THE BUSINESS OF SUSTAINABILITY

Sreelatha Menon / New Delhi, January 4, 2009
Business Standard

British Telecom's sustainability index aims to rank Indian companies according to their corporate social responsibility initiatives.

When companies are asking themselves how sustainable all the noise they made on sustainability was, and the tinkle of corporate social responsibility (CSR) announcements is getting less and less audible amidst the growing economic gloom, British Telecom (BT) has come out with a sustainability index for Indian companies.

But this one, unlike other standards to measure the sustainability of companies, tracks the popularity of companies based on their real or perceived good work on social, economic and environmental fronts.

BT recently came out with a list of companies that fared well on the index, which is a survey of 215 experts and 1,600-odd employees of top IT companies.

In other words, it is an opinion poll. It should be heartening for companies to see the impact of the money they spent on public relations to spread the word about their CSR packages as well as their various sustainability awards. So is it another such CSR road show?

The first BT survey has rewarded points to 11 companies for topping the charts.

BT says it came out with this index as it wanted to create an atmosphere for businesses based on sustainability and more so because it wanted to expand its work in India.

Sustainability has to make business sense, says its global CSR head Janet Blake, candidly adding that it intends to do business in a big way in India in these areas. This is about taking CSR to level 2.0.

We want to be thought leaders and our way to do business is by creating a market for sustainabile business and then by introducing green products and services, says Blake, pointing out the green business projects it has in Britain and in the rest of Europe.

For instance, it helps offices in making employees work from home, with BT itself leading the trend in England nearly a decade ago by asking 10,000 workers to operate from home.