RBS 2007 Annual Report Download - page 27

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RBS Group • Annual Report and Accounts 2007
in them. It also helps us to develop the products and services
to meet our customers’ needs, and to sustain and enhance the
value we return to our shareholders. Last year we convened
the new Strategic Advisory Board of our Business School, with
membership drawn from some of the world’s leaders in executive
education. Our Senior Manager Development Programme,
designed and delivered for us by Harvard Business School,
was supplemented by the Executive Leadership Programme
which was developed by Duke Corporate Education.
RBS and the environment
We recognise the threats posed by climate change and
endeavour to make a difference where we can. That involves
reducing the Group’s carbon footprint and wider environmental
impacts, helping our employees as they change their behaviour
and lending responsibly to the highest internationally-agreed
standards. In 2007 we elevated the priority given to the
environment and brought greater coherence to our activities
with the establishment of the Group Environment Programme.
Our footprint
Financial services is an industry with a low carbon footprint
and RBS has one of the lowest among UK banks. We are
committed to reducing further the carbon intensity of our
operations and the initiatives we have taken should reduce our
carbon dioxide emissions by as much as one-fifth by 2011.
We will achieve that in a number of ways. Since October 2007,
all of our electricity in the UK and Ireland has come from
renewable sources. Phase one of our £55 million property
our charitable investments have grown by 500%. We extended
our UK Give As You Earn programme to the US; under the
Colleague Matching Gift Program launched in August, Citizens
matches the charitable donations qualifying employees make
to eligible organisations up to $1,000 per year.
The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) in the US encourages
financial institutions to help meet the needs of low and moderate
income communities. There are four CRA ratings: Outstanding,
Satisfactory, Needs to Improve and Substantial Non-Compliance.
Citizens has Outstanding ratings in every state where it
operates and we have retained the Outstanding CRA rating
throughout all of our acquisitions.
Our employees
Involvement in voluntary work is one example of how our
employees support the communities in which they work.
We give employees more hours off work to participate in
charitable activities than any company in the UK. We launched
Colleagues in Action in Citizens to give greater prominence
to the voluntary work of our employees. More than half of our
employees report that the Group does ‘a very good job’ in
supporting charitable giving and almost nine out of ten say we
are socially responsible in the communities in which we operate.
Our supportive approach to community involvement is one of
the reasons for the consistently strong results achieved in the
annual Employee Opinion Survey where we consistently exceed
the performance of our peers. More than 80% of employees
feel they are treated with respect at work. Two out of three
employees believe RBS does a good job in developing our
people to their full potential. We seem to get right the balance
between work and home life, with eight in ten employees
saying the hours they put in to get the job done are reasonable.
Almost nine out of ten employees feel they are sufficiently
informed about the Group’s performance and more than 80%
say we are good at keeping them informed more generally. In
all of these instances, and more, our results exceed the Global
High Performance Norm, the results achieved by the world’s
best performing companies.
Since we believe that our people are the source of our enduring
success we invest to develop them. The RBS Business School
is central to our commitment to our people to bring out the best
£57.7 million invested in our communities during 2007
RBS achieved the highest AAA rating from Innovest for
managing social and environmental risks
Charter One’s Champion in
Action programme has assisted
more than 90 small non-profit
agencies who support their local
communities. Near West Theatre,
Cleveland, Ohio provides local
youngsters with the chance to
engage in creative activities and
was the first to benefit when the
programme was extended to the
Midwest.