Somewhere at the end of 2006, it became apparent that due to an illness Casper van Zijl, former head of CSR at Ahold, was not coming back soon to drive Corporate Social Responsibility as he used to do. It was at that time that I decided that it might be best if I combine several jobs at the same time. So next to being the Program Director of the Ahold Sustainable Business Development program, Program Manager for Sustainable Trade and the manager sustainability for European sourcing, I also got responsibility for driving CSR.
Casper left big shoes to fill but we got right down to work taking up where he left off. In January of last year we held our CSR Coordinating Meeting in Amsterdam. It was there that we decided that, based on the major trends and issues in the world today, that we would focus our CSR strategy on four themes: Healthy Living, Sustainable Trade, Climate Action and Community Engagement. I am not going to elaborate here on what those four pillars mean, because you can read plenty about that in other sections of this website.
My major objective was to see CSR adopted as a logical extension of our business strategy. It’s clear to us that it makes good business sense to promote the health of our customers by making it easy to choose healthy products in our stores. Building sustainable partnerships with our suppliers in other parts of the world safeguards our future supplies. We can reduce costs at the same time that we are reducing greenhouse gas emissions. And by engaging in the communities around us, we build strong relationships with customers.
So we started out on that journey.
A big part of this was gaining consensus on what it is we needed to focus on. For example, we have taken a lot of time to find out what the differences are in the perceptions of our stakeholders on both continents and what we can do to make CSR an integrated part of our operations.
Over the last few weeks we have been very busy with completing the 2007 CSR report. It’s been a lot of work and I am proud of the result. Because we wanted to publish this report along the Global Reporting Initiative guidelines, we devoted lots of energy to identifying the right data to adhere to those guidelines. But the work didn’t stop there. We are already looking ahead what we can do to improve our performance and the next report.
We want to publish data that are relevant for our stakeholders and to our business, where we can measure and set targets. Working on the 2007 report gave us a million ideas about what we can do better for the 2008 report. So as of October 2007, we established a Task Force focused on creating the framework for 2008. I expect we can make another big step in CSR reporting for the report over 2008 that will be published in 2009.
Meanwhile, now I dedicate my time at Ahold exclusively to CSR. As of December of last year it was decided that that was the next thing for me – my next challenge. So, now I am in Ghana transferring my responsibilities to my successor. Ha! I love it: 30 degrees, high humidity and lots of people that like to laugh. Tomorrow I will fly to South Africa to also make sure we extend our programs there. Yep, I am experiencing some sadness about leaving, but I also full of enthusiasm for the job ahead!