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January 17, 2008
It Could Happen To You
It began as an all so normal Tuesday, and then an email flashed across my screen from my colleague and fellow blogger, David Brain, in London. On his RSS feed from FT.com, he received an article titled, “Companies Warned on Social Reports,” written by the Financial Times’ hedge fund reporter, James Mackintosh.
The journalist reported on a special report from the UK-based investor group, Morley, which stated that 78 listed companies and 904 companies overall are “breaching pledges” to the United Nations Global Compact by “failing to produce the updates required by the scheme.” Among the companies named in the article were: Standard Chartered Bank; Premier Oil; Bouygues Telecom; and Edelman. The head of engagement at the Morley fund, Steve Waygood, goes on to suggest that the Global Compact needs this compliance mechanism requiring regular communication updates to “protect the credibility” of the initiative.
I nearly fell out of my chair because Edelman was one of the first companies to join the Global Compact and for years was one of only five American companies on the Global Compact. Edelman has regularly provided updates to the Global Compact including our CSR report and we have recommended the Global Compact to many of our clients.
Our first call was to the reporter at the FT, who acknowledged that he had not reached out to us but said that he was relying on the UN Global Compact database and the Morley report. He said that he planned to do no further reporting on the subject.
Our second call was to the Global Compact. We found to our dismay that in fact the UN did not have our CSR report on file and that therefore we were technically in violation. The UN official said, “This is just a yellow card for companies (using a football match analogy) to encourage them to get with the program.” I was frustrated that we had not made certain that the UN had our Report, but also I was pretty vehement, suggesting the UN could have a bit more affirmative program for checking on regular members’ compliance and keeping better files. We immediately produced evidence of our missive to the UN in mid 2006, which included our first CSR report, and asked that we be removed from the list of offenders. This was accomplished by Tuesday evening. I received a letter of apology from Georg Kell, director of the Global Compact, on Wednesday morning.
Our third call was to the trade media, especially to PRWeek in the UK, which was onto the story from midday on Tuesday. We gave them our evidence of compliance with the communications requirement of the Global Compact. They decided not to file a story.
Our fourth call was to the Morley Fund, to explain the mistake and to request that we be removed from the list of offending enterprises. We did the same to the FT.com, which has complied with our request.
There are a few lessons for companies in this contretemps. First, make sure that you do not take your friends in civil society for granted. We should have followed up our 2006 mailing with a phone call to make sure it was received and was sufficient. We could have been doing a better job of continuous updating, specifically our appointment of a global environmental procurement officer in the past few months. Second, you have to deal with a problem at the source, in our case at the Global Compact. Both Morley Fund and the FT were reporting on facts provided by the NGO. Third, do all of this with speed. From the moment the story was posted on Tuesday, we were on the case with all stakeholders, from our trade media to our internal constituency, with details of our commitment to the UN Global Compact posted on Edelman.com within five hours.
I hope the above proves thought provoking and is helpful as you confront your own challenges. I would appreciate your own stories via comment on this post.
Posted by Edelman at January 17, 2008 11:28 AM
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Comments
Well at least it proves that Edelman eats its own dog food when it comes to reputation management.
Posted by: Ged Carroll at January 17, 2008 1:40 PM
Hi, It's my first time signing your blog although I've been reading it for sometime now. I just looked through your New Media Summit Agenda. I'm quite surprised that in this digital age, you haven't actually invited the one's who are truly leading this revolution: the youth.
For the panel, "Enabling the digital revolution," you have invited professors and authors - but not a single youth! A little ironic, don't you think? How could you represent a true debate without their voices?
Although I graduated college in 05 (And I studied journalism) I know I have quite a few opinions about how enabled my digital generation is. Richard, I think you should invite me and my friends to come represent the youth at that panel. I'm afraid, without our voices, you won't be presenting a balanced point of view.
What are your thoughts? I'd like to hear them.
Posted by: Jinal Shah at January 22, 2008 10:42 AM