Let's face it - the press around very green supply chain and sustainability efforts and progress tends to be dominated by coverage of very large companies: Walmart, Unilever, Nike, etc.
And with good reason - most of those companies have set ambitious goals and launched aggressive programs to achieve them, often touted in fancy sustainability reports that obviously are not inexpensive to produce.
So we thought it might be interesting to drill down a bit into what a more mid-sized company is doing and reporting, and decided to take a look at what Chicken of the Sea, the iconic manufacturer of canned tuna and other food products, has done after it released its 2014 sustainability report last week.
Chicken of the Sea is owned by Thai Union Frozen Products. It does not release company revenue number for its division, but it appears to have annual sales in the low billions of dollars, which in today's world probably still qualifies as a mid-sized business, though the parent company would probably be considered a large firm. But because for now Chicken of the Sea operates very independently from Thai Union and is driving its own sustainability programs, it provides a good opportunity to take a look at what one mid-size firm is doing in this area.
Certainly the pdf report is bit late and somewhat less ambitious than those often seen from large companies, mostly in terms of having far fewer fancy photographs, but it does nevertheless provide a very good base of information. The accompanying web site, shown below, is likewise basic but very functional.
The report notes that In 2012, Thai Union began coordinating sustainability efforts among its business units and subsidiaries, including Chicken of the Sea. In 2014, each subsidiary shared its sustainability plan with the parent company, and in October 2014 sustainability personnel and executives met together in Paris to discuss moving towards a common set of sustainability goals and management systems. That process is expected to take several years to develop.
The report also notes that in Chicken of the Sea COO David Roszmann was recognized last Fall as one of CR Magazine's 2014 "Corporate Responsibility Superstars" - and it's nice to see such recognition for a mid-sized company.
Chicken of the Sea says it has four pillars for sustainability success, simple but very clear:
Sustainable Operations
Achieve annual progress against environmental goals
Maintain good standing on labor and community
Sustainable Supply Chain
Monitor and engage first-tier suppliers on sustainability issues
Align with industry best practices on sustainable sourcing
Support efforts to advance sustainability across value chain
Sustainable Products and Services
Maintain highest ratings on food safety and quality
Improve traceability
Good Governance
Dedicate sufficient resources to sustainability planning and oversight
Align with best practices on sustainability communications
Engage stakeholders on current and emerging sustainability issues
A few years back, the company developed a set of sustainability goals for 2020, illustrated in the table below along with progress made for each in 2014.
Chicken of the Sea Sustainability Goals and 2014 Progress
We also like this: Chicken of the Sea recognizes that "Sustainability is a complex and far-reaching concept," begging the question: What is in scope for the company and what isn't?
The new report defines the Chicken of the Sea's process for deciding if a given issue is "material" to its sustainability efforts. It works like this:
Step 1: Decide on the process
Chicken of the Sea worked with an external sustainability strategy company to make sure that it structured its materiality process correctly and followed best practices like those outlined in the AccountAbility AA1000 Standards and the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI).
Step 2: Understand takeholders
Next, the company gathered information about its stakeholders. That included looking at incoming inquiries from consumers on social media pages and a help line. It reviewed scorecards and questionnaires sent from customers, and
analyzed reports and regulations from advocacy groups, regulators, legislators and other governance bodies. It also
looked at what competitors and suppliers were saying with regard to sustainability, and surveyed our employees to determine their sustainability priorities and suggestions.
Step 3: Identify and map stakeholder concerns
Chicken of the Sea developed a long list of issues and mapped their frequency and consistency across different stakeholder groups. Using a mapping tool, it then ranked each issue between -10 (not of interest to stakeholders) and +10 (of extremely high importance to stakeholders).
Step 4: Identify and map business concerns
It then compared that same list of sustainability issues against its own analysis - filling in any items that were of great importance to the company, but not necessarily to our stakeholders. Once it had a master list of sustainability concerns, the company added a secondary ranking (again, between -10 and +10) to indicate each issue's importance to business success.
Step 5: Review the results
The resulting map gave the comlany a compelling visual representation of what matters most to itself and to its stakeholders.
The map was reviewed and finalized by the company's Sustainability Steering Committee, which discussed how the map could influence future activities and engagement.
Step 6: Communicate the results
In the report, the company shares the resulting prioritization matrix and also offers a brief discussion of the high-priority issue that rose to the top of the list.
The mapping exercise summarized above involved placing all the material issues on a two-by-two matrix, with the X-dimension being the "Significance of economic, social and environmental impacts for the organization," and the Y-dimension representing "Influence on stakeholder assessments and decisions," creating as usual in such efforts four quadrants. The company is focusing on the issues three of those four quadrants:
The most important set of issues landed in the top right quadrant, where issues are both highly important to
business success and very important to stakeholders. The company says it manages these issues very closely and reports on them in detail.
The top left quadrant includes issues highly important to stakeholders, but not necessarily relevant to Chicken of the Sea's business success at this time, an example being water management. It says it closely monitors these issues and report on them on a regular basis.
The bottom right quadrant covers issues that are highly relevant to the success of the company, but are
generally not high-priority concerns for our stakeholders, an example being logistics practices. The firm says it manages these items carefully and provides summary information about our activities and progress in its sustainability communications.
There is a lot more, but this is a good overview. The full report is available here: Chicken of the Sea 2014 Sustainability Report
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