Increasingly, stakeholders want to work for, invest in, buy from and form partnerships with businesses that are run responsibly. In simple terms, this involves giving consideration to, and balancing a multitude of commercial, socio-economic and environmental factors when forming strategy and making day-to-day decisions. Businesses that fail to achieve this balance risk their reputation.

But corporate responsibility is far more than just a way of managing risk. Running businesses responsibly can open up opportunities to create new markets, develop new products and services, improve operational performance, attract and retain high calibre employees and to develop innovative partnerships to tackle the most complex business issues. Most importantly it is about gaining trust.

So is your business managing this complex agenda sufficiently well to protect reputation AND maximise the potential to prosper from responsible practices? Are you sure?

Surprisingly, few companies are able to answer this question, despite its significance for long term business success. Somewhere in the myriad of standards for auditing and controls, the requirement to manage, monitor and improve responsible business practices has been omitted.

UK law now requires directors to give proper consideration to : the long term impacts of decisions; community and environmental impacts; the interests of employees; relationships with business partners; the maintenance of a reputation for high standards of business conduct. Executives need to be able to provide this information and reassurance to their Boards that such areas are considered and managed across all aspects of business activity.

We provide independent and highly informed assurance to executives and directors that all the necessary elements of responsible business management are in place and working effectively. This assurance can be communicated externally if requested.

•  We have a proven track record of improving business efficiency and helping to define and manage responsible business practices within blue chip companies, both in the UK and internationally.

•  Our experience of best practice spans a wide range of areas including environmental management; human resources and employee engagement; health and safety; supply chain; customer service; stakeholder management and business ethics. We understand how the individual management of these diverse issues should be coordinated to manage risk and business responsibility as an entity, and we are creative in identifying potential opportunities.

•  We have each worked at the forefront of responsible business for over ten years, helping to develop leading edge board and governance structures, stakeholder dialogue programmes, environmental strategies, employee engagement and communications, policies and codes, compliance systems, fairly traded products and ethical supply chains.

•  Our inputs are challenging, focused and practical, and importantly are in a language that resonates with senior executives and board members.

The feedback from our clients speaks for itself :

“TRN deliver so much more than simply assurance. Their broad experience, insightful knowledge and ability to challenge have helped to identify potential opportunities to deliver performance improvements in our approach to Corporate Responsibility. We welcome and value the challenge TRN brings to Next, as through internal exploration it stimulates improvements to help us identify, develop and implement strategic decisions to the benefit of our business.”                                                                                                                                                      
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We provide a high-value independent review of the elements needed to manage responsible business practices. We seek out and identify components that are in place, carefully evaluate how they interact and provide opinion on how well the overall “Responsibility Management System” fulfils the needs of the business and the expectations of stakeholders.

As part of this review we also evaluate how well covered these elements are by other audit and review elements e.g. internal audit, financial audit, risk management, systems certification e.g. ISO14001, and report verification.

Our outputs promote innovative ideas for improvement. At the same time we provide assurance to executives and the board that the management of issues is effective, adequate and efficient, and that “proper consideration has been given”.

Our review can be:
•  combined with report verification, or undertaken separately
•  presented publicly in the assurance statement, or issued confidentially in a management report
•  undertaken across a broad spectrum, or focused on specific issues, activities or business areas