Our CSR framework

Our community

Wherever we do business, our priority is to contribute positively to the communities that we serve.
Community health is at the centre of this activity. Through our network of pharmacies and the independent pharmacies we supply, we can reach millions of people in many countries.

Being a good neighbour means encouraging employees to share their expertise to help people lead healthier lifestyles. This is why we provide employees with opportunities to devote their time, energy and talent to supporting causes that matter through volunteering.

Our marketplace

Wherever we work, our values come alive and underpin our mission to make Alliance Boots the world’s leading pharmacy-led health and beauty group. We are responsible for bringing these values to life for our customers and partners, every day, wherever we operate.

Our environment

At Alliance Boots, we are determined to be a leader and an example to others in addressing the threat of climate change.

We pursue many practical activities which contribute to the overall reduction of our carbon footprint.

Our workplace

For a group that is all about helping people look and feel their best, it is second nature to make the health and wellbeing of our own employees a very high priority. It is one of the main reasons why so many are proud to work for Alliance Boots and eager to play their part in building a sustainable group.

We continue to support our people through training and development so that they can successfully meet the challenges of our industry.

Every year, after consultation with our stakeholders, we review the Group’s priorities in each of these four areas and, where appropriate, set new revised priorities within which targets can be set for the year ahead.

For example in 2010/11, our priorities focused on community healthcare (community); carbon management (environment); product sustainability (marketplace); and healthy workplaces (workplace).

All the principal businesses in the Group, other than those that have recently joined the Group, have their own scorecard based on these four key areas and, with the Group’s priorities in mind, set their own programmes and targets as appropriate.

Each principal business has a corporate social responsibility ‘action group’, with a ‘champion’ who has overall responsibility for the day to day running of our corporate social responsibility agenda, and for delivering against locally set targets. Guidance and additional expertise are available if required from a member of our corporate social responsibility team within the Group.

Each principal business follows the same processes when managing its CSR agenda. Stakeholder engagement establishes the agenda and targets to be pursued, which varies from country to country. Therefore, it is necessary to have a support structure which helps each principal business to develop and take ownership of a corporate social responsibility agenda that is appropriate to local circumstances, while remaining within the Alliance Boots framework.

For each element of corporate social responsibility activity there is a senior manager who accepts ultimate responsibility for the delivery of the activity and an owner who is responsible for day to day involvement.

Progress against each set of objectives is assessed and graded using a traffic light system of colours; green if everything is progressing to schedule, amber if there are some potential challenges and red if there are delays. For those rated red, the senior manager responsible will detail what actions are being taken to bring the programme back into line. These priorities are further divided into areas of focus and are apportioned around a ‘wheel’ which is submitted to Alliance Boots social responsibilities committee for review. An example is below:

Alliance Healthcare España has made strong progress across its CSR agenda this year, publishing a revised CSR policy to include principles and targets.
Specific initiatives include developing the project “Pills for other people’s pain” with Medicos Sin Fronteras as well as increasing awareness across the business of how employees can be more involved in Alliance Healthcare España’s CSR efforts.

In the ‘Workplace’ area Alliance Healthcare España initiated an external audit of its health and safety service to make a number of improvements. In the year, the business reported a reduction of 26% of work-related accidents compared with last year.

Alliance Healthcare (Distribution) in the UK continued to make strong progress across its CSR agenda this year. The team developed a change programme called ‘Shaping Our Future’ to give employees a voice through forums, annual engagement surveys and survey facilitator teams.

The team continues to undertake significant work to ensure that its business practices are socially responsible and environmentally sustainable and as part of this, the business launched a new head office recycling scheme. In December 2010, all desk bins were removed and replaced with six recycling points across the head office. By implementing the scheme, the number of bins has reduced from 416, which used to require over 8,000 bin liners every month.

In addition, in response to the business’ desire to continue to reduce its carbon footprint, the UK team held a ‘sustainable travel day’ to educate people how to drive their cars more economically to save on fuel and carbon emissions using an eco-driving simulator.

We have a Group-wide approach to recording, measuring and reporting on our corporate social responsibility performance. We have a defined set of reporting criteria (as defined in our Reporting Guidelines) and a set of corporate social responsibility measures and performance indicators that are applicable across the Group. The corporate social responsibility data captured is used to inform and assist in the development of each business’ own corporate social responsibility programme. The data for the year ended 31 March 2011 presented within this report includes all subsidiaries of the Group at 31 March 2011 that were also subsidiaries at 31 March 2010.

During the year the size and scope of the Group changed as a result of the acquisition of controlling interests in Hedef Alliance (with operations in Turkey and Egypt) and in Andreae-Noris Zahn AG (“ANZAG”) (with operations in Germany, Romania and Lithuania). Further, we divested 51% of our Italian businesses to our ultimate parent company and as a result our Italian businesses are now treated as associates.

For comparability these acquisitions and divestments are excluded from prior and current year data. We have however disclosed the number of reportable accidents recorded in our new businesses for the twelve months to 31 March 2011. In addition to the adjustments to exclude the Italian discontinued operations, further adjustments have been made to the prior year data to reflect enhancements made to the process of collecting data across the Group and changes to data sources.

This year, for the first time, our report includes an independent assurance report on our 2010/11 CSR data issued by KPMG and independent commentary by Tomorrow’s Company.

We continue to participate in the Business in the Community Corporate Responsibility Index and improved our performance against the prior year achieving a CR index performance score of 96% and achieving ‘Platinum Band’ performance. We also scored 95% in the Environment index performance assessment carried out for the year ended 2010/11. We continue to be proud of our record in the Corporate Responsibility Index which is a pre-eminent public measure of corporate social responsibility and sustainability engagement in the UK.