Reaching Our Stakeholders

As anyone who has ever produced corporate reports knows, the hardest part of the process is getting people to read them. At Seventh Generation, our slight report readership has always bothered us. We think the detailed story of how we grow as a company, stumbles and all, is an important one that is well worth sharing. For our 2007 report, we successfully boosted our report readers and their level of engagement in two creative ways — by offering money and by collaborating with the social media platform Justmeans.com

2007 $5,000 Contest: We asked businesses, organizations and individuals to tell us how they would put an idea from our 2007 report that inspired them into practice to create positive change. It wasn’t just the commitment and creativity of the majority of the responses that delighted us, it was the web-based discussions that occurred, spurred by the ideas in our report.

A cross-functional panel of Seventh Generation employees reviewed the 108 entries and selected YouthBank as the winner of the $5,000 grant to help carry out its mission. YouthBank is a small business incubator program designed to connect street youth in the urban developing world with the skills, mentors, and resources they need to launch their own community businesses and pull themselves out of poverty. Learn more here: go/youthbank.

Justmeans: Not only did we collaborate with Justmeans to spread the word about our report and our contest, but we are also a founding member of this community that ignites better business. “The site marshals the power of the internet to create opportunities for engagement on corporate social responsibility and sustainability,” notes CEO Martin Smith. “A strong presence on Justmeans allows Seventh Generation to create an expanded online community that is continually reporting on various sustainability and corporate responsibility initiatives. There’s a lot of technology on the site that can enable one-to-one and many-to-many conversations. Companies can foster engagement through microblogging, job postings, events, press releases, company profiles and other forums. This allows consumers and other stakeholders to share their stories about Seventh Generation and to shape the brand. We expect to have 250,000 registered users by the end of 2009.” Seventh Generation and Justmeans will be prototyping new approaches for creating dialogue relating to this report and the CSR reporting community.

Ceres and Stakeholder Consultation

We strongly support Ceres’ efforts to foster meaningful dialogue about corporate responsibility and the integration of sustainability into capital markets, and we endorse the Ceres principles. We value the unique forum Ceres provides for constructive exchanges between corporations, activists, and socially responsible investors. Visit www.ceres.org to learn more.

Our annual reporting process benefited greatly from two stakeholder reviews convened by Ceres. A review session in early 2009 focused on our 2007 Spheres of Influence Report and provided valuable insights for our 2008 efforts. Another review team evaluated this year’s report, in a session on May 5, 2009. The eight stakeholders who participated represented other companies, nonprofits, Ceres and one of our own manufacturing partners. As a further level of review, an internal cross-disciplinary team evaluated the document. These comments and the feedback received through JustMeans challenged us to review our work in 2008 as critically as possible and to find new ways to articulate what it means to be a values-driven company.

Reviewer Comments:

Positives: Reviewers were impressed by the report’s engaging tone, interactive web platform, and by the way that the company’s commitment to sustainability has clearly been integrated into its DNA. They liked the frank discussion in the Jeffrey Hollender’s letter, the acknowledgement of the economic crisis, the inclusion of challenging voices and the strong commitment to transparency. Sections that were particularly impressive concerned the label reading guide and the strategy behind product design.

Suggestions included:

• KPI table and goals: appreciated inclusion of three year data; would like to see more mid and long-term goals; some added in GRI Table; more could be added next year when current goal-setting effort is complete advocacy on public policy: more detail needed on company’s efforts to effect policy change; added “Influencing Climate Change” section
• Sustainability Summit: reviewers were very impressed with this section but wanted more details on what was covered and on the design of the planned supplier extranet; summit details added but extranet design is not ready yet
• Sourcing: better explanation needed of transition from traceability work last year to controlled sourcing approach; explanation added
• Decentralized transport network: impressive section; readers suggested cost/benefit analysis to demonstrate ROI; unable to perform this analysis due to data and time limitations
• Diversity: readers wanted more details on the company’s diversity plan; details will be added next year when the plan is more fully developed