JKH releases Sustainability Report 2010/11

The John Keells Holding’s Sustainability Report 2010/2011 which was released on 30 May 2011 sums up the Group’s commitment to sustainability integration across its businesses.

Sustainability has carved its own niche in the bigger picture of the business world, and stakeholders – be it investors, customers, suppliers or employees – are now increasingly becoming aware of the importance of seamless integration of sustainability into all aspects of business.

The John Keells Group fully appreciates its significance, and thereby has embraced sustainability as being intrinsically interwoven with what it does and hence is in the DNA of its business processes.

Last year, the Group committed itself to upholding and integrating sustainability into the value chain of all its sectors, focusing not just on its financials, but also on its economic, environmental and social performance.

This year, its sustainability process has been taken one step further, by decentralising the process to all its business units in order to align the Group’s strategic and operational objectives.

The main focus of this process was to integrate the objectives of sustainability with those of the businesses and ensure they are practised across the Group.

A key change brought about was that the sustainability goals and targets deliverable were determined by the individual business units, thereby facilitating their integration not only as an operational guideline but also as performance targets for each business.

The Group’s Sustainability Report this year, similar to last year, was compiled at a GRI disclosure Level B(+), and has achieved a GRI Application Level Check; it has also been assured by a third party.

The Group’s decentralised sustainability process has been a very insightful and extremely advantageous exercise as it has made the businesses look very closely at its operations and understand their impacts. This continuous sustainability process has now become entrenched across the Group’s business units and has formed an integral part of its business practices in the review of all its operations and stakeholder touch points.

The benefits of the Group’s sustainability integration – tangible and intangible – can now be felt across the Group. This progressive approach will ensure that sustainability at the John Keells Group is, indeed, here to stay.