Barclays 2011 Annual Report Download - page 20

Citizenship
18 Barclays PLC Annual Report 2011 www.barclays.com/annualreport
At Barclays, we have a clear sense of our business
purpose: to help individuals, businesses and
economies progress and grow. For us, the term
Citizenship captures this purpose and directs
how we use our resources and expertise to create
long term value for all our stakeholders.
Banks need to become better citizens.
This is not about philanthropy – it’s about
delivering real commercial benefits in a way
that also creates value for society.
Bob Diamond
Chief Executive
Citizenship is one of Barclays four execution priorities and is integral
to our business.
In the first instance, Citizenship is about contributing to growth in the
real economy, creating jobs and supporting sustainable growth. Second,
it is about the way we do business: putting our customers’ interests at
the heart of what we do, and managing our impact responsibly. Third,
it is about supporting our communities through investment programmes
and the direct efforts of our employees.
Our approach
Throughout the year, we engaged with a diverse set of stakeholders
to understand the challenges they face and how we can best help.
Stakeholders play a pivotal role in helping us determine how we prioritise
the issues we need to address. This involves listening to our customers
and clients, our shareholders and employees, while working in
collaboration with charities and governments.
We made firm progress in 2011 but still have a long way to go. That’s
why in 2012 we will launch a Citizenship Plan outlining our longer term
commitments to 2015. These objectives will be aligned to rigorous
planning and reporting processes to drive delivery of this agenda,
including responsibilities as corporate taxpayers. In this respect, we note
HMRC’s reaction to a transaction that we voluntarily disclosed to them
and recognise that we need to anticipate better its changing approach
to the taxation of corporates.
Board Citizenship Committee
In 2011, we strengthened our governance framework by creating a
Board Citizenship Committee as a formal sub-committee of our Board
of Directors. The committee is chaired by Group Chairman Marcus Agius
and includes two non-executive Directors.
Progress against our priorities is reviewed regularly and will be formally
assessed at least twice yearly by the Board Citizenship Committee and
the Executive Committee. A range of management committees are
responsible for specific aspects of Citizenship performance.
Citizenship reporting
We have included here a summary of our progress. We will publish
a comprehensive analysis in our Citizenship Report.
We measure and monitor progress across a wider range of issues
in our annual Citizenship Report. The Report contains an extensive
amount of information on our strategy, impacts, and performance
and is independently assured using a robust reporting framework.
Read the online Report from 23 April 2012 to access full 2011 data.
For more information, please see barclays.com/citizenship