STRATEGY STATEMENT
“We have consistently developed and focused our CSR strategy”
Dr. Helmut Frieden, Corporate Vice President Corporate Compliance, on success in 2010, the role of communication in CSR and the ambition to constantly do better.
Dr. Frieden, your department is in charge of global CSR activities at Symrise. How was 2010 for you personally?
Sustainability concerns not only the interests of the individual, but also those of the community – so I would prefer to answer this question for our company as a whole. It is my firm conviction that everyone at Symrise can make a contribution toward achieving sustainability, and I do mean everyone. We did much last year to raise awareness of this subject throughout the company. Of course, we made great strides in many other areas, too – including the environment, our research activities and the employee engagement survey. Our sustainability report is right on the mark again with the title “Perspectives.”
For whom is CSR most relevant today?
CSR is relevant for all Symrise stakeholders. In the past, the focus was often on customers who applied their own stringent sustainability criteria to their suppliers, such as Symrise. These days, sustainability is unthinkable without employees, investors and consumers. In fact, employees play an important dual role here: On the one hand, as a target group forming one of the pillars of the CSR strategy – this we address specifically in the area “Respecting People.” On the other hand, they actively and independently instill life into the concept of CSR within the company by launching and participating in social initiatives and environmental protection activities.
Is our perception of sustainability undergoing change?
Demand for sustainable products and processes is growing all the time. What has changed is sustainability’s range. The environment reports of just a few years ago have been replaced by the all-encompassing concept of CSR as we have come to realize the extent to which economy, ecology and society are intermeshed and the key role they play in a company’s success. That’s what we will concentrate on in the future, and thanks to the four pillars, we know where we should focus our activities. We want to further improve our performance as it relates to CSR, we want to constantly do better.
Could you break these efforts down in relation to the four pillars?
Take “Success,” for instance. Entrepreneurial success allows greater scope for sustainable processes and products – and sustainability in turn means greater success. We work consistently to develop innovative and sustainable products aimed at improving the life of the consumer and have established this as a strategic goal within our business units with our new focus on the segments health and nutrition, and care and skin protection respectively.
The subject of nature is the second pillar of your strategy …
Under “Caring for Nature,” we bring together our environmental activities and targets. These include reducing our energy and water requirements, our waste levels and our carbon dioxide emissions. Our focus is on renewable resources, on investing in backward integration, as in the cases of vanilla and citrus, and on new, sustainable technologies, as in menthol production and the new production facility in Russia. One particularly important aspect last year was the redefinition of targets: By 2020, we plan to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions, waste and waste water we produce by one-third compared with 2010.
A further pillar of your CSR strategy is “Serving Society.” How do you plan to do that?
There are plenty of overlaps here with other pillars, to be sure. If Symrise is successful – keyword “Securing Success” – it means we can create secure jobs, and that also serves society. If we protect nature, we are also serving society, just as if we develop highly effective sun blockers. This is also where our Naschgarten discovery garden project comes in, in which we focus on the societal problem of childhood obesity. But for me, the numerous local and regional initiatives around the world, where we give something back to the communities in which we work, are also a form of serving society.
How do you ensure that the CSR strategy is accepted and acted on throughout the company?
Information, transparency, participation – these are the keywords to our approach. We give high priority to CSR not only at operational level but also in our communications. CSR takes top place on our new website. On the intranet, our authors regularly post articles in the CSR section, and we have also launched a special section in our employee magazine. In addition, we set up internal forums for the communication of “smaller” projects that lack the necessary range for inclusion in the report. As you can see, CSR is not just a top-down issue; it also has bottom-up relevance.
How do you ensure the quality of sustainability at Symrise?
Wherever possible, sustainability is an integral part of our operational business processes: green chemistry has become a given, for instance. We research in sustainable areas such as white biotechnology and develop sustainable product solutions for customers and end consumers alike. And by setting up the Sustainability Board as a control body, we have established sustainability even more firmly in our corporate structure. We are also planning to create an advisory board of external experts. What’s more, we should not shrink from submitting our activities to scrutiny in the form not only of audits carried out by customers or public agencies, but also of stringent internal audits. We also subject our CSR report to critical analysis.
How did it fare?
The analysis revealed that we measure up to the market, and here I’m not talking about competition, but about achieving a certain standard because that helps to create transparency. And the results show us in a good light. Better is always the enemy of good, however ... Ambition to do even better is not something we’re short of – any more than dedicated efforts and good will. And here, too, I’m not only speaking for myself but for everyone at Symrise. Sustainability concerns us all.
