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Logistics is a key activity sector within the Supply Chain. As this is booming, it requires the mobilization of several actors such as transport, which goes hand in hand.
Transport is the leading sector of activity that causes environmental harm through its greenhouse gas emissions and unprecedented fuel consumption. These have enormous impacts on the environment: pollution, noise pollution, infrastructure related to transport that occupy urban space.
How a CSR approach can benefit the business
The concern of logisticians has always been to be able to offer customers a fast, quality and efficient service. However, in recent decades, an awareness has been growing within companies regarding the importance of ecology. It was a few years ago that the term "Green logistics" appeared.
In addition, this awareness no longer only concerns companies but also its customers. A study conducted by IFS (an ERP publisher) shows that 77% of industries needed to provide information on their CSR to customers.
The 12 key points to implement your CSR approach
Would you like your company to have a clear CSR approach but don't know how? Are you wondering how your logistician can be in line with your ecological and ethical values? We will offer you a list of measures and advice applicable to you or your supplier.
Discover the top 12 actions, tips and best practices to implement:
1 – Appoint a manager and a CSR team
This action will allow you to structure the CSR strategy. The team can be made up of one or more collaborators. It can also be made up of specialized external contributors. It all depends on your desires and your means. The most important thing is that the figures chosen are legitimate and credible to deal with this subject. Its purpose will be both to motivate the people concerned, to launch a strategy but also to evaluate the work done. This person will certainly have to be trained, but the ideal is that they are already passionate about the subject.
2 – Perform a strategic analysis of the company's CSR needs
This step is essential. Indeed, without taking stock of what exists and what should exist, the actions implemented will have no meaning and will be destructured. We must ask ourselves simple questions such as “What do we need to change?”, “Which subjects are priorities?” or “What are the most affected areas? “.
If you use an external service provider, they will also ask you these questions in order to better understand the needs of your business.
3 – Set up a dialogue with your Stakeholders on your CSR issues
For the same purpose, it is interesting to have the opinion of all external and internal actors on your CSR and its strengths/weaknesses. Here are the questions to ask:
What are the expectations of employees regarding CSR?
And those of consumers / customers?
What about shareholders / financial partners?
All this feedback will be an added value when implementing your strategy.
4 – Make public commitments regarding CSR actions
CSR (corporate social responsibility) is a public issue by definition. This is why the actions concerning them must be explicit and transparent vis-à-vis society. In addition, a company that is publicly committed to progress tends to receive motivating pressure through this promotion accessible to all. Finally, employees can also be motivated thanks to this indirect pressure, which will be beneficial for you and for the image of the company.
5 – Offer training on CSR to employees
It is true that a large majority of logistics players are not very sensitive to CSR. Employees being the essence of a company, it is through them that companies will be able to improve their CSR.
This is why training them regularly is essential in order to involve them in the process and the strategy.
In addition, it is important that managers and superiors are also trained. They represent authority and must lead by example.
6 – Succeed in associating profitability with CSR
Concretely, it is by talking about the financial benefits that you can involve as many people as possible. For example, you can highlight the savings that can be made through a waste reduction strategy as well as highlight the related long-term benefits.
Then, it is interesting to ask the question: which actions will have the largest and fastest ROI? For example, energy reduction measures are those that have a rapid and significant impact on company costs.
7 – Prioritize issues and strategies
Once the analysis of needs and the identification of areas for improvement have been carried out, it is essential to know how to prioritize them. The ideal is to create a list in order of priority in order to structure and organize the actions that will be implemented. The goal is not to change the entire organization of a company but rather to give a common line of conduct to each stakeholder. The only goal is to see what issues you have interest in working on.
Remember: it is by doing small actions at our scale that we can have the essence of a whole movement.
8 - Evaluate and reduce energy consumption
Assessing its consumption within the offices but also within the warehouses will allow you to be able to effectively compare the data after all the improvements implemented.
Note that it is possible to carry out the same process for other areas such as: water, waste, resources, materials.
This measure applies to all companies in all areas of activity but mainly in logistics. Indeed, warehouses, offices and handling equipment are energy-intensive.
This measure is relatively simple and as specified above, has a significant and almost immediate ROI.
This reduction can be done through several actions:
Change energy supplier to a renewable energy supplier
Change the type of luminaires for low-consumption LED-type lamps
Install a system of motion sensor lights in warehouses and large spaces that do not require constant lighting
Renovate and insulate buildings
Reduce paper consumption through awareness campaigns.
9 – Take stock of waste management
Every business inevitably produces waste. The important thing is to know how to reason and manage these. This is why it is advisable to carry out a waste reduction plan. For more information, consult the ADEME site specializing in waste management.
However, even if the waste is reduced, it is important to know what to do with the remaining waste. Indeed, sorting being an increasingly democratized habit within households, it is not necessarily so within companies. In order to be sure that these habits are respected, it may be relevant to create an awareness campaign on waste management and recycling.
10 – Ensure the well-being of its employees
As said earlier, employees are the essence of a company. Without them, it is impossible to hope for growth and development. You must therefore respect them and ensure that they feel good in their workplace. An employee in good physical and mental health will work optimally.
But how to do it ? Here is a list of things to put in place that will help you improve the working conditions of your employees:
Respect the rules of health and hygiene at work
Provide safe premises
Ensure the safety of warehouses in order to avoid any accident at work
Ensure compliance with the basic rules recommended by occupational medicine.
Provide optimized workspaces
Find the balance between individual offices and open space
Provide rest rooms
Make employees aware of respect for others.
Have an inclusive strategy
Respect gender equality. Attention, if you have more than 50 employees, you have the obligation to calculate your parity index every year here. We have also recently published an article on the parity index within XP LOG.
Ensuring diversity: differences in backgrounds, culture, age and specialization is important within a company. It allows a better open-mindedness and is beneficial for innovation
Enforce human rights: these apply to all actors in the supply chain
Establish a good balance between private life and professional life: it is important to know how to respect the private life of its employees, this promotes their well-being at work
Be flexible on holiday dates: difficult to satisfy everyone 100%, but it is essential to let employees choose their holiday dates.
11- Evaluate and communicate your actions
It is well known, everything that is measured progresses!
It is indeed possible to measure its CSR actions thanks to the Ecovadis tool. This will give you a score as well as an explanatory document for each topic assessed. Nothing is more motivating than having concrete data to improve.
After analyzing this assessment, it is possible to go even further in the process by producing a CSR report. This will allow you to publicly and officially discuss the company's results and areas for improvement.
12 - Enjoy the fruits harvested by your work
The idea is not to rest on one's laurels but rather to know how to appreciate the efforts made. It is important to congratulate the teams and actors who contributed to your project. Do not forget to make them understand the importance they have in order to motivate them to continue!