Forum for the Future was asked to provide a short commentary on
the 2003 EHS report from an external stakeholder perspective, highlighting
strengths and areas for improvement. Forum for the Future are not
auditors or verifiers however, and these comments do not represent
an assessment of the veracity of any of information provided by
GSK in this report.
"For the last few years, GSK has been the largest company
in the UK's pharmaceuticals sector and among the largest in the
world. Pressure on that sector has grown markedly during that
time, and as a major player, GSK is well aware of the fact that
its performance is subjected to intensive scrutiny. In those circumstances,
GSK's thorough approach to reporting on the challenges the company
is facing and the steps that it is taking is to be warmly commended.
It is no surprise to Forum for the Future that the
company's last EHS Report won the award from the UK Association
of Certified Chartered Accountants. This year's Report builds
on many of the strengths of the 2002 one. It provides a detailed
but accessible insight into the company's approach: its policies;
the governance structures, management systems and programmes it
has in place; and some of the wider issues that the company is
addressing. The fact that the company's reporting is mapped so
transparently against the Global Reporting Initiative's indicators
is helpful too, as is the emphasis that the company places on
dialogue with stakeholders to understand their concerns.
In terms of the Report itself, one of the main areas for improvement
that Forum for the Future would highlight is the way in which
some of the key issues are contextualised. For report readers
unfamiliar with the workings of the pharmaceutical industry, it
is important to be able to take a step back from the detail and
get a clear sense of how the company works and what the material
impacts - positive and negative - are that it has on the environment
and on society. The company could perhaps also be more up front
in some areas in giving full account of stakeholder views, even
when they run counter to the policies and practice of the company
itself.
Of course, it is important for all of us to keep the business
of reporting in perspective. Reporting is not an end in itself,
but is a window on how a company is performing in addressing its
key impacts and in moving towards sustainability. On that front
there is much good news at GSK. On some of the key targets contained
in the 10 year Plan for Excellence, the company is already ahead
of schedule. Indeed, the very fact of having that 10 year plan
in place is to be welcomed, setting out as it does a clear roadmap
for the company over the coming years.
Maintaining progress in this way, step by incremental step, remains
critical. But GSK's total footprint, on people and places, remains
substantial, and it is our belief that there are opportunities
to be had in terms of achieving bolder step changes. That almost
certainly means GSK will need to articulate more clearly what
it means to be a genuinely sustainable company. The company then
needs to bring its reporting together within a coherent integrating
framework that allows it to communicate progress towards that
goal of being sustainable.
What does integration mean here? So far, the company has built
pretty powerful conceptual bridges between what it does on environmental
issues and what it does on health and safety issues. The challenge
now is to find equally useful bridges between EHS, corporate responsibility,
community engagement, animal welfare and other key social issues,
and then to link all that with the core business issues, shareholder
value and competitiveness. This is a long journey, with many milestones
along the way, as this Report admirably bears out."
Jonathon Porritt is Programme Director of Forum for the Future,
a UK-based charity. Forum for the Future has strategic partnerships
with 50 leading UK listed companies, working to embed management
of sustainable development. GSK and Forum for the Future are now
in the second year of a three year partnership.
