Expert Steering Group

The Steering Group was convened by BITC and is drawn from senior practitioners from FTSE 100 companies identified by Ipsos MORI as exemplar reporting companies in its research findings on Public Reporting Trends in May 2010.
All of the companies represented are members of BITC and have provided thought leadership and overall direction for the Public Reporting Guidelines.

CIPD, Henderson Global Investors and Ipsos MORI are strategic partners of BITC.

The Henderson SRI team has been active over the years in addressing human capital management (HCM) issues, working with companies to encourage them to manage it as well as report publicly on their efforts. We have been engaging with BITC on HCM issues for some time, and recently took a more involved role by participating in the Workwell Campaign as a member of BITC’s Boardroom Reporting Steering Group, (which helped input into the development of the BITC Workwell Model), and the subsequent Steering Group for the development of these Guidelines to ensure they are useful for investors. We will seek to raise awareness of, and encourage uptake of the Guidelines, by both investors and companies.

CIPD research consistently highlights the importance of high quality leadership and people management skills to sustainable organisation performance. This has been supplemented recently by the government commissioned MacLeod review, which highlighted the link between enhanced employee engagement and improved business performance.
However evidence suggests UK people management capability lies behind that of our main competitors and that we as a nation invest less in management development.
Effective Human Capital Management reporting can highlight the link between effective people management, employee engagement and wellbeing and improvements to business performance and consequently encourage organisations to invest in the management and development of their people.  CIPD is working with its members to encourage and support HR practitioners to generate high quality people management information to help build the business case for investing in people management and development.
However it is equally important to raise this key agenda within the wider business community if there is to be a step change in the quality of HCM reporting across UK plc.
BITC’s Public Reporting Guidelines provide an excellent springboard for achieving much greater understanding and profile at boardroom level of this key issue.
We believe that the CIPD, together with BITC and Henderson Global Investors are ideal partners in this aim. Together we represent the HR, business and investor communities, all of which need to be engaged if there is to be substantive progress on this agenda.

Ipsos MORI’s Reputation Centre has long been helping to provide evidence of the case for companies engaging in responsible business practices and communicating their progress to key stakeholders.  Our research often shows the impact of these issues on a company’s reputation, and over the last few years we have been working with BITC on various statistical analyses to try and find links between best practice responsible business and enhanced financial performance.
We have conducted previous research for BITC’s Workwell Campaign on FTSE 100 companies’ public reporting on employee wellness and engagement.  Therefore, we were delighted to participate in the Steering Group to further develop the analysis of reporting on these themes and update the research showing where the gaps are in current public reporting on this agenda. It is good to see the key gaps addressed in these Guidelines, and we hope to see progress in the quality of future public reporting to reflect this timely advice. Ultimately it is about providing investors with more useful information on this key area of business performance, and helping companies to realise the full benefit from approaching employee wellness and engagement strategically.