Our stakeholder dialogue

“Through a high level of engagement, we continue to respond to our stakeholders’ needs with encouragement and support”

Throughout 2010/11 we have continued to engage with stakeholders, valuing the importance of stakeholder support and feedback in shaping our activities.  We pride ourselves in our high level of disclosure and transparency to communicate our progress in corporate social responsibility.

Our Group 2010/11 Annual Results press conference was attended by over 70 media correspondents from over ten countries.  In addition, we communicate our progress through a comprehensive Annual Report which includes full consolidated financial statements, as well as providing regular media updates on key matters of interest.

Dialogue with our stakeholders takes place at the Group, Division, business or local level as appropriate.  For example, during the year, stakeholders requested more detailed information on topics such as supplier verification (discussed in further detail in the ‘Marketplace’ section) and methods of reducing CO₂ emissions, as well as information at a local level on subjects such as the Forestry Stewardship.  We also received feedback through our Group website that stakeholders would like to be able to download a version of our full report, and as a result, this will be available from early October.

We continue to communicate and meet with many of our stakeholders through the variety of events and speaker opportunities we attend throughout the year.  For example, Ornella Barra, Chairman of the social responsibilities committee, in her capacity as an honorary professor at The University of Nottingham’s School of Pharmacy, in November 2010, delivered a lecture to pharmacy students on the main issues the healthcare sector is facing, the evolution of pharmacy and the increasingly important role of pharmacists in today’s society.

In the UK, Alliance Boots also participated in the Business in the Community (BITC) Responsible Business Convention in March 2011.  Ornella Barra presented on ‘Embracing CSR across international boundaries', George Fairweather, Group Finance Director, presented on the process for collecting CSR data and Alex Gourlay, Chief Executive of the Health & Beauty Division hosted a breakout session on health and wellbeing.  Our Director of Corporate Social Responsibility, Richard Ellis, has a regular dialogue with key CSR related organisations.  In addition, our Healthcare Public Affairs Director has regular interaction with industry and governmental bodies on key issues relating to pharmacy and healthcare services.  In particular, we work closely with governments to understand their changing requirements so we are better able to meet their needs, for example, our programmes to address smoking cessation and weight management.

Similarly, we listen to our retail customers; Boots UK continues each week to analyse over 25,000 customer responses to in-store marketing surveys to better understand customers’ evolving needs.  In our Pharmaceutical Wholesale Division, we engage regularly with our Alphega Pharmacy customers and hold an annual conference for approximately 700 Alphega pharmacy members.

Our stakeholders were also vocal about the qualities they wanted to see displayed by Alliance Boots and the vital role of corporate social responsibility activities in building the trust which is central to our Group.  These included:

We believe our corporate social responsibility approach continues to meet these expectations.  This is based on a consistent framework which is capable of accommodating varying levels of achievement across our business activities and takes account of different social, environmental and economic priorities in the countries in which we operate.

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