Risk management through CSR

by Catherine Woods - Friday, 12th October 2007 -

If you’re concerned about risk then you should be concerned about corporate social responsibility, according to The Grass Roots Group UK finance director Mike Sherry.

“One of our fundamental risks is: what’s going to prevent us making our targets in the next three years? Our inability to meet our clients’ requirements is one of those in a very simplistic way,” Sherry says.

He notes that many of the company’s 1,100 clients (31 of which are in the FTSE 100) are focusing on CSR and, consequently, are asking questions of their suppliers. “We need to give robust responses.”

A strong CSR framework also creates opportunities to attract new clients by providing appropriately-tailored products and services.

The Grass Roots Group is currently focusing on the environmental side of its CSR policy. It's hired a CSR manager, created a CSR working group, now uses renewable energy in its head office and is on its way to being carbon neutral.

The company, however, isn’t offsetting its carbon emissions. “I could have written a cheque out to offset our carbon emissions and that would have been about a tenth of the price of doing it as we’ve done it because the carbon market isn’t priced properly at the moment.

“We’re not doing any offsetting because that’s not what we want to do. We want to drive behavioural change.”

Picture source

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