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Media Partners

Provisional Programme

If you would like to get involved as speaker, sponsor, or exhibitor, please contact Nick Johnson, Conference Director, at +44 (0)20 7375 7209 or nick.johnson@ethicalcorp.com.

Day One

09.30 - 11.00 Plenary Session 1: The benefits of real engagement

The Business Case for Stakeholder Engagement

Stakeholder engagement is an integral part of what CSR means to your organisation. It is a vast and complex issue. In this session we try to get to the bottom of why a stakeholder engagement strategy matters to your business:

  • Understanding stakeholder engagement - How to putt it all together, forma cohesive strategy and then implement that strategy
  • Creating a joined-up approach - avoid a fragmented approach that hinders the effectiveness of your stakeholder programme
  • Why viewing stakeholder engagement as simply a communications tool is missing the point - and the value
  • What stakeholder engagement can do for you: boost brand, boost sales and motivate employees
  • Arcelor Mittal, Remi Boyer, Vice-President of CSR
  • Lehman Brothers, Charlotte Grezo, Head of Sustainability
  • MODERATED BY: Foretica, Alicia Grandanos, Chairperson

11.00 - 11.30 Coffee

11.30 - 12.45 Plenary Session 2: Bang for your buck

Measuring progress in your stakeholder engagement strategy

OK, so you have a stakeholder engagement strategy. You try to persuade your suppliers to be greener, you talk to NGOs about what you could be doing better, you involve your employees in generating new ideas and strategy for the company. But is it worth it? Are you having an effect? In this session, discover:

  • The metrics you should be implementing to effectively measure stakeholder engagement
  • The power of strength through collaboration: Putting results in a format that can be understood throughout your industry
  • The benchmarks and targets you should be aiming towards - as defined by other successful companies
  • Autogrill, Silvio de Girolamo, Head of Internal Audit and CSR
  • Rabobank, Bouwe Taverne, Senior Vice-President
  • MODERATED BY: Foretica, Alicia Grandanos, Chairperson

12.45 - 14.30 Lunch

14.30 - 16.00 Breakout Sessions Set 1

NGOs

CASE STUDY: How an NGO partnership has helped Allianz create a more effective stakeholder engagement strategy

Allianz, one of the world's leading insurance groups, and CARE, a leading NGO, discuss in depth their partnership, and how this partnership allows them create a more comprehensive and effective stakeholder engagement strategy:

  • What mechanisms Allianz now use to reach out to all stakeholders
  • How stakeholders are able to hold Allianz to account as a result of the work done with CARE
  • How CARE, and NGOs as a whole, are able to help as a middle-man between companies and their stakeholders
  • Allianz, Michael Anthony, Microinsurance Manager
  • CARE, Helen Barnes, Corporate Partnerships Executive

Local Community

The benefits of strategic community involvement, not just one-off school-painting trips

Any community involvement programme you design should not have as it's sole objective the feel-good factor of your employees. Currently, much business community work remains non-strategic and badly planned.

A strategic approach to community involvement can generate real rewards, for both the community and your business. But how do you go about strategic community involvement?

  • How to match skills and resources in your company with social needs in the local community
  • How can you persuade your board to move from the 'random acts of kindness' model to real community involvement strategies?
  • Create a programme that engages, inspires and relates to your key stakeholders
  • Identify the key indicators you need to guarantee your impact is being measured accurately
  • Charities Aid Foundation, Kay Clark, Senior Business Development Manager
  • Charities Aid Foundation, Peter Cafferkey, Senior Company Relations Manager
  • Earthwatch, Kay O'Regan, Corporate Partnerships Manager

Employees

Communicating responsibility to every level of your organisation

A recent study has uncovered that 91% of employees feel that working for a 'good' company is an extension of their own values and interests in behaving ethically. So how do you make sure that the 91% in your business know that you are an ethical company?

  • Hear about how you can adapt your regular set of 'engagement tools' to suit the needs and interests of your employees
  • Discover how to make sure your employee sustainability projects are interesting and varied - so employees don't suffer from 'ethics fatigue'
  • How to prepare your employees to engage with stakeholders
  • Rabobank, Bouwe Taverne, Senior Vice-President

16.00 - 16.30 Coffee

16.30 - 18.00 Breakout Sessions Set 2

NGOs

Managing 'difficult' stakeholder relationships with NGOs

Stakeholder engagement isn't all about telling sympathetic groups how great you are. A large portion of the work you need to do is working with stakeholders that have animosity towards your organisation. Stakeholder engagement offers a real opportunity to reduce the negativity from NGOs and other groups - and even take on their expertise to improve your company. Learn:

  • How to deal with NGOs that refuse to engage with you
  • Tools for dealing with the different language and value-set of NGOs - and how to find common ground
  • How to find the right balance: Taking on the views of critical parties without shifting your company away from its core strategy
  • Strategies for making sure the problem doesn't spread: Convincing your other stakeholders that they should not get worried
  • ConsultancyWorks, Jane Linklater, Managing Director
  • The Environment Council, Winsome Gregor, Engagement Director
  • MODERATOR: Sean Ansett, Social Accountability International

Local Community

CASE STUDY: Microsoft, IT Skills and the European Alliance on Skills

After our session on the necessity of strategic community involvement, find out how one of the biggest companies in the world is putting the lesson into practice. This workshop acts as a detailed exploration of Microsoft's commitment to the 'EU Alliance for Skills for Employability' - an attempt to build the foundations of employability in local communities through the development of IT and other skills.

  • How partnership between business, government and local communities can improve social inclusion
  • Microsoft's experiences of the EU Alliance - is it worth the time and effort?
  • The 'value chain' approach - how to define your key competencies and expertise, and use these skills to improve the outlook for local communities in which you operate
  • Microsoft, Elena Bonfiglioli, Director for Corporate Citizenship and Community Affairs

Employees

The accurate measurement of effective employee engagement

We know that engaged employees are good for business. According to a recent survey, companies with high employee engagement also experience higher operating margin (up to 19%) and earnings per share (up to 28%). How do you make sure the strategies you have in place are paying off, and you're in line for these rewards for your business?

  • What does engagement look like - and how can you increase it?
  • How does employee engagement contribute to business performance?
  • Which precise metrics can you use to link corporate responsibility, employee engagement and business performance?
  • How can you change the numbers?
  • Alliance Boots, Ian Blythe, Head of Environment

Day Two

09.30 - 11.00 Breakout Sessions Set 1

Stakeholder Strategy

How do you incorporate the results of your stakeholder engagement strategy into your business strategy?

In this session, discover one of the most important issues on CSR and stakeholder strategy - how to actually use the results of your stakeholder strategy to make your business better.

Identifying your key stakeholders, and the key issues you want to discuss with them, is a laborious task. But once you've done it - what then?

  • How do you implement the results of stakeholder engagement?
  • Keep them in the loop: Stakeholders need to see movement and reaction to their contribution - how do you show it to them?
  • How to take on advice: Learning from the expertise of your stakeholders
  • Sanofi-Aventis, Antoni Gelonch, Senior Director, Sustainability
  • Shell International, Albert Wong, Head of Policy and External Relations

Special Interactive Workshop

Creating and maintaining good working relationships under pressure

In the highly charged atmosphere of working with stakeholders and partners in a CSR relationship, differing values, approaches and ways of working can quickly solidify into barriers to mutual understanding and respect. Central to successful and sustainable relationships is an approach that acknowledges and values difference, while maintaining focus and energy on shared aims.

We will look at:

  • Setting up good working relationships from the very start
  • Helping all parties work well together
  • Review ongoing stakeholder relationships
  • What to do when stakeholder dialogue and relations are difficult

Workshop Objectives:

  1. To deepen participants’ understanding of the key approaches and frameworks in creating and managing stakeholder relationships
  2. To experience a range of approaches and practical techniques based on current stakeholder dilemmas
  3. To create space for participants to consider and develop together creative new solutions to old and entrenched problems
  • Session run by ConsultancyWorks

Employees

Getting employees involved in generating innovative sustainability ideas

Discover how encouraging employees to drive sustainability innovation can offer new perspectives on sustainable business, cut costs, and make your company a better place to work:

  • Should you encourage employees to be creative and think for themselves? Or is taking the role of 'dictator' the best idea?
  • Boosting creativity while retaining central control and brand unity - how to achieve the right balance
  • What's the best way to integrate employee innovation into a wider sustainability initiative?
  • A review of the new ways of engaging employees en masse: the most cost-effective way to use technology to garner and share useful ideas.
  • BT, Donna Young, Head of Climate Change
  • Unicredit, Emanuela Angori, Deputy CEO Staff

11.00 - 11.30 Coffee

11.30 - 13.00 Breakout Sessions Set 2

Stakeholder Strategy

Identifying the silent majority: Engaging with hard to reach and unwilling stakeholders

One of the biggest challenges for the CSR professional working in stakeholder engagement is finding and working with the hard-to-reach and the unwilling - from unfriendly NGOs to consumers that don't care about CSR. How do you go about it?

  • Coca Cola, Euan Wilmshurst, Manager, Stakeholder Engagement

Your Supply Chain

How to collaborate with your competitors to create a more efficient supply chain

Companies are increasingly turning to their competitors to help engage with suppliers and get across important messages about CSR. Collaboration with your business rivals offers advantages and savings otherwise unattainable. Initiatives like the Global e-Sustainability Initiative demonstrate the appetite for companies to work together to improve the ethical performance of their supply chains. But is all the effort worthwhile? Learn:

  • Opportunities your business has for collaboration
  • When it is shrewd to collaborate with your competitors
  • Where collaboration is best avoided
  • Global eSustainability Initiative, Katrina Destree, Executive Director
  • The Carbon Disclosure Project, Frances Way, Head of Supply Chain

Employees

Developing a passion for CR in your employees

Your employees are currently the most important stakeholder group you have, according to a McKinsey survey of leading CEOs. Unless they fully support your CR strategy, it is doomed to failure. By contrast, a motivated and interested team means a successful CR campaign.

In this session, hear about 'ENGAGE' and how developing enthusiasm in community development will have a measurable impact on the success of your business:

  • Identifying and using 'internal champions' to pass on your CSR message
  • How volunteering enervates the workforce
  • Communications methods you should use
  • Business in the Community, David Halley, Head of International Partnership
  • Fundacion Empresa y Sociedad, Maria Erquiga, Manager, Employee Programmes

13.00 - 14.30 Lunch

14.30 - 16.00 Breakout Sessions Set 3

Other Stakeholders

Using your CSR Reports as a useful tool for engagement

CSR reports are often the first port of call for anyone planning a stakeholder engagement strategy. But they are limited because they are passive and lack interactivity. Are they really the best place to start?

In this session, we explore:

  • How much you can expect your CSR report to deliver
  • The best way to organise and distribute your CSR report to ensure it is welcomed by your stakeholders
  • New reporting methods - does the internet herald the end of the paper-based CSR report?
  • Ferrovial, Juan Cardona Soriano, Head of Reputation and Corporate Responsibility
  • Canadian Business for Social Responsibility, Melissa Whellams, CSR Advisor

Other Stakeholders

Effective engagement with the socially responsible investment community

According to an Allianz survey, 71% of investors see sustainability investments as offering the potential for long-term growth. The SRI community is important, and is growing. But their priorities are very different to those of an NGO, an employee, or a consumer. How do you tailor your engagement strategy to work best with them?

What is the information that an SRI professional needs from your company, and how should you deliver it?

  • Are investors using CSR reports to make investment decisions?
  • Should reports be the basis of any engagement with SRI community?
  • How do you show you are managing your CSR risk?
  • Co-Operative Insurance Society, Jo Allen, Head of Socially Responsible Investment
  • International Interfaith Investment Group 3iG, Katinka van Cranenburgh, Secretary General

16.00 - 16.30 Coffee

16.30 - 18.00 Breakout Sessions Set 4

Stakeholder Strategy

What different kinds of engagement should you use?

Reporting, CSR Panels, Questionnaires, websites, PR, the list of potential stakeholder engagmenet tools goes on. But remember - one size never fits all, and you need to tailor and deliver your message differently for each stakeholder you have.

In this session, you'll explore:

  • What engagement tools tend to work best for specific groups
  • How to get an external advisory group started
  • The trouble with surveys: While they are easy, they're not a dialogue, and by necessity they cannot be as focused as a stakeholder panel
  • Repsol, Eduardo Garcia, Director of CSR and Institutional Relations
  • ORSE, Delphine Poligne, Project Director

Your Consumers

Rebuilding trust - how to bring critical consumers back on board

Some three fifths of UK consumers say that they avoid purchasing from certain companies because of questions they have about their social, environmental, or ethical track record. If disaster strikes and your CSR record is tarnished, how do you go about getting these consumers back? In this session, we discuss:

  • Do you start right from the beginning - again?
  • Is "sorry" enough?
  • How far should you go when trying to bring back alienated consumers before you should give up?
  • Rainforest Alliance, Angel Llavero, Regional Co-ordinator, TREES programme, Europe