John Lewis Partnership plc annual report and accounts 2013

Business review Resources and relationships (continued)

embed CSR into our everyday business practices.

Overall responsibility for CSR continues to rest with the Director of Personnel. Operational management responsibility for CSR is delegated to the Managing Directors, who are supported by individual members of their divisional management boards.

In order to decide where to focus our efforts we assess and prioritise CSR risks, opportunities and insight by engaging with a wide range of stakeholders. This process enables us to increase our responsiveness to stakeholder concerns, find new ways to reduce our impacts and maximise opportunities, balance business efficiency with economic success and, ultimately, continue to make the Partnership more competitive, profitable and sustainable. Our CSR departments retain responsibility for identifying and prioritising CSR risks and opportunities and ensuring that appropriate controls are in place to manage these.

Our governance process informs the divisions of Corporate policy and maintains an oversight of the policy implementation, whilst allowing the divisions discretion to the extent that they require operational freedom.

Our two trading divisions use ‘The Waitrose way’ and John Lewis’ ‘Bringing Quality to Life’ to share their CSR strategy and commitments with Partners, customers, suppliers, and other key audiences. They allow them to message their distinct and specific CSR propositions and activities while delivering the Partnership’s overarching CSR commitments.

‘The Waitrose way’ is:

• Championing British – We believe in always bringing people home-grown food and produce at its very best, celebrating the British food season and working with the best local and regional suppliers;

• Treading Lightly – We believe in making the right choices for the environment by reducing packaging, waste, water and CO2 emissions, and sourcing our food and raw materials responsibly. At Waitrose, product stewardship and maintaining the highest levels of agricultural and environmental management are our key focus at home and abroad. We look closely at our operational impact on the environment

and ask all own-label suppliers to reduce their business footprint too;

• Treating people fairly – We believe in treating our customers, Partners, farmers and suppliers fairly as well as supporting local charities and community groups through our Community Matters and Partner volunteering schemes; and

• Living well – We believe that eating well should be enjoyable. We provide a wide range of imaginative and nutritious choices to inspire people to eat more healthily and are ahead of targets for salt reduction.

John Lewis ‘Bringing Quality to Life’ is:

• A better way of doing business – Bringing quality to life through a better way of doing business, from our unique Partnership structure to our commitment to reducing our impact on the environment;

• Encouraging sustainable living – Bringing quality to life through the products and services we sell by ensuring they are responsibly made and by helping customers choose and use them in ways that are more sustainable; and

• Engaging with our communities – Bringing quality to life through the communities we touch, whether local to our shops, or to our suppliers throughout the world.

Performance We measure the Partnership’s performance and therefore our effectiveness in managing CSR through: strategic development; monitoring programme implementation and performance improvement; and external perception and benchmarking. Internal Audit and external authorities have been used to provide independent assurance on our performance.

We remain committed to openly communicating our CSR activity, achievements and challenges. Detailed information is included within our Sustainability Report which can be found on the Partnership website, www.johnlewispartnership.co.uk/sustainabilityreport.

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