Dedicated to making a difference
A broad overview of our Scheme Plus journey can be seen in this document.
We have done the benchmarking exercise on “Plan A” by visiting the Marks and Spencer website. The tables in the following section list our Scheme Plus commitments for the period 2011-2016. For the purposes of transparency we’ve shown the new commitments together with the few existing commitments we first launched in 2009 and ongoing unstructured commitments since 2009.
The implemented CSR policies and programs has helped our organization in the following:
Win new business
Increase customer retention
Develop and enhance relationships with customers, suppliers and networks
Attract, retain and maintain a happy workforce and be an Employer of Choice
Save money on energy and operating costs and manage risk
Differentiate our self from our competitors
Generate innovation and learning and enhance your influence
Improve your business reputation and standing
Provide access to investment and funding opportunities
Generate positive publicity and media opportunities due to media interest in ethical business activities
To help the reader each commitment has a comment next to it to confirm whether it’s a new commitment or an existing commitment that has been extended since 2009 is on-going towards the original target of 2016. Our annual CSR Report published in June each year will continue to provide information on the progress we make towards these targets. Altogether we are planning to deploy 25 objectives under the 5 pillars and execute 100 different commitments.
Our Scheme Plus themes and objectives
Involve our customers in Scheme Plus:
1 / Aim for all our Axiom products to have at least one CSR initiatives quality by 2020 (50% by 2016) and help our customers identify and buy these products
2 / Help our customers make a difference to the social and environmental causes that matter to them
3 / Help our customers live more sustainable lives
Make Scheme Plus how we do business:
4 / Engage our employees in Scheme Plus
5 / Integrate Scheme Plus into our systems and processes
6 / Build Scheme Plus into every aspect of our construction programme
7 / Engage our business partners in Scheme Plus
8 / Create a culture of innovation on sustainability
Extend our social and environmental commitments across the 5 Pillars of Scheme Plus:
Marketplace
9 / Help our customers cut their carbon footprint
10 / Create partnerships to help our customers reuse or recycle all our products and packaging
11 / Encourage our customers to become more active
12 / Drive health benefits across our product & service offer
Environment, Health and Safety
13 / Reduce our operational carbon emissions by xx% and make our operations carbon neutral
14 / Send no operational waste to landfill and reduce our operational waste by xx%
15 / Ensure efficient use of natural resources in our operations
16 / Reduce the impact on the natural resources used to supply and service our products
Responsible Sourcing
17 / Help our suppliers cut their carbon footprint
18 / Encourage our suppliers to become more active
People
19 / Deploy the Attract & Retain strategy
20 / Help to facilitate behavior change through clear visual aids and information
21 / Encourage our employees to become more active
Philanthropy and Community Involvement
22 / Help & Fund Educational programs both nationally & internationally
23 / Help to facilitate nationalization strategy
24 / Contribute to reduce the global poverty
25 / Ensure workforces and communities benefit in our supply chain
Below is an overview of our current commitments and progress. Whilst a number of these have already been achieved, we still consider these commitments to be a priority and we continue to advance in each of these areas. Later in the year, these commitments will be built on and replaced, with the view to setting stretching targets for the years to come.
How we will involve our customers in Scheme Plus
To involve our customers in Scheme Plus we’re setting three key objectives:
Objective 1 – Objective 1- Aim for all our Axiom(After sales Service Department) services to have at least one CSR initiativesquality by 2020 (50% by 2016) and help our customers identify and avail these services.
As a service provider, our impact on society and the environment is primarily associated with the after sales, use and disposal of the 1 billion individual stocks we repair every year. By 2020, we want every Axiom after salesservice to have at least one significant Scheme Plus quality – and to meet an intermediate target of 50% by 2016.
While this commitment is demanding, we’re not claiming that all of our after salesservices will be fully sustainable by 2020, but it is a bold statement of intent that will drive systemic change in the way we develop all our products – ensuring social and environmental principles are always taken into consideration.
We also believe that sustainability achievements related to issues that are not currently accredited by an external third party – for example, a repair factory paying a fair living wage – may also merit the term Scheme plusand quality. At the same time, we know that qualities not linked to external standards will demand scrutiny. That’s why we’ll be discussing ways to define Scheme Plus qualities with our key stakeholders by next year.
No. / Commitment / Comment
1.1 / Develop a definition for CSR initiatives quality in consultation with key stakeholders by the end of 2011. / New
1.2 / Have at least one Scheme Plus quality in all our Axiom (after sales service department) merchandise by 2020 – with 50% of our services having at least one Scheme Plus quality by 2016. / New
1.3 / Develop mechanisms to help our customers identify services with Scheme Plus qualities service centersand on-line to encourage their purchase. / New
Objective 2 – Help our customers make a difference to the social and environmental causes that matter to them
Together with our employees and customers, we’ve always made a significant contribution to the community and to help disadvantaged groups. We’ll maintain this high level of commitment, focusing particularly on:
• Health and wellbeing – fighting cancer and autism is an issue that’s very important to our customers and employees and we’ll continue our work with the Dubai Autism and Cancer fighting bodies to tackle the same. We have set a target of raising AED 3000through our corporate CSR committee each year to fight cancer and autism.
• Poverty and exclusion – poverty remains a challenge in the GCC and overseas. We’ll build on our work with Dubai Cares in the UAE and continue to offer at least 5 Axiom placements(within the group) every year for people facing particular barriers to work in the GCC and other countries like India & Philippines.
• Environmental protection – environmental protection and regeneration underpin healthy and sustainable communities. We’ll continue to work with EWS-WWF to protect natural landscapes and biodiversity across the GCC. We’ll also maintain our support for WWF’s work to conserve and restore some of the most vulnerable ecosystems in the world.
We’re setting a target to raise AED 20,000(which is around 1-2% of our NP) every year for these three causes by working with our service centers creating cause-related marketing relationships for our services and by our employees volunteering in the community.
No. / Commitment / Comment
2.1 / Support and facilitate annual fundraising activities in our division to support local charities / Ongoing
2.2 / Use a comprehensive programme of cause related marketing to raise money for charity partners and donate unsold stock and surplus equipment where feasible and safe to them. / New
2.3 / Help disadvantaged groups like the disabled and homeless get jobs via work placements in our division. / New
2.4 / Developing and launching initiatives on environmental and international community issues by 2012. / Ongoing
Supply of water-saving packs to customers, to encourage more efficient water use. Eg.free set – which included a 'flush saver bag' and a water widget to make an eco-shower – which will give customers a number of water-saving tips to promote responsible water use and raise awareness of water sustainability. / New
2.5 / Maintaining our campaign with Breakthrough Breast Cancer & Dubai Autism Group programs. / New
Objective 3 - Help our customers live more sustainable lives
Customer engagement will take many forms ranging from helping customers to create their own personal CSR initiatives, to constant positive marketing and encouraging customers to offer their own ideas on CSR initiatives.
No. / Commitment / Comment
3.1 / Contact M&S and avail permission to market their commitments for our customers to create their own five year plan. / New
3.2 / Encourage people to act differently via a continuous programme of CSR initiatives marketing communications. This programme will build upon previous campaigns that tackled successfully major social issues such as road safety and the dangers of smoking. / New
3.3 / Create anAED 1000 every year ‘Your Green Idea’ prize for the individual or group who comes up with the best idea to help us green our business. / New
Objective 4 - Engage our employees in Scheme Plus
We want to attract and retain the best people in after sales and our other businesses. We’ve seen benefits in motivation and morale from employee participation in CSR initiatives. We also know new joiners increasingly cite CSR initiativesas a key reason for joining Axiom (after sales service).
We already plan to have Scheme Pluschampions in all our service centers and offices and we’ve been training relevant employees in responsible buying skills. Now we want to engage our employees in a new way, by encouraging them to volunteer in the community and offering them free water saving devices etc. We believe this will benefit them directly and also make it easier for them to engage with CSR initiativesin every aspect of their job.Every employee is given 1 Day to volunteer in the community.
No. / Commitment / Comment
4.1 / Plan to have Scheme Plus champions in the service centrers & offices. / New
4.2 / Offer support to employees to help reduce the carbon footprint of their homes by providing energy saving tips. / New
4.3 / Provide one day’s paid time off for all employees to participate in a CSR initiativesinitiative or charity event as part of an overall employee engagement programme. / Ongoing
4.4 / Achieve at least 90% of our employees at the required levels of performance in CSR initiatives. / New
4.5 / Achieve a positive employee feedback score of at least 80% on Service communications in our annual employee survey. / Ongoing
4.6 / Achieve a positive employee feedback score of at least 70% on 'intention to stay 12 months' in our GPTW survey. / New
4.7 / Report on an extended range of diversity measurements including senior management, age, gender and ethnicity by 2012. / Ongoing
4.8 / All service centers and offices to actively report on health and safety incidents through clear policies and increased training and awareness by 2012. / New
No. / Commitment / Comment
4.9 / Maintain certification of first-aiders in our service centers and offices in the UAE for the benefit of both our customers and staff. / New
4.10 / Training all relevant employees on upselling responsible buying & service provisions as part of their personal development by 2012. / New
4.11 / Appoint and train Scheme Plus Champions in all our service centers and offices by 2012. / New
4.12 / Providing improved health and lifestyle information to our employees, by 2012. / New
4.13 / Great place to work survey for our employees and action plan with regular updates. / New
Objective 5 – Integrate Scheme Plus into our systems and processes
A number of key changes will enable us to fully integrate CSR initiatives into business processes. These include:
- making successful delivery of CSR initiativespart of the bonus plan for our Management Board;
- introducing an internal price of carbon; reporting on the financial business case for CSR initiatives; and
- Integrating CSR initiativesinto our wider Business Foundation Programme which is overhauling many of our day-to-day processes and operating systems
5.1 / Develop and report on the financial business case for CSR initiativesby 2012. / New
5.2 / Integrate CSR initiatives considerations by 2012 into all aspects of our Business Foundation Programme, which is reviewing and updating all key processes and systems across the business. / New
5.3 / Introduce the CSR framework of Dubai Chamber followed by the Chamber sealrecognition for the CSR document of 2011. / New
Objective 6 – Build Scheme Plus into every aspect of our construction programme
We will make major strides to address environmental performance in the construction, refurbishment and operation of our service centers.We’re now extending our efforts to integrate sustainability into key systems that we use for project assessment. For example, whole life costing and continuous evaluation of the CSR performance of new service centers and major refurbishments to identify the scope for further improvements.
We’ll build initial 1 eco service centers, where we ran ‘fast-track’ trials of many different new technologies, by developing a number of ‘learning service centers’ over the next 5 years to improve our understanding of sustainable construction. This process is intended to show us how to create a service centers that:
• Has zero embodied carbon in construction
• Is made from 100% recycled material.
• Is 100% recyclable when refurbished or no longer needed
• Has a net positive biodiversity impact.
• Is resilient to climate change.
• Brings new benefits to the communities we serve.
No. / Commitment / Comment
6.1 / Construction in future shall include one sustainable learning service center to support continuous improvement . / New
6.2 / Introduce DEWA audits and actions plans by 2013. / New
6.3 / Conduct a review of likely impacts of climate change once in a year by 2012. / New
6.4 / Introduce a system for the continuous evaluation of the sustainability performance of our new service center and major developments, starting in 2012. / New
6.5 / Environment complaints/feedback management system by 2012. / New
Objective 7 – Engage our business partners in Scheme Plus
We will be working with our business partners to develop best practices. We will take these best practices and turned them into a set of sustainability standards that we are now going to drive across variouschannels in our supply chain. These standards are vital. They will make CSR initiatives on how our suppliers do business too. This set of standards will include:
•All of our raw material suppliers will be covered by a balanced performance scorecard that includes social and environmental issues as well as lean manufacturing, with 25% of them achieving the very highest (Gold) performance standard by 2016.
•In partnership with our general merchandise suppliers we’ll focus on making social and environmental improvements in our major service centers and within the group.
We’ll also work to extend our sector leading traceability standards to include all aspects of the supply chain down to the source of the raw materials used in our general merchandise goods.
We will also be working closely with our stakeholders to help them adopt relevant parts of CSR initiatives for their businesses.
No. / Commitment / Comment
7.1 / Conduct a review by 2012 with Axiom (after sales service) to incorporate CSR initiatives targets in their operations. / New
7.2 / Require our office to install more efficient lighting(energy saving), improved insulation, and temperature controls, to reduce their energy usage by an estimated 10% by 2016. / New
7.3 / Introducing a ranking system for suppliers covering ethical trading performance by the end of 2012. / New
Objective 8 – Create a culture of innovation on sustainability
We will not become a significantly more sustainable business using today’s solutions. To transform our business we must innovate. Our innovation (Kaizen) ‘drive’ will focus on creating a AED 20,000 innovation fund to be spent over the next 5 years that will help us make step changes in our sustainability performance and work with external partners to define what makes a long-term sustainable business model.
No. / Commitment / Comment
8.1 / Launch a Sustainability Innovation fund in 2012 with AED 20,000 funding to be spent over the next 5 years. / New
8.2 / Work with external partners to identify the characteristics of a sustainable retail business by 2012. / New
8.3 / Launch of information sharing portals across the company / New
8.4 / Identify best practices and roll out to our supply chain and sister concerns. / New
Objective 9 – Help our customers cut their carbon footprint
We encourage our CSR team to run projects to reduce the carbon footprint. Information on CSR programs is shared with our customers and they are encouraged to join us in the corporate and public events.
No. / Commitment / Comment
9.1 / Launch at least 3projects by 2012 which provide a ‘step change’ in reducing carbon emissions across. / New
9.2 / Use the most environmentally efficient forms of packaging systems in our logistics division throughout the supply chain to help reduce the overall carbon footprint of packaging and products by 2015. / New
9.3 / Ensure that by 2020 at least 90% of our household electrical products meet a credible energy efficiency standard and improve the energy efficiency of the most energy intensive products by at least 25%. / New
9.4 / Encourage customer to use energy saving lights by 2012. / New
9.5 / Encourage customers to participate along with our team in the Corporate Heroes campaigns launched by EWS - WWF. This will help our customers understand their carbon footprint and how to reduce it.
9.6 / Encourage customers to conduct an energy conservation study at their site for a better understanding on energy conservation and energy savings. / New
9.7 / Progressively introducing customers to encourage the use of public transport and cycling for both customers and employees where appropriate by 2012. / New
Objective 10- Create partnerships to help our customers reuse or recycle all our products and packaging
We support the principles of developing programs that aim to reduce, recycle, use renewable sources, remove environmentally sensitive materials and promote reuse of packaging in the entire operations. Through our ongoing engagement with our customers, we are working to move to a position where all our operations use the most environmentally friendly products available in the country of operation.We support the sustainable green initiatives of our customersto develop strong customer partnerships that support and integrate with the 3R principles.