Many of the UK’s largest companies are failing to take advantage of the
web to communicate their CSR programmes, reports the Good Business
consultancy.
The study found ‘huge variances’ in the way the 50 largest listed UK
companies present their CSR activity online. The range of scores was
from 13.6 out of a possible 15 for Unilever to 0.1 for cruise company
Carnival.
Good Business says many of the worst performers were companies with a
relatively good story to tell, but they are just not telling it. Three
utilities companies in particular – National Grid Transco,
ScottishPower and Scottish & Southern – were judged to be doing
well on CSR but to have ‘very poor’ online coverage.
The finance sector fared badly too. No bank was in the top 15 and two
were in the bottom ten, although all five are in the top ten by market
capitalization. Extractive industry and alcohol companies did best. The
study sought to ‘assess how well companies communicate what they are
doing in the area of CSR rather than their actual CSR performance’.
However, it concluded that the two factors generally went hand in hand,
so a company making no mention of CSR on its website was unlikely to
have a developed CSR management system. Giles Gibbons, founding partner
of Good Business, said: ‘Given that so many companies say CSR is a
vital part of their business, it’s surprising so few go to the trouble
of rethinking their reporting for the online medium. They could provide
a far more compelling experience than they currently do.’
Good Business awarded up to 70 per cent of the points for the quality of information and up to 30 per cent for presentation.
