Holiday Inn 2012 Annual Report Download - page 38

36 IHG Annual Report and Financial Statements 2012
IHG employees take part in the Shelter Sprint to raise funds for the IHG
Shelter in a Storm Programme
Stakeholder engagement
Our stakeholders play a key role in helping us identify and tackle
our priorities. They include guests, corporate clients, our hotel
owners, local communities, employees, shareholders, suppliers,
academic institutions, non-government organisations, governments
and industry-specific institutions.
As a member of the International Tourism Partnership (ITP) and
the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC), we work with our
industry peers to share knowledge and resources, and together
we address issues that affect the industry as a whole.
We engage with our stakeholders through a number of channels,
including forums, meetings, individual interviews, surveys and
through our websites:
• our award-winning online Corporate Responsibility Report,
updated regularly, is available at www.ihgplc.com/responsibility;
• our ‘IHG Planet CR’ Facebook page is available at
www.facebook.com/IHGCorporateResponsibility and at the end
of 2012 had been liked by over 20,000 fans; and
• our internal intranet site is a one-stop-shop resource centre, which
keeps all of our colleagues up-to-date on our key programmes.
We also continue to build on our series of animated videos to help
raise awareness and understanding of our key programmes in a
fun and engaging way. Recently we created a new video about our
economic impacts – this reached almost one million people through
Facebook. The videos are also available on YouTube and through our
online Corporate Responsibility Report.
To make sure our hotel General Managers and their teams have the
latest information on our programmes, we launched standalone
websites for the IHG Academy and the IHG Shelter in a Storm
Programme. These provide ‘how to’ guides and other materials
for hotels to download and share with their teams.
Our engagement with shareholders is set out on page 55.
Public policy, regulation and legislation
The travel sector is one of the largest employers in the world and
being a Responsible Business means engaging with decision-makers
on policies that affect our guests, hotel owners and our other
stakeholders.
We constantly engage with policymakers in executive and legislative
branches around the world in order to advocate issues important to
IHG, our owners and our guests. We particularly concentrate on
issues relating to the operating environment for small businesses,
data privacy and intellectual property. We work in a coordinated
fashion with industry and business advocacy organisations in all
regions where we have hotels.
Our systems and CR programmes help us keep ahead of legislative
and regulatory requirements. For example, Green Engage is core
to helping hotel owners manage current regulatory performance
and prepare for anticipated regulations. In 2012 we used the
programme to comply with the requirements of the UK’s Carbon
Reduction Commitment, a mandatory carbon emissions reporting
and pricing scheme.
These and other complex regulatory matters are overseen by our
Global Sustainability Council. Our carbon strategy for managing our
footprint is through Green Engage and we discuss our approach and
actions with the IHG Owners Association to ensure our franchisees
understand and support our initiatives.
To further drive engagement of our owners, General Managers and
their teams, we introduced a suite of web-based tools to help them
engage with their elected officials on policy issues of critical
importance to the business.
Policies and Code of Ethics
Responsible Business is at the heart of everything we do. We
encourage all our employees to ‘do the right thing’ and ‘show we
care’ through living our Winning Ways as shown in the diagram on
page 30. The Group’s Code of Ethics and Business Conduct
consolidates and clarifies expected standards of behaviour and
communicates the ethical values of the Group globally. It states
clearly that IHG’s reputation is built upon the trust and confidence of
our stakeholders and is fundamental to our operations worldwide.
A confidential disclosure channel also provides employees with a
means to report any ethical concerns they may have. The Code of
Ethics and Business Conduct is applicable to all employees and is
available on the Company’s website at www.ihgplc.com/investors
under corporate governance. We also have detailed policies on the
environment, supporting our community, competition, anti-bribery
and data privacy, which are regularly communicated via eLearning
and face-to-face training modules promoting accountability and
transparency.
We participate in the ITP working group on human trafficking. We
also have our own human rights policy and in 2010, we signed up to
the UN Global Compact aligning our operations and strategies with
the 10 universal principles that include commitments to human
rights and labour standards.
External recognition
In 2012, we were:
• awarded the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA)
Gold Medal Award for Sustainability;
• awarded the Hotel Owners’ and Franchisees’ Transatlantic
and European League (HOFTEL) Owner Friendly Innovation
Award for Green Engage, an important recognition that
Green Engage is of value to our hotel owners; and
• shortlisted for the World Environment Centre Award
for Sustainability, making it to the final round with
Green Engage commended.
Business Review: Corporate Responsibility continued