the necessary preparatory questions:

• What is the corporate identity? What does it mean to be part of the society? How international is the business? What is the competition doing?
• What are the structures facing this self-perception? What concept or code of conduct forms the basis for company actions?
• What planning, monitoring and control processes are already in place for Corporate Responsibility – including risk, crisis and compliance management?
• What are the forms of internal and external reporting? Does the management level have a real insight into what is actually happening within the company with regard to CR?

PwC experts assist and advise on the implementation of the amendments that are necessary for reliable sustainability management.

These include:

• Appointment of a CR Officer and CR Control Board
• Preparation of a CR Strategy and CR Program
• Development and installation of the necessary CR process organization
• Performance of stakeholder dialogs / Development of stakeholder management
• Introduction of CR Controlling
• Selection and implementation of CR software
• Setup of CR Communication (status report, CR report, Internet presence)
• Corporate Citizenship: Uniform corporate guidelines for donations, sponsoring and corporate volunteering
• Diversity Management: Using globalization, demographic development and cultural change for company success.

Systematic Sustainability Management pools together CR tasks and in this way makes it possible to organize individual measures across the board, ensure continuous comparison with corporate strategy and control CR Communication in a rational and beneficial way.