Evaluate the company's corporate social responsibility strategy and how it relates to its stakeholders.

This part focuses on CSR strategy and requires that you apply theoretical concepts and frameworks covered. The question asks that you evaluate the company's CSR strategy to elaborate on its strengths and weaknesses and how it relates to its stakeholders.

A possible way to answer is to begin by first identifying the stakeholders. How does the company prioritise conflicting demands and needs of its stakeholders? How does it use its CSR strategy to address those demands and needs? These are importa nt questions which you are expected to deal with in your answer.

You need to demonstrate an understanding of the concepts you choose and your ability to apply these concepts to the case company.

SUMARY OF THE WEEK

Summary

During this week you explored the need for organisations to take responsibility for the impact of their actions on their stakeholders; this is the fundamental driver of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Contributions within the CSR literature advocate that organisations should aspire to be 'good corporate citizens', to go a step beyond their legal and economic responsibilities and to avoid their actions causing any harm on the natural environment and communities (Carroll, 1991). The voluntary, elusive and subjective nature of the top tiers of Carroll's (1991) pyramid opens room for business to claim abiding to CSR values without proceeding to fully implementing such principles in their goals and actions. Some consider corporate philanthropy as just a miniscule contribution to societal causes and advocate for the potential to create 'shared value' (CSV) by identifying areas where societal challenges give rise to business opportunities (Porter and Kramer, 2011). CSV is appealing as overall it leads to greater value creation which can be shared among some stakeholders. CSV is not devoid of criticism, as it prioritises new business opportunities and the potential for profit and dismisses the opposing nature of social and monetary objectives.

The United Nation's sustainable development goals (SDGs) offer to business a path to adopt a holistic approach towards a sustainable future; to work towards ensuring a common shared and future-proof outcome for all stakeholders. Organisations stand to benefit from embedding relevant SDGs in their strategies, as they can inspire their employees, attract the best talent, become aligned with the values of an ever-increasing number of consumers, contribute to greater equality and welfare, foster economic growth and nurture stable and secure environments to conduct business.

Materials

3.1 Whitbread's 'Force For Good' Strategy

Sustainability

We believe we have a responsibility to help people live and work well. Our sustainability programme, 'Force for Good' aims to ensure we have a positive impact on all of our stakeholders and the world around us. Split into three pillars; opportunity, community and responsibility, we've made great progress so far and have set long-term strategic targets to continue on our journey.

Our strategy and targets

We know that being a Force for Good is not only the right thing to do, but it makes business sense too. With over 275 years of history, we understand the importance of making decisions now that will have a positive impact on the future of our business, our teams, our guests and the world around us.

Creating our strategy

Each year we undertake a robust process to help shape our sustainability strategy, ensuring we focus on tackling the risks and opportunities presented at this time of great social and economic change.

In 2020 we took the opportunity to undertake learnings from our stakeholders and from wider sustainability trends to identify the programmes and issues that need our focus. We used this as the basis to reset some of our targets and to ensure they are fit for our current business.

Our strategy is called 'Force for Good', and is more important than ever before. The strategy is split into three pillars;opportunity,communityandresponsibility.

Whitbread is tackling the complex social and environmental challenges that we face, today and for the future. We know that focus, direction and collaboration is required to make positive and impactful change. Our specialist sustainability function helps to align Whitbread's sustainability programme to the overarching business strategy whilst also providing specialist support to solve sustainability challenges. We remain focused on being a Force for Good even in the most challenging business environments and are proud of our ability and progress thus far to enable our people to live and work well."

Rosana Elias, Head of Sustainability, Whitbread

Targets and reporting

Each year, we deliver an integrated Sustainability and Annual Report which highlights our progress against the targets outlined below. In 2020 we also released a stand-aloneEnvironmental, Social and Governance report (ESG Report)to showcase the breadth of our Force for Good programme and achievements.

We strive to strike the right balance between clear disclosure on key indices that map to the material issues we face, whilst also not throwing the net too wide that could result in duplicated reporting. We annually report on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) and the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) and have now started to report to Sustainability Accounting Standards (SASB) as well as providing an update on our progress towards responding to the Taskforce on Climate Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) recommendations.

Our programme is underpinned by a number of policies, each outlining the standards we commit to working towards as we move towards achieving our targets.

Opportunity

A team where everyone can reach their potential. No barriers to entry and no limitations to ambition.

We will be for everyone, championing inclusivity across the organisation and improving diversity

• We will actively seek to break down all barriers to entry and be an inclusive and representative prospective employer
• Our people will feel represented and respected, no matter how they identify

We will have industry-leading training and development schemes

• Through our apprenticeship programmes we will support people to find and develop their hospitality careers
• We aim to promote internal succession above external recruitment and will support our teams in this endeavour
• We will be bold about broadening career opportunities, supporting cross-functional and meaningful career development

Team member wellbeing will be considered in everything we do

• We will listen genuinely to our teams, ensuring their views help inform decision making
• We will support the physical and mental wellbeing of our teams

Community

Making a meaningful contribution to the customers and communities we serve

We will make a positive contribution to the communities we serve

• For every new site, we will donate our time to actively supporting local community activity

Working collaboratively with our teams and support chain, we will support our charity partner to meet their mission

• We will raise 20m for Great Ormond Street Children's hospital by 2020

We will support the wellbeing of our guests and customers

• We will improve the nutritional value of our menu by continuing to reduce sugar, salt and calories and will continue to develop inclusive menus for customers with a range of dietary needs. We will do this in a responsible and transparent way whilst maintaining great taste, quality and value for money for our guests
• We will strive to be a leader in our sector for delicious, appealing and healthier children's food

Responsibility

Always operating in a way that respects people and planet.

We will source responsibly and with integrity

• Human rights will be respected across our value chain
• We will work with our supply chains to source to internationally recognised sustainability standards

We will reduce our environmental impact

• We will eliminate unnecessary single-use plastic by 2025
• We will cut food waste by 50% by 2030
• We will not send any waste to landfill
• We will minimise water use across our business and champion water stewardship with high risk areas
• We will reduce our Scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions intensity by 80% by 2030 and Net Zero by 2040
• We will reduce our Scope 3 carbon emissions intensity by 50% by 2035 and 64% by 2050

We will always do business the right way

• We will always operate with integrity and respect
• We will always support our people and partners to do the right thing
• We will always be honest and transparent in our communication

Delivery

We work hard to make our Force for Good programme part of everyone's job. We dedicate time to embedding our strategy across our business, setting accountability and ensuring this programme lives and breathes in everything we do. From our CEO to our housekeepers, we want to ensure everyone has a stake in enabling us to be a Force for Good.

3.2 Premier Inn as a 'Force for Good'

We're a Force for Good

At Premier Inn, we really care about you, our teams, our communities and our planet. That's why being a Force for Good is at the heart of everything we do, from donating surplus food to communities and helping raise over 17 million for the incredible causes at GOSH, to responsibly sourcing our cotton for all our comfy bedding, and more.

As the UK's largest hotel chain, we're proud to be setting industry-leading goals for sustainability, so you can rest easy knowing we're all about making positive changes in a big way and doing our bit for the world we live in.

Operating responsibly and sustainably

Being a Force For Good in all we do supports our vision of enabling people to live and work well.

Serving up tonnes worth of food

We donated over half a million meals worth of surplus food to charity in 2020 - one of many steps we're taking towards the larger goal of cutting our food waste in half by 2030.

Stop Food Waste Day

Thanks to our partnership with FareShare and The Real Junk Food Project (TRJFP), our restaurants have donated over 140 tonnes of food to those in need, the equivalent of 335,000 meals.

Caring about our customers

Whitbread plc is passionate about using our scale and size to make a positive difference to people's lives, our communities and the world in which we operate.

Community

We have over 800 hotels across the UK and every single one of them is built into a community. We pride ourselves on playing an active role in those communities, whether that's through charity fundraising, volunteering or providing work experience opportunities.

Part of the community

Every time a new hotel or restaurant opens, we're joining a new community. We support and sponsor each team member at our new sites to volunteer three hours to a local cause that both they and local residents are passionate about. This can be anything from picking up litter to redecorating community centres or donating to food banks. It works for everyone - we learn more about the communities we're part of, and the community gets to see more of who we really are.

We support GOSH

We've been partnered with the fantasticGreat Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity(GOSH) since 2012. Since then we've raised over 15m through our teams, guests and suppliers. 7.5m of this helped to build the Premier Inn Clinical Building; a new, much-needed facility at the hospital. Premier Inn team members voted overwhelmingly in favour of continuing our partnership withGOSHin 2017 and we pledged to raise a further 10 million towards a newSight and Sound Centre. Due to open in 2020, the centre will be the first dedicated medical facility for children with sight and hearing loss in the UK.

Caring about our customers

We're proud to serve high quality, great-tasting food and drink. That's whywe're committed to improving the nutritional value of our menu by continuing to reduce sugar, salt and calories and will continue to develop inclusive menus for customers with a range of dietary needs. We will do this in a responsible and transparent way whilst maintaining great taste, quality and value for money for our guests. Not only this but we are striving to be a leader in our sector for delicious, appealing and healthier children's food.

Responsibility

We know our work affects the environment and the people around us, which is why we have industry leading targets across our programme to reduce our impact on the environment and respect the human rights of workers across our value chain.

We source responsibly

We only work with suppliers who share our values and meet our high standards. We pride ourselves on working with our suppliers to continuously ensure that human rights are respected across our value chain and source products to internationally recognised sustainability standards.

We're going Net-Zero

We're committed to reducing our carbon footprint, and we're already really proud of our achievements so far; we use 100% renewable energy to power our hotels, and we have solar panels installed on over 180 of them. We've also planted roof gardens on some of our hotels to help support local biodiversity, and encourage birds, bees and other wonderful wildlife to thrive at our buildings.

We've recently set an industry-leading target to reduce our carbon emissions intensity by 50% by 2025 and we're going one step further by going Net-zero on our scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2040.

We're reducing our waste

All waste from our hotels and restaurants is diverted from landfill, and we recycle all of our beds, pillows and duvets. We're working to remove all unnecessary single-use plastics from our hotels and restaurants by 2025. We were also the first business in the UK to sign up to Refill - offering free water bottle refills at over 3000 sites. 3.3 We value difference at Premier Inn

The reception of our hotels are at crossroads for everyone, no matter what they're here to do. Everybody is made to feel welcome when they visit, and we wouldn't have it any other way. But this goes far beyond the guests we host, it's at the core of our business. We believe that embracing difference is not only the right thing, it's the smart thing. Diversity in people creates diversity of thought, and diversity of thought leads to new ways of thinking and doing.

So we aren't just accepting of difference, we value it and we welcome it with open arms.

We're committed to supporting all our colleagues, including those from under-represented groups such as those who are ethnically diverse, identify as gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, trans sexual, non binary or use another term, and people with disabilities. Whilst we have made significant progress in the last 12 months, we recognise we have more to do, to be both more diverse and more inclusive - and we won't rest easy until we achieve these.

In 2020 we made commitments to change:

1. Greater representation through stretching targets around gender and ethnicity in our senior leadership roles in the business
2. Review our recruitment processes, particularly at mid-management level
3. Invest more in diverse talent of the future
4. Support the leaders in our business with knowledge and skills to be confident and capable inclusive leaders
5. Amplify the voices of our minorities through networks and forums, such as GLOW (LGBTQ+ and newly formed Race, Religion and Cultural Heritage, Gender Equality and Disability groups)
6. Review our organisational policies to ensure they are inclusive. For example we've just introduced a new policy allowing our team members to transfer Bank Holidays to other religious holidays, and signing up to theHalo Collectiveas part of our appearance policy
7. Celebrate a wider range of cultural events within our business - we have recently celebrated Black History Month, LGBTQ+ History Month, International Women's Day alongside religious festivals such as Diwali, Rosh Hashanah and Ramadan.

We also signed the Prince's responsible business network Business In The Community's 'Race at Work Charter' and are working to implement its five calls to action to tackle barriers that ethnic minority people can face.

Gender equality continues to be an area of commitment. View our latestGender Pay Gap report.

We're committed to doing more, and we look forward to sharing our progress with you as we continue on this journey.