Discuss about the Managing Sustainability for Woolworths Group Ltd.
Woolworths Group Ltd is a Company dealing with wide variety of the most recognizable and trusted products in Sydney, Australia. According to Sarah (2017, p. 26), it is one of the leading retail businesses in Australia. This company serves thousands of customers each day and deals with fast-moving products. To overcome competition and to maintain sustainable growth, Woolworths has been using proper operational strategies to ensure it grabs a significant market share.
The company’s mission statement is ‘to be the first choice for customers who care about value.’ The Woolworths is on its mission to deliver the finest in convenience, importance and quality products to its customers (Sarah, 2017, P. 29). For the company to achieve its mission, it has employed dedicated and skilled employees. Over the years, this company has been focusing on satisfying the need of its consumers by providing high-quality products (Sarah, 2017, P. 28). It also aims at making its employees to attain job satisfaction through proper compensation and working environment.
Being one of leading Companies in Sydney, Woolworths’ vision is to offer quality products and services to its customers. The company is trying to add exceptional quality in all products by engaging in innovation, as well as research and innovation. The company can achieve its vision through setting price strategies, fresh food strategies and also human resource strategies.
According to Dannin (2013, p. 164), its core purpose is to add value in life, through exceptional quality in all products it sells and every experience it delivers to its consumers and other stakeholders. Since the company is one of trusted industry partner to thousands of both local farmers and manufacturers, it has a goal of strengthening its brand image. For the company to achieve this, it has laid down some priorities such as building a consumer and store-led culture and team, to generate sustainable sales impetus in Food and also to evolve its drinks production to offer more value and expediency to their customers (Sarah, 2017, P. 29).
According to Dannin (2013, p. 170), Woolworth’s management team is viewed as passionate, motivating, accountable, and joint as well as committed to offering quality products to its customers. This stems from the manner in which the company strives to ensure customer satisfaction and strong relationship with its stakeholders.
Over the years, this Woolworth has been positioning itself as a premier company that seeks to produce products that meet customer expectation. To maintain sustainability in its positioning, it has been striving to undertake extensive market research to identify changes in customer needs, and expectations and using technology and innovation to ensure products are produced in a manner which can make the consumer to feel valued (Wells, 2011, p. 98).
There is adequate evidence of sustainability because irrespective of stiff competition which exists in this industry, Woolworth has maintained a substantial market share over the years (Willard, 2012, P. 145). Its decision to position itself as premier and to value customer as among the essential assets has enabled this company to maintain customer loyalty over the years, hence being able to survive in the competitive industry. The other evidence that shows this company has maintained sustainability is its excellent performance when it comes to sales and revenue.
To ensure efficient and effective Business sustainability, the company has come up with various strategies. For instance, it has established value formation and the material optimization strategies to enable it to maintain success and goal attainment. The drivers to attain sustainability, in this case, are based on eight areas which include: transformation, community improvement, fitness and wellness, ethical sourcing, sustainable undeveloped, dissipate, stream, as well as energy and also climate change (Williams, 2015, p. 65).
The company has adopted Corporate Governance standard in order to comply with its sustainability frameworks/standards. Woolworths Group has also been complying with policies and practices as well as the recommendations of the ASX Corporate Governance Council’s Corporate which was approved by the Woolworths Limited Board.
The company requires that its Vendors abide by their legal Regulatory Requirements in all compliments. This includes ensuring that they comply with all the statutory and regulatory product safety, compositional and cataloguing requirements. Woolworth accomplishes this by providing the WQA Standard. This means it does not discharge the purveyor from its obligations to comply with those statutory requirements.
Woolworths, being one of Australia’s largest companies has maintained its sustainability through its strong values. This is by ensuring that the changes they make have a significant impact on their shareholders, suppliers, their staff as well as their esteem consumers, and their local communities. Furthermore, striving to maintain its sustainability through the production of high-quality products has enabled it to have a reputation. According to Benn & Bolton (2011, P. 56), striving to produce outstanding products has enabled the company to be viewed as superior to its competitors.
According to Mihela (2016, p. 60), this Company has been conducting GRI Sustainability Reporting Guidelines. The GRI is an independent international organization that assists corporates to communicate their blow on significant sustainability issues. Also, it is also committed to endlessly aim at civilizing and escalating the use of the Guidelines, which are unreservedly available to the community.
According to Blowfield (2013, P. 56), GRL is the best form of reporting which an organization such as Woolworth can undertake. It is intended for use by companies of any size and also coming from any sector or location. With thousands of Woolworth reporters in more than 90 countries, GRI offers to the most trusted and broadly applied standards on sustainability based on reporting. It has enabled many organizations to compose better decisions based on non-financial information with the aim of undertaking better sustainability reporting.
The company has also undertaken comprehensive governance system to ensure there are sustainable group practices which have been kept in place to help it in attaining its targets.One of the best practices to ensure sustainability is based on evaluates and controls. According to Mihela (2016, p. 58), this strategy is achieved by using economic, environmental and also social indicators
The company has also adopted environmental practices. For instance, they have incorporated both the social and environmental concerns in their operations to improve their relations with all stakeholders. The company has also adopted Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) standard which includes ecological, financial, and social performance information linked to sustainable progress.
Indicators of strategic sustainability are commonly undertaken to measure a company’s performance and to monitor and report future progress (Schmandt, 2010). For Woolworth, its management can use various indicators to ensure strategic sustainability. These indicators can be classified into three areas which may cover the economic, environmental or social aspects of sustainability.
One of the indicators of strategic sustainability can be based on Economic performance. This covers the company turnover and profit as well as the number of products sold. This can be viewed on the number of products sold either annually or semiannually.
Another indicator is based on the Social performance of the Woolworth. This is reflected in the manual labor practices, individual rights, and other broader issues which are likely to affect its consumers, community, and other stakeholders in the social order.
Environmental performance is another indicator of strategic sustainability which is this company can apply. According to Benn et al., (2011, p. 167), this indicator can be based on various aspects such as the level of greenhouse gas emissions, water consumption, and also waste output. To meet the demand of the consumers and other stakeholders, companies its management should disclose reports concerning if it has been able to attain its environmental sustainability indicator.
One of the evidence that shows this company has been enabling these policies is participating in corporate social responsibility. This is attained by ensuring it considers conservation in its operation by properly disposing its wastes and supporting some of the programs aimed at ensuring the environment remains clean. The company has also been operating based on labor laws and promoting positive relationship among all stakeholders.
To ensure these indicators are attained, its management undertakes monitoring and evaluation from time to time to identify what has been attained and what needs to be done to ensure the anticipated results are achieved (Satya. 2010, p. 32). The company also values other people’s opinions concerning how to enables these indicators and therefore involve its stakeholders, including the staff, consumers as well as decision makers and managers to contribute in coming up with strategies that can enable its management to its sustainability indicators.
Conclusion
Woolworth’s mission statement is to deliver to customers the right shopping experience every time, while its vision is to offer quality products and services to its customers. The company has a core purpose of adding value to life, through exceptional quality in all products it sells and every experience it delivers to its consumers and other stakeholders.
In its operation, this company undertakes different forms of sustainability reporting. Some of them comprise of; GRI Sustainability Reporting Guidelines and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) standard. The GRI is an independent international organization which helps corporations to communicate their blow on significant sustainability issues.
There are various indicators which this company can apply in its operation. Some of them comprise of economic performance, social performance, and environmental performance. Some of the evidence that shows this company is enabling these policies include engaging in corporate social responsibility, working based on labor laws and fostering a positive relationship with its stakeholders.
References
Benn, S & Bolton, D. 2011, Key Concepts of Corporate Social Responsibility, London, Sage.
Benn, S., Dunphy, D. & Griffiths, A. 2014, Organizational Change for Corporate Sustainability, 3rd edition, London, Routledge.
Benn, S., Dunphy, D. & Perrott, B. (eds). 2011, Cases in Corporate Sustainability & Change: A Multidisciplinary Approach, Prahhan, Victoria, Tilde University Press.
Blowfield, M. 2013, Business and Sustainability, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Dannin, E. (2013), Book Review: Women Strikers Occupy Chain Store, Win Big: The 1937 Woolworth’s Sit-Down, by Dana Frank, Labor Studies Journal, vol. 38, No 2, pp. 165-186.
Mihela, P. R. (2016), Managing Sustainability throughout Supporting Activities. Economics, Management and Financial Markets, vol. 11 No. 1, pp. 56-68.
Sarah, B. 2017. Woolworths on the Market. The observer (Gladstone, Australia), 18th march, P. 25-38.
Satya, P. 2010, Sustainability and the Role of Information and Communications Technologies, Business Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 32-56.
Schmandt, J. 2010. George Mitchell and the Idea of Sustainability, College Station, TX, Texas A&M University Press.
Wells, G. 2011, Sustainability in Australian Business: Fundamental Principles and Practice, Milton, John Wiley and Sons.
Willard, B. 2012, The New Sustainability Advantage: Seven Business Case Benefits of a Triple Bottom Line, Gabriola Island, B.C, New Society Publishers.
Williams, E. 2015, Green Giants: How Smart Companies Turn Sustainability into Billion-Dollar Businesses, New York, AMACOM.
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