BNFL – Top--level Horizon Scanning of business environment issues, CR best practice and relationships with NGOs

Client challenge

The BNFL Group Corporate Responsibility (CR) Executive wanted to review the Group’s performance in the context of business environment issues – covering CR issues as well as strategic and corporate issues – that could potentially affect the future of the business.  To facilitate this process the Executive needed to gather intelligence from outside the nuclear industry, to find out what they didn’t already know and understand the extent to which BNFL meets current and future expectations as a responsible business within the business and amongst its stakeholders.

What did we do?

Article 13 took a two phase approach to this future scenarios exercise, commencing with a wide-ranging top-level horizon scan of business environment issues and following it up with a review of CR best practice and NGO attitudes and activities around the principal issues uncovered in the initial scan.

Phase one, the overarching horizon scan, began with a situation audit involving a web-based research trawl, an interview with the client and the development of working hypotheses.  Article 13 conducted telephone interviews with individuals from a range of backgrounds including BNFL Group employees, stakeholder groups, nuclear and energy industry specialists and professional futurists to identify the issues and challenges facing the BNFL Group and the nuclear industry.  Input from these interviews was supplemented by a “what if” workshop with Fellows of the St Andrews Management Institute to bring out any ‘left field’ factors that might impact on the industry as well as research using future scan databases, specialist sources, press scanning and online business environment databases.

Article 13 then developed a framework for an ‘Issues and Impacts Database’ which they populated with business environment trends and factors according to the PESTE (political, economic, social, technological, environmental) categories.  The business environment trends and factors in the database were scored for impact, likelihood and ‘newness’ and the top issues were selected, ranked for newness and importance and, consequently, analysed in further detail.  The findings and recommendations were documented in a report and presented to the client.

Phase two, the CR best practice and NGO scans, focussed on the five ‘emerging’ issues from the business environment scan.  In each case, Article 13 undertook a website trawl and review of Article 13’s press scanning service to find evidence of policies and practices, campaigns and programmes addressing each issue.  Research findings were presented in report form, including a section within each theme considering the implications for company activity.

How did we break the cycle?

Article 13 used cutting edge future scanning techniques to identify potential issues and impacts for the client and the wider nuclear industry.  The implications identified are already being used to stimulate debate within the CR Executive and are published in the 2006 CSR report.

© Article 13 2006