Corporate Responsibility
Welcome to WHSmith’s Corporate Responsibility site.
Over the last year, we have seen environmental and social issues rise higher on the agenda for our customers, as well as for politicians and the media. At WHSmith, we have continued our long-established work to embed our Corporate Responsibility (CR) principles within the way that we manage every aspect of
our business. We believe that managing CR in this way enables us to understand and effectively manage the key impacts of our business, as well as the related risks and opportunities.
WHSmith PLC’s 2007 Corporate Responsibility Report available here outlines the progress we have made during 2006/07 towards the objectives we set last year. As ever, we divide our CR programme into four areas: marketplace, workplace, environment and community. We are pleased to report progress in all areas of our programme.
Notable achievements include further increases in the amount of paper we source from sustainably-managed sources and the delivery of training and development programmes which have achieved clear results to help our staff further their careers with us. We have also continued to make progress to reduce our environmental footprint and to support our staff as they take an active role in the communities we operate in. More detail on these and many other initiatives can be found in the Report. We are always keen to benchmark our CR performance against other leading UK companies as this can help us identify ways to further improve our programmes. The annual Business in the Community Corporate Responsibility Index provides just such an opportunity and, this year, we were delighted to improve our performance for the fourth successive year, achieving a Gold ranking.
In the year ahead, we will continue our work to manage our impact on society and the environment, whilst also exploring opportunities to use corporate responsibility to enhance our business performance.