Smith & Nephew - the future of their CSR strategy
Client challenge
Smith & Nephew have an ‘ethical’ approach to business and consider it essential that they are able to address the concerns of institutional investors. They wanted to check and benchmark their positioning as an innovative FTSE company. They also wanted to build a business case for operating responsibly.
Smith & Nephew required an overview of how their competitors and other market leaders were dealing with emerging risks and challenges associated with CSR. They wanted to use this report to demonstrate to the board areas where they were strong and areas which needed improvement.
What did we do?
To develop a sound understanding of how Smith & Nephew’s responsibility agenda is viewed Article 13 carried out three types of research:
Interviews with institutional shareholders and opinion formers, including one with Smith & Nephew’s Chief Executive Benchmarking of competitor companies Benchmarking of companies in other sectors in the UK and USA
The interviews were designed to find out what investors and opinion formers look for when assessing a company, what they consider to be the basics and best practice in CSR, and how they think Smith & Nephew could or should adapt to meet changing risks and expectations of reporting.
For the benchmarking, company websites and published reports were analysed. For benchmarking companies in other sectors, companies were selected on the basis that they operate in similar sectors to Smith & Nephew (manufacturing, healthcare, hospital groups) or are recognised as best in class (ACCA awards winners).
How did we break the cycle?
The research enabled Smith & Nephew to check their position in the field of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and equipped the client with a report for the board to show and enable discussion around areas that had been identified where they were performing well, and also areas where improvements could be made to ensure they continue their strong position.
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© Article 13 2006
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