Survey: How great is the risk to organisations posed by inaction on climate and environment?

Many companies are simply lucky so far that there has been no social policeman watching over their inaction on climate change and environment in the management of their workplaces. As they are still not cognisant of the concerns and opinions of certain segments of their customer bases on the subject, we're introducing a new survey into the profiles we post here and on the Cloud Citizen group page on Facebook. It aims to explore the opinions of visitors about the risks to which these companies' managers are exposing themselves to risk as the inevitable consequence of the failings of their undertakings.

INTRODUCTION
Questions of risk and trust are always important in any company’s relationships with its stakeholders - customers, investors, employees, banks and insurers, the community, and so on. These relationships often form the constraints - “the licence to operate” - within which companies can trade to “thrive in perpetuity”. 

There are many risks to which all companies are exposed on their reputations. This survey aims simply to create a better understanding of how much this company’s transparency in its actions and undertakings on climate change and the depletion of the natural environment can be trusted, and to what degree they, or the lack of such commitments, pose a risk to the future of its business.

Throughout, where not written out in full, this survey will use “CCE” to substitute for “climate change and environmental depletion”.

RISK FACTORS
Based on your current knowledge and understanding of this company’s activities and undertakings on climate change and environment, please indicate the degree to which you agree with the following statements about the risks each presents to its future business.

1. The failure of the company to act swiftly enough on the threats of CCE will alienate future customers over the long term
2. The company is vulnerable to public awareness, knowledge, understanding and concern being seen to be ahead of the its own on CCE
3. The company is vulnerable to its board and management being seen to have misread public sentiment on CCE
4. The company is vulnerable to perceptions that its management has an insufficiently broad understanding of the risks CCE pose to the health of its business
5. The company’s management on CCE is creating negative perceptions of its managerial competence
6. The company lacks the key people, skills and understanding to manage its business risks on CCE
7. The company will attract increased negative media coverage on the basis of its present actions on CCE
8. The company is at risk from others identifying more about the risks its business poses on CCE than it can for itself
9. The company is vulnerable to social media using the company as an example of poor management of its true actions on CCE
10. I believe the company is vulnerable because it does not understand the power of social media as a tool for investigation of its actions on CCE
11. I believe the company is vulnerable to the reputations of the suppliers it is seen to buy from on the basis of the limitations of those companies’ own undertakings on CCE
12. Competitors are likely to take advantage of the company’s failure to act on CCE in the conduct of its business
13. The company’s actions on CCE are unconvincing enough that we could see its example being used to demonstrate management failure in future teaching in schools and universities
14. The company is at risk of losing or to develop key skills that will earn it favour on CCE
15. The company is at risk from failing to develop the quality of thinking and understanding about CCE in the minds of its workforce
16. The company is at risk from failing to share effectively the existing knowledge or understanding in the minds of its workforce in limiting its risks on CCE
17. Staff sharing information about growing perceptions of its failures of management on CCE will create problems in the effectiveness of the company’s internal communication
18. The company is at risk from customers knowing more about the risk of CCE to its business than its own management does

CONSEQUENCES OF RISK
Based on your answers above, please rate the degree to which you agree or disagree the company is exposed to the risks of each of the following possible outcomes, should it fail to act on effectively on CCE.

1. The value of the company’s sales and future contracts will begin to fall
2. The company will lose market share to competitors
3. The company’s shares and and investors’ holdings will fall in value
4. The company’s reputation will suffer
5. The reputation of individual members of its board will be damaged
6. The individual reputations and credibility of its chairman and chief executive will be harmed
7. The reputations and career prospects of identified, named inidividual decision-making executives will be affected negatively
8. Key executives will leave to join other companies
9. The company’s workplace morale and productivity will suffer
10. The company will find it harder to attract quality staff, downgrading the overall quality of its workforce
11. The company will find it harder to attract bank financing at a reasonable price
12. Insurance will be harder to attact at a reasonable price

TRUST AND ACTION

•  Based on your existing knowledge of the company’s activities and undertakings on climate change and environmental depletion, which of the following five outcomes do you consider most likely: 

1. More bad news will come out about this company
2. Management will try to bluff it out and ignore the increasing risk to its reputation of being seen not to act more effectively on CCE
3. Management will attempt to be seen to act on the concerns of the public, but only through increased promotional and public relations activity
4. Management will attempt to obfuscate and block communication between the public, the media and its employees
5. Management will apply real commitment and make a demonstrable, transformative and positive success of its effort to act on its environmental footprint and CCE liabilities

• On the critical question of trust, to what degree do you agree with this statement:

"I now associate this company more with the damage to the environment it is responsible for than I do with whatever good things it claims to do on behalf of its community."