Audit

• Reviewing Corporate Affairs or Communications activities - eg Public Affairs, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Corporate Community Involvement (CCI), Employee Communications, Reputation Management - against current good practice and against business goals and needs.
• Establishing expectations and perceptions of key stakeholder groups - eg opinion leaders, government, business leaders, community and voluntary bodies, and employees (mostly using qualitative research techniques).
• Analysing relevant features of the national or international environment for corporate affairs and CSR.

Clients have included BP, British American Tobacco, Severn Trent, Shell and Sprint (USA).

Strategy

• Developing new strategic approaches to improve the business and reputational value of activities such as Corporate Affairs, CSR and CCI.
• Advising on the establishment of management structures and processes to achieve strategic and reputational goals.
• Facilitating ‘Task Force’ initiatives or dialogue sessions with senior management to review reputational goals, agree Public Affairs issue priorities, etc.
• Helping to design strategies for reporting and accountability to stakeholders, eg via social auditing and reporting.

Example clients include Barclays, National Grid Transco, Shell UK and United Utilities.

Implementation Support

• Identifying CCI or CSR projects and/or partner organisations to achieve specified aims.
• Designing new initiatives relating to CSR and reputation, eg a pioneering corporate citizenship education project in Southwark, employee involvement and volunteering programmes, community award schemes, etc.
• Managing Public Affairs issues and campaigns.
• Carrying out projects calling for particular skills and credentials, eg a CSR salary survey covering selected leading companies in the UK.
• Providing ‘coaching’ or training for staff or executives on topics relating to reputation management, Public Affairs or CSR.

Example clients: Marks & Spencer, SmithKline Beecham (now part of GlaxoSmithKline) and Southwark Education Business Alliance.

Assessment

• Comparative benchmarking of groups of companies against current good practice in fields such as CCI, CSR and Public Affairs, both nationally and internationally. 29 leading companies in the UK have now been assessed against our CCI Index, a comparative benchmarking and assessment tool for community programmes; a total of 45 Index assessments have been completed in four two-year cycles to date.
• Developing and implementing suitable measurement methodologies (performance indicators, targets, measurement tools, etc) for individual client companies to assess their performance in reputation management, CSR, CCI, Public Affairs, etc.
• Conducting performance assessment exercises in CSR-related fields - eg an audit of the total extent and value of CCI activity across a multi-company group, or a review of community partnerships and their effectiveness.
• Assessing reputational and other risks relating to Communications, Public Affairs and CSR activity and helping to set up processes for managing them.

Clients for CCI benchmarking offerings have included ASDA, Barclays, BP, BT, Camelot, Centrica, CIS, Diageo, GlaxoSmithKline, Marks & Spencer, National Grid Transco, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Rio Tinto, Unilever and Whitbread.

Other Services

• Research and analysis: During 2003 we have conducted a project for the London Assembly Economic and Social Development Committee to explore the potential for organisations in London, across all sectors, to help meet the capital’s regeneration and development needs through their mainstream activities, and to identify how the Greater London Authority ‘family’ of organisations could enhance the level and impact of such activity.
• Executive search: We offer a specialised executive search service to help clients fill senior Corporate Affairs, Communications or CSR posts.
• Interim management: We are in touch with a number of high-quality, experienced public affairs and corporate citizenship professionals who can be made available to clients on limited-term contracts to help set up new functions, structures, strategies or initiatives, or to provide temporary management expertise.

(References available on request.)

Contact Us for a free consultation.