Last month, Green Business told the story of how Coca-Cola Canada (Coca-Cola Ltd. (CCL) and Coca-Cola Bottling Company (CCB)), after releasing their first joint corporate responsibility and sustainability (CRS) report, gave students at The Schulich School of Business the chance to formally critique it. The students recently came back with their review and raised a number of interesting issues.

The two companies are learning as they go with their sustainability reporting practices, so they felt that engaging the Corporate Social Responsibility Society at Schulich to review the report and offer feedback would help them create a richer report to share with stakeholders next year.

Student teams used their own knowledge of CSR trends, best practices and other reports/efforts of similar Canadian companies to examine the following issues:
 
1. Physical Report/Hard Content — Assess whether the report is easy to understand and presented in a way that is clear and concise. 
 
2. Quality and Quantity of Information — Review the information provided in the report and evaluate if it supports the organization’s progress and long‐term goals; and is it the right information that stakeholders are looking for in relation to current CRS issues.

3. Impact — Assess if the report supports the Company’s goals of creating a benchmark foundation and demonstrating progress against stated goals.

4. Suggestions for Future Reporting — Provide any further suggestions you have for the organization to improve future reporting.

The CSR Society ended up having 19 teams of students interested in responding to the report - almost 60 students overall. From that long list, six teams were chosen to present their findings to a panel of four people - Sandra Banks, VP of public affairs and communications at CCB, David Moran, Director of corporate affairs at CCL, Alain Robichaud, VP of supply chain customer service, and Professor Dirk Matten, HP Chair of CSR at the Schulich School of Business.

Sandra Banks found there were five pieces of feedback the group heard most commonly:

1. Stakeholder engagement. "While we did report on that, and indicated the process that we followed, the students invited us to give more details regarding how we’re engaging our stakeholders and incorporating their feedback," says Banks.

2. Show and tell. "They asked us to consider different ways to show our progress against our goals — substantively and visually," explains Banks.

3. Third-party validation. While the companies had explained the way in which they would measure and grade their self-reporting, the students wanted to see reputable third-party validation.

4. Integration of business and financial results. "The students felt this would be helpful," says Banks. "They said, ’show how CRS has helped you become more successful as a business financially.’ It’s refreshing to hear that because that’s the true hallmark of a business’ success."

5. International comparisons. This was a bit of a surprise to Banks — the students wanted to see more global references. "We chose, by the nature of our business and territory where we operate, to limit our reporting o local and Canadian progress, anecdotes and examples," explains Banks. "But they wanted us to put everything in context — how do our efforts complement the global system’s goals. The question for us is how do we do that and make it relevant without being overwhelming."

There’s no question that this was a positive experience for the Coca-Cola team.

"For any business person, it’s always a tremendous experience to go 'back to school' and be challenged and informed about what the new generation of business leaders is thinking and seeing," says Banks. "The winning group — Team Green, they called themselves — showed the greatest balance in analyzing the content and the substance, as well as the way the information is presented. It was a very thorough, pragmatic approach that was well communicated."

There are no firm plans as yet to do this again next year — the next report is due out in mid-2010 — but the experience was a useful and engaging one for both sides. The question is, will other companies follow their example? 


 

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