Sustainability and CSR

Tim Roberts and Robert Nuttall present on sustainability and corporate social responsibilty.
 
This session will be a review whether involving employees and other stakeholders in sustainability drives might be the new way of engaging people in corporate and/or public activities.  Are people fed up with current financial, economic and productivity measures?  Do they believe that the vision of our leaders needs to shift towards being smarter about the use of resources?  Do people still trust our severely-weakened, capitalist system; are they looking for more thought, honesty and empathy?

Or, given turbulent and declining global markets, are we just looking for security and value-for-money?  Debate: ‘sustainability was just a luxury fad’.  If true, will organisations who reverse their CSR policies simply demonstrate how short-term, shallow, dishonest they were all along?

I believe the real question is: ‘can sustainability deliver both economic and environmental gains which turn people on to a sustainable partnership with commerce and Government?’.  I believe it can – it’s vital, common sense – and will prove that there are tangible, long-term gains for all.
 
Robert will speak on his personal experience with devising and implementing M&S’s eco plan ‘Plan A’.
 
 
 
Robert Nuttall is currently managing partner at Clownfish, a sustainability and communications consultancy dedicated to making sustainability tangible for business
Prior to this, he was Head of Internal Communications at Marks & Spencer where he played a key role in devising and implementing the internal and external brand and communications strategy for 'Plan A', M&S's 5 year, £200m, 100 point eco-plan.
 
With over 20 years’ experience in senior communications and change roles, Robert has also worked for GSK, Cable & Wireless, the BBC and Citigroup.

Robert holds an MBA from the Cranfield School of Management and is a Fellow of the RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce).
 
Tim Roberts was one of the first members of Friends of the Earth and then corporate ecologists in the UK.  In fact, it was so early that it just wasn’t a fashionable (or financially rewarding) career and it was simpler to say he was a glorified dustman at posh dinner parties.  Nevertheless, he persevered for 8 years.  He headed up some of the most important initiatives across Europe on recycling and energy recovery from wastes which evolved into the legislation that continues to protect us today.  He also caused a major rethink of nuclear waste storage and disposal, a policy the Government will now implement 24 years too late – or is it 54?  He had to travel to work and worked internationally on some of the first true environmental impact analyses, not least the development of the oil cities of Jubail and Janbu in Saudi Arabia and the new airport for Hong Kong (Chek Lap Kok).

He entered internal communication in 1985 and has now worked on projects for over 40% of the FTSE-100 and all of the civil service.  His work has included privatisations, corporate restructuring and recovery plus all aspects of people management.  He created the case law on TUPE and has worked with the UK Government on public wealth education programmes.

He has now combined his environmental and communication expertise to help organisations achieve sustainable improvement.  He read Ecology at London University a long time ago - Abigail thought it was something to do with Mrs Beaton.  He has been passionate about the environment since the age of 16.

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