Essay Sample on Corporate Social Responsibility

Introduction

Whitbread PLC operates in the UK as the largest hospitality business consisting of some of the most successful hotels and restaurants. These successful hospitality brands include Premier Inn, Brewers Fayre, and Beefeater, and are ranked as the top favorites among the UK citizens. Whitbread PLC focuses on fulfilling its customers' interests, providing them value for money through efficiency in offering services, and achieving profitable growth in the long-term (“Reports”). Therefore, the PLC publishes an annual sustainability report highlighting its corporate social responsibility actions and the subsequent results.

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Goals and Objectives

Whitbread PLC annually sets the goals and objectives to attain and monitor their progress and achievements using the sustainability report. The sustainability report for Whitbread PLC is called the Force for Good and entails the business's environmental, social, and governance performance (“Reports”). Furthermore, the sustainability report thrives on prioritizing everyone around them, such as customers, suppliers, and employees. The three pillars of the Force for Good are opportunity, community, and responsibility (“Reports”). Consequently, these pillars ensure that Whitbread PLC contributes positively to the community by creating a suitable environment for its people to live and work efficiently. Additionally, it analyses the impact of society on the investments and financial performance of the company.

In the UK, corporate laws acknowledge two frameworks for financial reporting; the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and the UK and Ireland Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). The IFRS applies to publicly listed companies made up of group accounts, unlike GAAP that appeals to individual companies (Dunne, 2008). Whitbread PLC is a group account and can follow either the EU adopted IFRS (FRS 101 with Reduced Disclosure Framework) or FRS 102. However, the EU adopted IFRS concerns the listed hospitality brands under the Whitbread PLC, while FRS 102 applies to the non-listed entities (Sahana). Despite the different frameworks incorporated in the reporting options, they aim to attain efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and sustainability while reducing disclosures (Weerathunga et al., 2020).

Corporate Social Responsibility

The UK corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting standards under the EU adopted IFRS state that publicly listed companies should provide a mandatory sustainability report annually addressing diversity, human rights, and the main governance principles under the organizations' acts (Industry Today, 2020). For Whitbread PLC, these reporting standards serve as a guideline during the annual compilation of the Force of Good. The reporting standards set up require organizations to provide a detailed analysis of their financial and non-financial performance (Almahrog et al., 2018). Whitbread PLC meets these standards since it annually outlines its social, environmental, and corporate governance (ESG) performance and how it affects the community, team members, guests, suppliers, and surroundings. Moreover, its ESG report works towards educating and providing solutions on diversity, climate change, equality, and single-plastic use.

The governance principles addressed in Whitbread PLC's sustainability report abide by the CSR reporting standards to ensure transparency. Through robust management, offering support, and holding shareholders accountable for their actions, the business provides a comprehensive analysis of its decision-making process. Furthermore, the board of directors convenes yearly to discuss matters relating to the Force of Good and ESG, such as diversity in the business. Whitbread PLC has clear governance structures that constitute; risk, technology, and people committees and focuses on measuring sustainability by analyzing various factors affecting its long-term financial performance. Forums for employees and specialists are also included in governance to provide alternative solutions and feedback on its management. Therefore, Whitbread PLC makes its decisions following the Food for Good policies and processes already established while incorporating the team members and executive committees' inputs.

Pillar of Opportunity

Under the Focus for Good, the pillar of opportunity aims at highlighting corporate governance performance by providing training and room for growth for the team members of the business. It ensures that the company's staff are well-acquainted with the necessary expertise and are aware of the goal, mission, and vision set out to meet the customers' expectations. Furthermore, during a particular year, the ESG accesses if the company can embrace diversity by including team members with different cultural and social values. The team members are also trained on diversity and its advantages to the company's financial performance. Whitbread PLC contributes to the community's positive change by embracing diversity and supporting movements such as the Black Lives Matter. Moreover, the company encourages its staff to voice their ideas and complaints through employee forums that improve management policies. Consequently, by inspiriting diversity in their teams, it promotes creativity and ensures balance during business decisions.

The pillar of responsibility aims at addressing environmental performance by achieving the company's goals of positively impacting climate change through single-use plastics and supporting local, national, and global movements towards environmental change. Recently, there has been a rise globally in carbon emissions, and Whitbread PLC advocates reducing emissions through ethical and economic policies and actions. Some of the innovations in place include heat recovery boilers, heat pumps powered by air, battery-powered hotels, electric charging points for customer vehicles, green gas, and the use of low energy lighting. Furthermore, Whitbread PLC works towards mitigating climate change's effects on their people, supply chain, and products by following the regulations set up by the Taskforce for Climate-Related Financial Disclosure (TCFD). The company also puts efforts towards eliminating single-use plastic from their business functions, reducing wastage of food, ensuring ethical conduct and adherence of human rights from their supply chain, and responsible procurement of sustainable commodities.

The community pillar under the Force for Good focuses on the social performance of Whitbread PLC by prioritizing the wellness and satisfaction of guests and consumers within society. Whitbread PLC is passionate about providing quality and affordable hospitality services that are responsibly sourced through their hotels and restaurants. The hotels and restaurants ensure that their menus are of nutritional value by reducing calories, sugars, and salts in their meals. Moreover, their menus are diverse and incorporate various dietary needs that their customers may have that depends on their health issues and age. Despite the cautionary nutritional measures, the hotels and restaurants under Whitbread PLC ensure their foods and drinks are delicious and appealing in addition to being healthy. Furthermore, to positively contribute to the community, the company engages and assists during local community activities and charity fundraisings.

Reporting Standards

The CSR reporting standards require that companies uphold the components of transparency, authenticity, business overview, goals towards sustainability, targets, and performance summary (“The CSR Report Checklist Every Company Needs”). Therefore, the three pillars in the Force for Good ensure that Whitbread PLC complies with the reporting standards. Whitbread PLC achieves transparency by highlighting its corporate governance principles in detail, together with the decision-making process. Furthermore, involving its team members through employee forums to gather feedback on its performance; nurtures trust and honesty. Whitbread PLC embraces a diverse culture that guarantees authenticity in its provision of services and management. Moreover, the sustainability report highlights the company standards for matters affecting the environment, society, and governance policies.

The Force for Good abides by the reporting standard of outlining its sustainability goals through sustainable sourcing of its raw materials and focusing its innovations on carbon emission reduction. Sustainability goals act as a profitability and risk measure for comparability purposes during investments (Jones et al., 2014). Whitbread PLC report meets the CSR reporting standards through its targets of securing the welfare and satisfaction of consumers while using strategies that promote cost-effectiveness, profitability, and globalization. Furthermore, the CSR report entails the company's performance summary regarding improving its profits and positively affecting the community's growth. From the performance summary, Whitbread PLC accesses its failures and strategizes on the measures that could improve its financial performance while still upholding its mission to improve society.

Conclusion

In 2017, Whitbread PLC faced ethical problems with the UK's ethical trade body after Premier Inn failed to recognize and prevented the union from accessing the British workers (“Premier Inn owner quits ethical trade body after union row”). Furthermore, the PLC addressed the issue by stating that their employees are free to engage and acquire information from any public trade unions in the workplace. In the case where Whitbread PLC had indicated the said regulations on trade unions in the sustainability report or formed employee forums to raise the issues of exclusion, the ethical problem would have been avoided. Moreover, it would have been easier for the trade unions to prove the organization's organization's lack of authenticity. Therefore, the Force for Good is an effective mechanism for holding Whitbread PLC accountable for ethical issues such as discrimination and safety standards mainly because it acts as a reference point. Generally, Whitbread PLC's Force for Good adheres to the CSR reporting standards and ensures that the hotels and restaurants under it conduct business ethically.

References

Almahrog, Y., Aribi, Z. A., & Arun, T. (2018, June 11). Earnings management and corporate social responsibility: UK evidence. Journal of Financial Reporting and Accounting.
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JFRA-11-2016-0092/full/html.

The CSR Report Checklist Every Company Needs. GlobalGiving. (2019, October 25). https://www.globalgiving.org/learn/csr-report/.

Dunne, T. (2008). The implementation of Ifrs in the Uk, Italy and Ireland. Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland.

Guardian News and Media. (2017, September 15). Premier Inn owner quits ethical trade body after union row. The Guardian.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/sep/15/premier-inn--ethical-trade-body-unite-union-whitbread.

Industry Today. (2020, April 15). Mandatory Sustainability Reporting. Industry Today. https://industrytoday.com/mandatory-sustainability-reporting/.

Jones, P., Hillier, D., & Comfort, D. (2014, February 4). Sustainability in the global hotel industry. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management.
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/IJCHM-10-2012-0180/full/html.

Rashid, N. A. (2018, August 23). 'Factors Determining Profitability': A Study on Whitbread PLC Hotel in United Kingdom. SSRN.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3181638.

Reports. Whitbread.
https://www.whitbread.co.uk/sustainability/policies/reports.

Sahana, S. CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY ACCOUNTING IN IFRS REGIME. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jerry_Kwarbai/post/Is_there_any_impact_of_IFRS_adoption_on_Corporate.