Our decentralised approach

Key to our success has been our highly decentralised approach which allows the businesses to develop their own models to address day-to-day business activities. We believe that they benefit from the flexibility to tailor their operations and cultures to their individual situations. However, this variety of approaches to CR is underpinned by our business principles and a fundamental requirement to manage CR risks.

Over time, our businesses have therefore developed their own approaches to CR. For example, the Twinings Ovaltine strategy is based on the five elements shown below. Because each separate business has different CR risks, some are more advanced than others and have embedded CR further into the heart of their operations.

In February 2010, we held our first group conference on CR in order to bring together all our experts from across the group so they could share best practice and learn from common experience. We found this enormously productive and regular dialogue between participants has been established – we will be holding this global meeting again.

Developing our own corporate responsibility model
The Twinings Ovaltine strategy is based on the five elements shown below

Corporate Responsibility Model 5 elements
 
 

What is corporate responsibility?

It’s about recognising the impact we have on all our stakeholders, whether they are our people, shareholders, customers, consumers or the communities in which we operate. Then it’s balancing what may be conflicting demands in order to act in ways that meet our responsibilities as a business to those stakeholders.

Mark Fairweather
Chief Executive Allied Bakeries

Ethical Tea Partnership Twinings

Key to our success has been our highly decentralised approach, which allows each of our businesses to develop their own approaches to corporate responsibility.