Now, as then, trusting the lady in the white coat

In 1919, years before the concept of CSR was coined, cooked and spun, Jesse Boot, son of the founder of Boots the Chemists, was already talking shop: ‘Our mutual interests are by no means restricted to business in any limited sense. Fellowship in recreation, fellowship in ideals, common sympathies and common humanity bind us together and whatever fosters this happy union is valuable.’

That Mr Boot, albeit a Methodist, was echoing the socially responsible beliefs of his Quaker peers is nothing more than ‘business as usual’ to the company.

‘Over the past few years other businesses have suddenly discovered CSR but we’ve been doing this for over a hundred years,’ says Richard Ellis, CSR manager. ‘We’re on a drive to put the ‘chemist’ back into Boots and show our customers that we can be trusted.’

Also driven into its journey towards responsible business practice is the value, efficiency and recognition that any 21st century business must have to convince green-aware customers of its environmental credentials. For instance, Boots has been working with the government’s Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) to increase recycled materials content into its packaging. These cost savings are then transferred to the customer.

But Boots’ enduring success, says Ellis, stems from the added ingredient that no economy supermarket hawking tinned tomatoes can match: trust in the woman in white. ‘What really made Boots the force that it is, is the combination of products at fair prices with the advice we dispense. People trusted the Boots lady in the white coat,’ he says.

To this end, the Nottingham-based business opened 43 new pharmacies in its stores last year, dispensing over 100 million prescriptions. And to make sure its customers have ready access to medicines, it has pledged that by the end of this year, most of the population will be within a 30 minute drive of a late night pharmacy.

Ellis says that putting healthcare first makes sense for a business where the majority of items are either ingested or absorbed through the skin. ‘We know that with increasing demands on the NHS, people are looking to the high street pharmacy for a trusted source of health advice and care,’ he says.

It is from this platform that Boots now wants to re-establish itself as the chemist to the nation and one of the country’s most trusted retailers. It has positioned its healthcare strategy accordingly to dovetail with public health policy.

In line with government attempts to increase primary health services, the company is developing and expanding the role of its 4,000 pharmacists. Some 2,800 of them have already trained or are training to implement Medicine Use Reviews, a new government initiative through which customers are allocated a 10-15 minute session with their pharmacist to discuss health and improve their drug taking regime.

Boots has also become the employer of choice for newly qualified pharmacists, snapping up 65% of UK pharmacy graduates. Similarly, Boots addressed the urgent public health priority of tackling the explosion in sexually transmitted diseases by pioneering NHS access to free chlamydia screening last year in 200 of its London stores. The programme has so far distributed upwards of 20,000 testing packs to worried customers and backed this up with expert advice.

One of Boots’ abiding strengths is its ability to tap into the needs of its 80% majority female workforce and customer base which present the perfect demographic for its products and services.

Its ten-year partnership with Breast Cancer Care, which in 2005 raised £450,000 for the charity, is an ideal fit because both parties have women’s health at the core of their business.

The Be Up Front campaign, which began as a fundraising initiative, has evolved into a series of awareness raising events during Breast Cancer Month every October supported by staff and customer fund-raising and sales of pink products from the Boots No 7 range.

Murray Lindo, director of fundraising for Breast Cancer Care, describes the partnership as ‘truly integrated’: ‘This not only raises considerable funds for Breast Cancer Care — 7% of the overall income in 2005 — but enables the charity to deliver breast health messages to Boots’ 20 million weekly customers.’

Engaging with such stakeholders as charities has helped it raise its profile as a provider of frontline health and customer care.

Its Soltan suncare range, for instance, is a cause-related marketing success story. As one of the UK’s leading suncare products, it enjoyed substantial sales growth in the last financial year. Boots has linked up with Cancer Research UK’s SunSmart Campaign, which warns against the carcinogenic effects of the sun. The company employs 250 suncare consultants and has also capitalised on its product’s protective benefits by introducing a consumer-friendly UVA five star-rating system which has since been adopted by other manufacturers.

CSR, says Ellis, is deeply embedded in all of its business operations. Nurturing the bottom-line involves modernising good business practice and showing all of its stakeholders that it can be trusted.

Boots aptly uses a molecular analogy to explain how CSR can only become integrated into the ‘core DNA’ of the company if it links its activities with CSR objectives and entwines CSR strategy ‘in a genuine double helix with that of the overall business plan’.

This is illustrated by the fact that Boots has no bolt-on CSR department. Rather, Ellis oversees CSR activities within the company, ensuring that the 21 targets across the themes of marketplace, workplace, environment and community are acted out by senior management.

Policy is implemented through the CSR Action Group, with legs across the company, which meets at least four times a year. It then reports back to the main Social Responsibilities Committee Board which comprises top tiers of management.

The result is that CSR can only be delivered by the company as an entity because Ellis must make the business case to the relevant department each time a strategy needs to be implemented.

The company is also aware that market drivers such as growing stakeholder scrutiny of business practices, especially from environmental NGOs, increased legislative and mandatory requirements for responsible business reporting and wider interest in socially responsible investment, have all catapulted CSR further up the business agenda.

And Boots has shown it is capable of sustaining the double helix, reporting total sales growth up 1.7% on last year in a tough market while still managing this month to secure second place for the Best Company award from Business in the Community, the business-led corporate responsibility charity.

An integral part of its responsible practice is the old-fashioned business value of cost-efficiency, achieved by sewing sustainability into the product journey from production and distribution to disposal of waste.

Boots introduced 16 double-deck trailers late last year which reduced the number of journeys made saving 1.4 million kilometres and 700 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions.

Its energy efficiency drive has been in evidence since 1915, when it was using steam by-product from its generators to power machines. By the 1930s, the company was recycling bottles.

The updated combined heat and power system at its Nottingham headquarters now creates most of its electricity and heat, saving the company £1m each year.

Boots also wants people to understand that it is aware of the potential harm its products can cause the environment: ‘As chemists, we’re particularly concerned with the chemicals that go into the products we make,’ says Ellis.

They were involved during development of the European REACH legislation to mitigate potential harm. Colin Butfield, director of WWF chemicals and health campaign, says: ‘Boots has been one of the leading companies in demonstrating that there is not only a strong health and environmental case for substituting hazardous chemicals with safer ones, but a business one as well.’

Winning stakeholders’s trust is more important than ever as the company this year completed its merger with Alliance Unichem, expanding its international healthcare presence.

Trust and responsibility are still very much a part of Boots’ vision. One century after Jesse Boot’s pronouncement, chief executive Richard Baker echoes his philosophy: ‘We must not just be seen as a leader in social responsibility but recognised as one,’ he says. ‘That’s why we’ve made the decision to put our CSR programme at the very heart of our business.

Anita Pati is a freelance writer specialising in corporate responsibility and the voluntary sector.