Making a difference
Our 2016 conference brought to light some of the ways that a few companies are practically applying the Blueprint Principles and and Framework to become organisations led by a purpose that serves society.
EasyJet
Paul Moore (Communications Director) stated that; ‘Blueprint gave us the picture on the outside of the jigsaw box and all of sudden it made much more sense.’
He went on to say that trust is incredibly important to companies and is something that has to be earned. It is easy to create a great CSR report but it is very different to genuinely run a company in a sustainable way. ‘One of the appeals of Blueprint is that it absolutely does force, or encourage, you to run your business in a better way.’
VODAFONE
Matt Peacock (Group Director of Corporate Affairs) explained how Vodafone got together its top forty leaders, put the Blueprint Principles and Framework on the wall and discussed how Vodafone stood in relation to them. ‘It was a very honest and sometimes quite painful conversation.’ In parallel they carried out a gap analysis using employee and customer feedback and external stakeholder research.
This led to the introduction of a number of programmes to include their customer excellence programme, which aims to rebuild their relationships with customers, a complete overhaul of their supplier relationships, greatly improving their payment scheme, and the implementation of their Sustainable Business Framework to refocus the company on global transformational goals (women’s empowerment, youth skills and jobs, and energy and innovation).
‘We can align core commercial objectives that are very important for us as a business with material positive social impact at scale.
FLOODRE
Part of ensuring this thriving culture was to hire people who are aligned to their purpose. They talk about getting the Flood Re bug, and receive an incredible amount of discretionary effort from the teams at Flood Re: ‘My chairman brought the idea of Blueprint to me some months ago and it just resonated immediately. I was immediately very excited by it. I loved its simplicity, it’s clarity but also its depth.’
CENTRICA
‘What Blueprint did for us was to ask us some different and unusual questions about the type of energy system that people would like for the future.’
Centrica undertook a gap analysis and gathered input from stakeholders which narrowed their focus on what they actually wanted to be. They landed on customer empowerment and innovation. Centrica have taken some very real steps towards this by investing more in projects related to customer empowerment and moving away from the areas that used to be their core business, but now no longer fit with their purpose.