Newsletter January 2017 WINTER EDITION
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NEWSLETTER JANUARY 2017 WINTER EDITION MIKE BARRY – Welcome DIRECTOR OF PLAN A It’s the end of another very busy year for M&S and our customers. 2016 was a year of change across the globe and marketplace diversification continues at pace. At M&S, we have been focusing on looking at what our customers want and how we can engage them more in Plan A. So what do our customers want from us? Well we’re on the And of course our customers will never stop expecting us right journey via our core purpose of Making Every Moment to anticipate new social and environmental issues (such as Special, through our products and our service. But MEMS human rights, transparency, the circular economy, food waste is also all about what we’ve done with Spark Something etc) well before they become mainstream concerns. Good this year. From Edinburgh to Bradford; Newcastle to So as we approach the 10th anniversary of launching Plan A Exeter we’ve been improving the communities where our we can be proud of what we’ve achieved (£180m savings pa, customers live. 230 awards won etc). But we should also be clear that there The same with our employability programme “Marks and is so much more still to be done if we are to become a truly Start”, where we’ve kept on going from strength to strength sustainable retailer, one that in everything it does and helping 1000s of people facing barriers to work to get the everything it sells creates better outcomes for our skills and confidence they need to get that most precious customers, their families, their communities and the of things, a good job. planet we all share. They’ve loved our work with Macmillan and Breast Cancer So here’s our commitment for 2017, let’s work together Now too. Helping them make a difference on an issue, cancer, to make Plan A bigger, bolder and more relevant to our that blights too many of our customers and colleagues’ lives. customers and in doing so help M&S win too. And our Sparks Card is rewarding a charity of their choice every time they shop with us. We’ve come a long way in 2016 to better engage our customers with our Plan A story but we know we have to be so much better in 2017. 1 PLAN A NEWSLETTER DECEMBER 2016 WINTER EDITION http://corporate.marksandspencer.com/plan-a Halting deforestation Wood is at the heart of our business; we need timber and wood fibre to build, furnish and run our stores and to make our products and packaging. Traded commodities like palm oil and soy are hugely valuable not only for M&S products, but for the role they play in lifting communities from poverty and, when well managed, for their productive use of agricultural land. Halting deforestation was always going to be tough; we knew But sustainability schemes are not the whole answer. that. M&S has been working to remove deforestation from our We’re seeing bold commitments from national and provincial supply chains for 10 years and we’ve learned a lot in that time. governments inspired by market based Produce-Protect Most of all we’ve learned that single supply chain efforts will commitments. M&S and WWF recently ran a workshop on never achieve sufficient impact or scale to halt land use landscape approaches to create a forum for supply chain change, and even huge industry wide collaborative efforts like companies, government, academics, NGOs and industry the Consumer Goods Forum Deforestation Resolution need bodies to learn about new developments to protect natural to be accompanied by broader international strategies. landscapes, and to share thoughts on challenges and As the recent Forest 500 Report highlighted; ‘the leaders opportunities. We need all actors in the supply chain to put continue to lead and the laggards to lag’. It was wonderful to their shoulder to the wheel and support these burgeoning see M&S one of only 5 companies in the top tier, and to see governmental programmes. this replicated with M&S leadership rating for all commodities Transparency is fundamental as an agent of change. in the CDP Forest Disclosure report, but being at the front Companies must disclose their policies and progress on has made us acutely aware that much more needs to be done implementation. Transparency allows companies to be held to protect forests from conversion to commodities like palm to account as well as helping us understand what works, oil, soy and cattle. We need co-ordinated action on a scale what doesn’t and why. While traceability is critical at some never seen before, and M&S is working with others to develop levels for some actors, it can be argued that we can achieve strategies to promote the sustainable agriculture and more by focusing more on understanding what information livelihood improvement programmes that need to sit is needed by who, and less on expecting everyone to know alongside conservation actions. everything and equating knowledge with action. M&S is So the M&S view on business and global priorities putting this into action through our initiation and leadership to protect forests? of pre-competitive programmes to protect forests in palm There’s a need to take a fresh but critical look at what can oil and forest fibres used in textiles. be achieved by the technical schemes we rely on to ensure So the public and private sectors have roles to play, as do they adapt and evolve to meet new challenges. academics and NGOs. The real challenge is how do we work Fiona Wheatley, our Sustainable Raw Materials Manager, in partnership towards a shared goal. At M&S we’re committed recently attended the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil to creating and catalysing alliances to achieve more than the conference and General Assembly in Bangkok. RSPO is the sum of their parts, with a clear focus on healthy landscapes strongest of all the single commodity certification schemes and productive livelihoods. with 17% of all palm oil being RSPO certified. But certification volumes have plateaued and change is needed for RSPO to (Notes: Emerging economies, such as India and China alongside producing extend its reach beyond this level. Fiona sits on the Board of countries like Indonesia and Brazil, need to be more engaged in tackling sustainability and deforestation issues. There needs to be public recognition of our RSPO and there is recognition that we need a new approach collective dependency on viable ecosystems and productive agriculture. Private organisations: finance; supply chain; market facing, should advocate for more to meet RSPO’s objective of ‘transforming mainstream palm ambitious national policies to protect forests and other vulnerable ecosystems. This can help governments understand how critical good regulation is for oil production’. commercial success as well as for social development and climate stability.) 2 PLAN A NEWSLETTER DECEMBER 2016 WINTER EDITION http://corporate.marksandspencer.com/plan-a DataDive 2016 Using M&S skills for good What do you get when you put 40 analysts, The Welcome Centre is a food bank in Huddersfield and South Kirklees that supports people experiencing crisis three charities and a coffee cart in a room for through practical help. They wanted to understand their two days? Data science for social good! clients better and identify those who would benefit from additional support, advice and referral to other services. For the third year running, Marks & Spencer partnered with In particular, the Welcome Centre wanted to know who is DataKind UK to run a DataDive, a two-day event at which pro most likely to become a repeat user of the food bank, as bono data analysts volunteer for charities. DataKind UK those individuals tend to need extra support. brings together groups of volunteer data scientists to work with selected charities. They believe that the same data The all-star centre of pro bono analysts got to work and were science tools and techniques revolutionising many private able to find factors that predicted how likely it was that sector companies can be applied to some of society’s someone would need extra support. The Welcome Centre is toughest challenges. looking to develop the model further so they can identify who needs support earlier, what future demand for the For DataDive 2016, we had a very interesting mix of charities, service might be, and to test hypotheses for which each linked to an important Plan A initiative in the past year. interventions work best with which clients. The Welcome Centre, a small local charity in Huddersfield is part of our Food Redistribution programme, in partnership “...It is the best level of human resources with neighbourly.com. Oasis Community Learning are part analytics that Oasis Community of the Oasis charity, which have been involved in our Spark Something Good nation-wide volunteering programme. Learning has ever had and it is great And Shelter, a well know national charity, are also one of the to see the educational impact being charities supported through the Sparks card 1p charity clearly mapped to the turnover of our staff.” donation programme. JOHN BARNABY, CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER, OASIS COMMUNITY LEARNING A quick round up of the questions we addressed and the outcomes. Oasis Community Learning is one of the top three Academy providers in the UK with 47 schools across primary, secondary and 6th form serving 22,000 students with 4,300 teachers. Oasis wanted to look at their human resources data to understand staff turnover and absence, and what this means for pupil performance. The findings from DataDive enabled Oasis to see patterns in their HR data for the first time and will help accelerate their plans to become more data-driven.