CSR Strategy 2.0

The great opportunity offered by CSR initiatives is to develop new engines to drive business growth, thereby contributing to increased revenues and reduced costs, including risk minimisation, while also impacting positively on customer satisfaction and delivering improvements to the labour market environment.

Some of the axes that underpin the CSR Strategy 2.0 are the following:

Processes for verification and improvement of the Corporate Responsibility Report convert this report into a management tool as opposed to a simple communication device, fully leveraging recommendations for improvement offered by auditors, and, above all, making this report a real scorecard revealing the evolution of economic, social and environmental behaviour.

The creation of a network of national and multinational institutions to jointly finance projects that foster inclusion and social cohesion means that projects that would not be profitable in themselves in the early stages can nevertheless be implemented by business units in collaboration with multilateral institutional funds; such projects, which would never be green-lighted otherwise, can become a source of new income.

A new organisational culture based on leveraging the Group's code of conduct and its business principles, involves, in practice, developing internal regulations that breathe life into the code of conduct principles.  

A new way of managing “dialogue with stakeholders”, that is not so much based on giving and receiving information or suggestions, but rather, on seeking formulas for joint creation to launch joint businesses. Working in this way involves establishing partnerships that are financially beneficial for all parties.

Above all, the CSR Strategy 2.0 demands the identification of new sources of revenue that impact positively on social development, new ways of cutting costs and an understanding of how responsible behaviour impacts on margins and on customer satisfaction. Examples of new sources of revenue are all ICT solutions that promote increased productivity, those which support the e-health industry, those related to energy efficiency and climate change, solutions aimed at integrating the elderly or disabled people in society, or those aimed at promoting education.

Examples of cost reduction measures include the following: all energy saving and energy efficiency measures, the acquisition of efficient equipment, the use of efficient equipment, reducing printouts, replacing paper mail with e-mails, sensible consumption of water. Potential savings derived from risk management should also be included.