After several years' reporting experience, we share with stakeholders the evolving perspective on the issues that uniquely define the Corporation's sustainability journey. The following interview with our Sustainability Development Manager, Dr Glenn Frommer, gives some insight as to why change is inevitable.

Managing the sustainable development journey is both a science and an art. Can you give us your insights into how the Corporation approaches and manages its journey in this context?

The science of best practice has been "relatively" straightforward to integrate into the Company which is an engineering-based organisation. We understand processes, systems and feedback, sets of standards and guidelines for implementation and the need to improve continually to maximise performance. The science of sustainability follows this same logic, using different sets of inputs, measurement tools and outcome management.

The art of sustainability, on the other hand, is about crafting the tools and steering the aspirations of both ourselves and our stakeholders. As management, we see the need to excite a personal awareness among staff, engender a sense of the Corporation within the community and collectively steward the organisation for the benefit of the greater society. It is a challenge that goes beyond the vision, mission and value sets. While the form of this challenge will no doubt change over time, the essence will not.

In viewing sustainability as a maturity process, the Corporation's attitude towards applying KPIs has changed. What has changed and why?

In essence, it is all about measuring our business and ourselves on principles and practices as well as achievements and deliverables. The use of KPIs underpins measurement and forms the necessary base for tracking our operational performance over time. It is the nature of our business to have KPIs as they show how we are using our resources and demonstrate continual improvement.

What has changed is the view of KPIs as the measurement of the sustainability journey in absolute quantities. How does one measure a change in staff working attitudes for example, or measure the impact of race walking for the community? These are certainly an accepted part of our programme but, these being qualitative by nature, we have yet to develop any meaningful KPIs for them that are quantifiable. What we have done, however, is restructure our S&CSR Steering Committee to establish a governance framework that will prioritise and focus on initiatives that deal with these types of non-measurables, with the purpose of establishing and acting on their impact with relevance to corporate value and the business case for sustainability.

This shift in attitude is a key driver in how we have reported to stakeholders this year. The GRI Content Index, while remaining an important component of reporting, is now posted online . We include and introduce, as part of our management discussions, the Corporation's development under the BS8900:2006 Standard. The accompanying Maturity Matrix maps a six-year timeframe under this Standard. It not only gives us a scale for a management process that is open ended and allows for the inclusion of non-measurables, but also provides a concrete tool for thinking forward in sustainability.

The Corporation's appreciation of sustainability has evolved over time. This is most observable in the maturing of the Company's annual reporting to stakeholders on performance. What does the broader horizon hold as you continue on the sustainability journey?

In first reporting to stakeholders seven years ago, we began with an understanding of sustainability that reflected our inward-looking, technical and target-achieving mindset. The reporting process focused mainly on health, safety and environmental issues based on the drivers of core values and interaction with key stakeholders. Many organisations start their sustainability journey in much the same way.

 

Ensuing years brought a confidence and maturity in our focusing more on the principles of sustainability and applying them to our work practices. A gradual sense of seeing targets as signposts as opposed to defined achievements changed how and what we reported on and characterises where we are today. By natural extension of our internal processes, we have grown our stakeholder groups beyond our immediate customers to the broader community. We have even changed our corporate branding to a lifestyle rather than a service provider.

 

Given our internationalisation strategy, we see strategic mileage in promoting and aligning with our industry's best practices based on the principles of sustainability rather than on generic year-on-year targets. This is critical to positioning and participating in maturing sustainability within the wider rail transport and services industries. I believe many business are presently going this way, which is not a bad thing considering the diversity of stakeholder interests and the spectrum of risk issues in any one industry. As a publicly listed organisation we, of course, continue to sustain our ratings on the internationally recognised indices such as FTSE4Good and DJSI. These are critical benchmarks for our institutional investors.