Stakeholders of British American Tobacco appear to have become more willing to talk to the group since it published its first social report last year (EP4, issue 2).
The world’s second-largest tobacco company says that while it is still having difficulty engaging with government and public health interests, overall more stakeholders have been prepared to talk to the group in the period leading up to publication of its second company-wide social report.
Last year 167 interested parties were invited to take part in dialogue leading to the first corporate report, but only 34 did so. This year, 82 out of 145 took up the invitation.
‘The breadth of engagement has deepened, and that is a source of satisfaction,’ said Adrian Payne, BAT’s head of CSR. ‘It's noticeable that the second phase of dialogue has become more inclusive, and that groups which were hesitant to come on board the first time are now taking part.’
Bureau Veritas, which verified BAT’s social report, confirmed the trend. It said inclusivity ‘has improved significantly, with engagement being extended to a broader spectrum of stakeholders’.
However, there is still significant resistance in some quarters. None of the 15 public health or tobacco control groups invited took part in dialogue organized by the Institute of Business Ethics and the pollster MORI, while only three of 17 political organizations and eight out of 16 non-governmental organizations attended.
BAT says it has most trouble speaking to such groups in the UK, where the parent company is headquartered. ‘By contrast, in Russia we spoke to almost all tobacco control advocates, and in Australia, Germany and Hungary a number of them were involved in dialogue,’ said Payne.
Apart from its main report, which is on the web, BAT has issued social reports in 24 countries compared with 14 last year. It hopes to publish around 30 in 2004.
The cost of the group’s social reporting work this year was £3million ($4.8m), including £430,000 for assurance work by Bureau Veritas. The group turned over £25billion last year and made pre-tax profits of £2.1bn.
BAT has also drawn up a statement of business principles that has been sent to all general managers worldwide.
The 18 principles include commitments to ‘add value to the communities in which we operate’, to provide ‘accurate, clear, health messages about the risks of tobacco consumption’, and to market brands responsibly to adult consumers only.
Bureau Veritas says that having developed the statement, BAT ‘now needs to focus on the development of appropriate indicators to enable performance against the principles to be measured’.
BAT has said it will consider a UK government demand that it should withdraw from Burma (Myanmar) because of the country’s poor human rights record. ‘We haven’t made up our minds yet, but we will get back to them sooner rather than later,’ it said. The demand was made by UK Foreign Office minister Mike O’Brien.