Framework

Corporate and Social Responsibility at Aegis
In 2007 we made significant progress on a number of fronts in the corporate and social responsibility (CSR) area. We continued to pursue successful established programmes, such as Synovate’s CARES community involvement scheme and Isobar’s Green Bean initiative.

At the same time, we created several new strategic initiatives in order to put sustainability at the heart of our business. This means our business processes, HR, procurement and service development will all be viewed through a sustainability lens. Imperative to this objective was the formation of a steering group of Aegis-wide CSR champions – an expansion of the corporate responsibility committee we had established in 2006 – and the development of a strategic framework for sustainability across the Group.

The steering group includes representatives from Aegis Media, Synovate and head office functions. Chaired by Nigel Morris, CEO of Isobar, attended by Alicja Lesniak, Group CFO, and championed by Robert Lerwill, Group CEO, the steering group presents its findings and work to the full Aegis Board through regular reporting and presentations.

Our approach
In our 2006 CSR report, we noted that “much of our work on corporate and social responsibility is driven and delivered on an individual market basis.” Reflecting our history as an entrepreneurial business with strong local operations, a significant number of individual initiatives were being undertaken and managed throughout Aegis at a local level throughout the 70 countries in which we operate. Those initiatives continue today, and some are outlined in this report.

However, during 2007, the CSR steering group carried out a thorough review of our CSR activity and policies, using external CSR services for bench-marking and consultancy. As a result, we identified the opportunity for a more structured approach for our CSR programme. We have already taken some steps to put that in place, and the framework will inform our CSR activity during 2008. The framework and those steps are set out below.

Our business is structured around the interplay of local and global – in terms of client relationships, strategy and execution. Accordingly, we have developed our CSR framework to reflect this aspect of our culture and structure.

Leading the SEE Change
Our group-wide sustainability framework, known as ”Leading the SEE Change”, is based around Aegis’ social, economic and environmental impacts. It is designed to ensure that we meet our commercial goals responsibly, at the same time as assessing and managing our impact on the environment and society at large.

Within this framework we are focusing on three principal areas: people and society; awareness and advocacy; and products and services. Each of these workstreams has a dedicated senior team. The three workstreams are underpinned by additional workstreams in reporting, procurement and communications. Having identified these areas and put in place an internal structure for delivery in the course of 2007, we will focus on output from the individual workstreams during 2008, with objectives for reduction and improvement set for 2010.

We are a member of FTSE4Good and we participate in the CSR Media Forum, a group of media organisations developing CSR and sustainability practices and understanding for the UK media sector.

Baselining exercise
In order to develop the policies, procedures and targets set out below, we completed two pilot waves of research and internal benchmarking.

The current baseline was developed with the involvement of our 13 largest businesses and our head office, from which a variety of environmental and social impacts were evaluated. It was important to gauge not only the quantifiable impacts, but also the current level of interest and actions related to CSR in each region so as to establish how best to expand our programme in the coming years. This exercise involved 31% of our workforce (or 52% of our workforce and 65% of Group revenue if extrapolated for the entire country market).

We have since set ourselves a number of targets for 2010. Individual targets are set out in the following three sections. We believe these targets are stretching but can be attained if we adopt appropriate measures throughout our business. We will monitor progress on an annual basis, using the GRI reporting framework.