Corporate Social Responsibility
Social and Sustainability Audits
Although auditing often gets a bad name in companies and organisations because of its common connection with policing and regulating it can, if approached positively, be an important management tool in the performance improvement process. Carrying out inspections, checks, interviews and reviews can be an effective way of maintaining performance and benchmarking against industry codes of practice and international standards.
Natural Capital has considerable experience in undertaking audits of all kinds including, environmental, social and sustainability audits and appraisals. We can quickly identify gaps and suggest realistic actions to improve performance in all three areas. This can help to pinpoint areas of attention and improvements to current systems and reporting.
Services
Services include:
- management system audits (for ISO 14001, EMAS)
- internal audits
- supplier audits
- social audits (ASA 1000)
- Benchmarking against:
- FTSE4Good
- Dow Jones Sustainability Index
- GRI Standards
CSR Reporting
CSR is fast becoming a prerequisite for all organisations large or small. Many organisations don't fully understand the concept and feel intimidated by it.
Services
Natural Capital can provide a full support service to help your organisation by providing the following:
- Identify what your organisation is already doing
- Provide opportunities to become more socially responsible (Natural Capital is involved in a number of community projects which can provide opportunities for improving CSR efforts).
- Engage your stakeholders
- Provide CSR training
- Draft CSR reports for your organization
Stakeholder Engagement and Workshops
Engaging stakeholders requires more than just providing annual performance reports.
Services
Natural Capital is one of very few consultancies that offer an additional service which gives genuine results and is an improvement to the traditional method of communicating with stakeholders.
- Stakeholder Workshops: By holding workshops with different stakeholders of an organisation we can communicate directly with those that matter. Helping you to understand what stakeholders think, using this information to help shape policy and strategy thus allowing you to determine a sustainable future for your organisation.
Key Projects
- Natural Capital has undertaken several research projects for Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) (Researching SNH’s role in the EIA process and their interaction with developers) which have involved extensive consultation with those that have a stake in the outcome of the work. The consultation has been used to feedback into re-shaping policy.
- In developing guidance for assisting public bodies in delivering their biodiversity duty (for the Scottish Executive) Natural Capital held early stakeholder workshops in order to help shape the guidance and make sure that it would meet end user requirements.
- In assisting the Upper Deeside Access Trust in developing a business strategy and reviewing its options for future development Natural Capital ran a series of stakeholder workshops in order to gather essential feedback for strategy development.
CSR Training and Capacity Building
With many years experience of training in both the public and private sectors and at all levels in the organisation (general staff to Board Directors) we have developed a flexible range of training modules that address all aspects of the CSR agenda. Courses include:
- General awareness raising and overview of global and regulatory drivers
- Stakeholder engagement - approaches and techniques
- Key social, ethical and environmental issues
- Policies, practices and procedures
- CSR auditing and reporting