Changing Responsibilities

Change has become routine in modern business life, no more so than for the waste and resources management industry: Changes in policy and regulation towards tighter control and more sustainable waste management practices, changes in stakeholder expectations towards greater transparency, changes in reporting, such as the rise of carbon as a critical performance indicator for companies and changes in the skills and attributes required by waste and resources managers.

Successful companies will embrace such change and embed it into their policies, strategies and systems. It is not by accident that one of the main strands of Shanks Group’s publicly stated strategy is to “…develop our infrastructure to support sustainable waste management...” However, nowhere have the changes of recent years been more prevalent than in how an organisation approaches its corporate responsibilities.

At Shanks we aim to be a solid corporate citizen. We have a dedicated CR Committee, consisting of senior executives from across the business and reporting directly into the Group’s Executive Committee. We have developed an umbrella CR Policy for the Group, under which our CR issues and activities can be addressed. This over-arching CR Policy includes statements on how we approach corporate responsibility and the standards required from all of our employees, I would very much welcome stakeholder feedback on this policy.

Ultimately which CR issues are critical for an organisation will vary. We focus on three areas that reflect the nature of our activities and the risks we face: The environment and carbon, employee well-being and the wider community. Setting policy and standards in these critical areas and reporting on performance are obvious requirements. However, organisations which wish to truly embed CR practices into their activities need to go beyond this and set themselves targets for improvement and change.

Change can be unsettling, bringing as it does new challenges and opportunities. However, change can also be good. Shanks changing and developing approach to corporate responsibility is an example of where change is certainly for the good and will continue to be so.

Tom Drury,
Group Chief Executive