What are the material issues the company has identified?

In its 2018-2019 Sustainability Report Landmark Group identified a range of material issues, such as packaging, circularity, carbon footprint, product quality, health and safety, chemical and waste management. Among these, promoting employee development stands out as a key material issue for Landmark Group.

Stakeholder engagement in accordance with the GRI Standards              

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) defines the Principle of Stakeholder Inclusiveness when identifying material issues (or a company’s most important impacts) as follows:

“The reporting organization shall identify its stakeholders, and explain how it has responded to their reasonable expectations and interests.”

Stakeholders must be consulted in the process of identifying a company’s most important impacts and their reasonable expectations and interests must be taken into account. This is an important cornerstone for CSR / sustainability reporting done responsibly.

Key stakeholder groups Landmark Group engages with:

To identify and prioritise material topics Landmark Group engaged with its stakeholders through the following channels:

Stakeholder Group	Method of engagement
Partners	·      Supplier selection and onboarding ·      Progress meetings ·      Emails, phone calls and meetings ·      Appreciation events
Environment	·      Monitoring Landmark Group’s environmental footprint ·      Addressing circularity of fashion ·      Environmentally-friendly sourcing of materials ·      Preserving natural resources ·      Sustainability team
Customers	·      Specialised customer service teams ·      Stores, outlets, malls and online ·      Social networks ·      Customers satisfaction surveys ·      Call centres, emails and phone calls ·      Advertisements, promotions and press releases ·      Loyalty programmes
Community	·      Community programmes and initiatives ·      Cooperation with NGOs ·      Social networks and events ·      Philanthropy and sponsorships
People	·      Employee engagement surveys ·      Training and development programmes ·      Internal communications ·      Volunteer programmes ·      Face-to-face meetings ·      Emails, calls and instant messaging software ·      Performance management programmes

What actions were taken by Landmark Group to promote employee development?

In its 2018-2019 Sustainability Report Landmark Group reports that it took the following actions for promoting employee development:

• Promoting frontline development
• Landmark Group’s frontline programmes include:
  • Learn and grow: Career training for sales associates, supervisors and store managers that includes 70% on-the-job training, 20% coaching with managers and 10% workshops and e-learning. In Saudi Arabia, succession role assessments were piloted for 1,000 store managers.
  • Store leadership programme: Redefines capabilities of store managers as customer- and business-focused whilst improving their work environment. In financial year 2018-19, 986 Store Leaders participated with 101 High Potentials identified to progress to the next level in their career.
  • Career passport: Tracks career progression of store employees offering a structured plan for skill development. It ensures managers have a comprehensive overview of employee performance over a long period of time, and not just on their recent achievements.
  • Race: Retail Academy for Career Enhancement are certified courses to create a talent pool for critical roles, while upskilling and retaining existing talent coaches.

• Fostering functional development
• Landmark Group’s functional programmes include:
  • Analytics teams: Capacity-building online and classroom courses for 95 data analytics employees and customer experience optimisation sessions for 25 senior leaders.
  • Finance teams: Landmark Group worked with PwC to standardise finance processes across the Group and deliver workshops for 100 finance managers.
  • Planning teams: Learn and Grow for planning and digitalising planning fundamentals for scalability, linked to career path. Knowledge assessment scores went from 39% to 85% and individual development plans were created for all 126 planners.
  • Buying teams: Landmark Group worked with Trendstop and WGSN on workshops for 35 buyers from its fashion and shoe divisions on trends, product direction, commercial range building and setting strategic buying plans.
  • Warehouse teams: Emerging Supervisor Development Programme trains supervisors, managers and senior managers on supervisory skills.

• Promoting leadership development
• In 2018-19, 199 Landmark Group mid-senior leaders were enrolled in a Group Leadership Development in Landmark Middle East. Landmark Group also partnered with SP Jain Institute of Management & Research and Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad to support growth and career development of High Potential employees, co-delivered with an internal faculty of leaders. 86 High Potentials took part in a nine-month blended programme of workshops, mentoring, action learning projects and coursework. 24 of the 51 midlevel High Potentials and 12 of the 35 senior-level High Potentials were promoted or moved roles during or within six months of completing the programme. Other programmes included Emerging Leaders for mid-level managers and Leaders Coaching Leaders, to equip employees with the ability to play a proactive role in the development of Landmark talent. Landmark India’s Executive Coaching Creating Leaders programme identifies senior leaders through one-on-one coaching. A detailed skill assessment exercise is conducted to identify employees’ strengths and weaknesses, with bespoke development plans created with assigned coaches.

Which GRI Standards and corresponding Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have been addressed?

The GRI Standards addressed in this case are:

1) Disclosure 404-1 Average hours of training per year per employee

2) Disclosure 404-2 Programs for upgrading employee skills and transition assistance programs

 

Disclosure 404-1 Average hours of training per year per employee corresponds to:

• Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4: Quality Education
• Targets: 4.3, 4.4, 4.5
• Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5: Gender Equality
• Targets: 5.1
• Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth
• Targets: 8.2, 8.5
• Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 10: Reduced Inequalities
• Targets: 10.3

Disclosure 404-2 Programs for upgrading employee skills and transition assistance programs corresponds to:

• Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth
• Targets: 8.2, 8.5

 

78% of the world’s 250 largest companies report in accordance with the GRI Standards

SustainCase was primarily created to demonstrate, through case studies, the importance of dealing with a company’s most important impacts in a structured way, with use of the GRI Standards. To show how today’s best-run companies are achieving economic, social and environmental success – and how you can too.

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References:

1) This case study is based on published information by Landmark Group, located at the link below. For the sake of readability, we did not use brackets or ellipses. However, we made sure that the extra or missing words did not change the report’s meaning. If you would like to quote these written sources from the original, please revert to the original on the Global Reporting Initiative’s Sustainability Disclosure Database at the link:

http://database.globalreporting.org/

2) https://www.globalreporting.org/standards/gri-standards-download-center/

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