Our primary stakeholders are our clients, our employees, our partners and our suppliers.
Our Clients
Our People
Our Partners
Our Suppliers
Our mission is to help organisations build competitive advantage and long-term stakeholder value through corporate social responsibility. This drives the work we do in providing advice and research services and delivering CSR training. Our clients include participants at our workshops and our research and advisory clients.
Our consulting clients work with us in three main areas: development of strategy; stakeholder research and reporting services. Consulting clients are asked to complete an evaluation at the end of each project. Figure 2 shows client ratings of our service on the attributes of delivery on outcomes, responsiveness, satisfaction, professionalism and ability to meet time and budget requirements
We believe that improvement on client ratings for delivery on agreed outcomes is the result of better specification of projects following our work with an external consulting mentor. Modest declines in ratings on other attributes in FY09 compared to FY08 reflect the challenges of rapid growth we experienced in consulting work during the GFC. We will continue to monitor our service performance and seek continuous improvement.
Feedback from our workshop participants enables us to continue to develop and adjust our workshop programs to suit the needs of participants. We carry out evaluations for each of our workshops. Participant ratings on six aspects of workshop service delivery are depicted in Figure 3. We have monitored these aspects since our first workshop in 2004.
In the early years, our scores were lower for workshop flow and providing the right amount of time for the content, than for other aspects we monitored. We often over-prepared and had more material than could be delivered in the allotted time. Although workshops always finished on time, there was sometimes a rushed feel about the final session. Figure 3 shows clear improvement on these aspects, while performance in areas such as learning outcomes and responsiveness to participants has remained steady.
As our workshop program expands to reach more people, with more programs and more facilitators, we expect a challenge in retaining consistency in participant satisfaction and learning outcomes. We remain alert to the need to maintain high quality learning outcomes in the future.
Our major new goal for the next reporting period is to become a GRI-accredited trainer and provide a new GRI-certified training program in sustainability reporting.
As a small business in a specialised area, attracting and retaining skilled staff is fundamental to the success of our business. We had five permanent employees as at the end of June 2009 and employed eight research sub-contractors in the reporting period. More information on our people is available here.
Our major goals for the next reporting period are to continue to provide excellent career development opportunities and to identify and implement better staff retention practices.
We develop alliances with people and organisations who share our passion for helping organisations build competitive advantage through CSR. Our partners include international CSR specialists who facilitate our workshops. In the reporting period, we worked extensively with Paul Hohnen, Ann Svendsen, Dr Robert Boutilier and Dr Sanjay Sharma.
In 2008, we formed a partnership with La Trobe University’s Graduate School of Management to develop and help deliver Australia’s first Graduate Certificate in Corporate Responsibility from February 2009.
In 2007, we signed a Memorandum of Understanding with La Trobe University’s Graduate School of Management to advance CSR education in Australia. La Trobe University is one of the ‘Group of Eight’ leading Australian universities for research and teaching quality and is a signatory to the United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education.
Our first project was to develop Australia’s first Graduate Certificate in Corporate Responsibility (GCCR). The GCCR began in February 2009 with 11 students.
The aim of the GCCR is to provide managers and leaders with a sound body of knowledge and skills based on the latest research in the rapidly growing field of corporate social responsibility. It seeks to broaden and deepen their understanding of the issues and dilemmas surrounding the management of this aspect of organisations, and also to provide them with an integrated approach to theory and practice that incorporates business, environment and social imperatives.
It comprises four compulsory subjects: Business and Society; Culture, Values and Ethics in Business; Foundations in Managing Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Risk and Value; and Foundations in Integrating Responsible Business Practices.
The latter subject is delivered by ACCSR. This subject comprises four days of ACCSR workshops plus an assessment conducted by La Trobe GSM.
The Certificate was developed by La Trobe University’s Graduate School of Management and ACCSR in collaboration with an Industry Advisory Group, comprising senior managers from the largest employers of CSR professionals in Australia, including Alcoa of Australia, ANZ, Cadbury-Schweppes, Foster’s, IBM, McDonald’s, Members Equity Bank, NAB, Stockland, Target, Telstra and Westpac.
We see this certificate as an important step in the professionalisation of corporate responsibility as a management practice in Australia.
The Graduate School of Management is delighted to have a partnership with ACCSR in developing and delivering the Graduate Certificate of Corporate Responsibility. ACCSR has been instrumental in forging relationships between the University and industry through the facilitation of the Industry Advisory Group.
The Graduate Certificate fits within the Responsible Management Framework which has been adopted by the Graduate School of Management to guide our School in research, curriculum and course development and forging of industry partnerships. It also contributes to operationalising of the university’s strategic focus on sustainability. Universities have a role in creating a new generation of business people that can deliver on broad business and financial imperatives at a time of increasing environmental and social challenges. The partnership is a strategic response to meeting these challenges.
Our partners also include organisations which supported our events during the reporting period. They include: Westpac Banking Corporation, CPA Australia, Chartered Secretaries Australia and the Australasian Compliance Institute.
In FY09 we also began a partnership with SAI Global which has so far resulted in collaboration on an e-learning program in corporate responsibility. This will be launched in FY10.
We use local suppliers wherever possible. Our core suppliers include web and marketing communications (Hunter Online Communications), information technology services (Chris Core), on-line surveys (E-valuate-IT), telephony (Spirit Telecom), office stationery (Fuji Xerox and Corporate Express), external venue providers (Melbourne Business School, Macquarie Graduate School of Management and Cliftons), legal (Vanessa Bleyer Lawyers), banking (Westpac) and accounting (Banks Group).