Benchmarking environmental performance

We undertook this project with our partners in csrnetwork ltd.

The client in the construction sector had recently demerged from its parent company and needed to bring its environmental management processes up to speed as a newly-fledged FTSE 250 PLC.We approached this project primarily by developing an internal benchmarking matrix, which scored performance on a number of dimensions (e.g. leadership and allocation of responsibility; external communication; operational control). After testing we rolled the out to all the client's UK operations. This process was repeated for five annual cycles. In the first year we did this independently; as time went on the work was increasingly undertaken by the client directly with our taking a moderating role and testing the validity of the process by a sampling methodology.

This approach proved to be very helpful in guiding the organisation's development. The matrix worked well with scores in (for instance) leadership and allocation of responsibility generally correlating well with those in (for instance) internal communication.

This meant that areas that required more attention stood out and became clear, with priorities for improvement or developmental action becoming clear and with the next step building naturally on what had already been achieved.

The process meant that we were able to have focused meetings to review progress with internal change agents and with senior subsidiary and corporate management over a five year period. There was demonstrable improvement across the group as internal change agents felt increasingly supported in their work. There were particular improvements in external communications, with managers developing much greater capacity to engage non-defensively with organisations such as campaigning NGOs (whom they would previously have avoided) and hence to plan strategically rather than just react to problems they had not foreseen. The group's capacity to recognise and respond to issues such as climate change increased. The benchmarking process led to other projects, including the project with the PFI developer also described on these pages.