Sustainability Essay: Coles Limited's Current State And Material Issues.

Understanding Sustainability and CSR

Question:

Discuss About The Regulators Environmental Protection Groups?

The current explain the sustainability report of Coles Limited (Coles.com.au 2017). In this given assignment, appropriate prominence has been given on understanding the present state of sustainability for the largest Australian retailer company named as Coles Limited. Coles Limited focuses mainly on serving customers, suppliers, community and environment as a whole. At Coles Limited, their main responsibility is to affect every aspect of business and encourages being a little better on everyday basis (Coles.com.au 2017). Coles Limited is proud to lend a helping hand to the many business organization where the team members and clientele are involved in and across Australia. The current segment explains the issues that are faced by Coles Limited and linked with practices so that the company can reduce or minimize the issue in the upcoming financial year (Williams 2014).

Sustainability report is a report that is prepared by an organization that give detailed information about economic, environmental, social and governance performance. Corporate Social Responsibility can be termed as initiatives taken by Business Corporation for accessing and taking responsibility for the company effects on social and environmental wellbeing. The term CSR applies to efforts that go beyond what may be acquired by regulators or environmental protection groups.

As rightly put forward by Smith (2017), Coles Limited has been committed for formation of worth for its shareholders, communities, employees for more than a century from now (Coles.com.au 2017). It is only possible to create long-term value with the shareholders, if the company engages in playing a positive role in the community as a whole. At Coles Limited, sustainability is all about understanding as well as managing the impact that has on community and the environment to ensure how the company engages in creating value in the near future. The sustainability reporting of Coles Limited help in gaining proper understanding on how much effort is required for the company to deal or act in a ethical or responsible way.

According to Reisch, Eberle and Lorek (2013), Coles Limited provides fresh food, general merchandise, financial services, groceries as well as fuel and liquor to more than 21 million consumers on an average every week through its store system and online channels. Coles Limited have more than 1,02,000 team members and operates nationwide store network of 787 supermarkets, 89 hotels, 865 liquor stores as well as 690 fuel and convenience outlets.

Current State of Coles Limited's Sustainability Report

There are several material issues that are faced by Coles Limited and these are listed below with proper justification:

• Australian sourcing- One of the material issue faced by Coles Limited is Australian sourcing. In order to check over the problem, Coles Limited signed the Food and Grocery Code as well as issued a new code compliant terms and conditions that relates to supply agreements to all Coles suppliers (Lodhia and Hess 2014).
• Community partnerships and support - One of the material issues faced by Coles Limited is community partnerships and support. In order to minimize the problem, Coles Limited supports national as well as local charities along with fundraising activity, disaster relief and food donations (Henderson et al. 2015).
• Product quality and safety- One of the material issues faced by Coles Limited is product quality and safety (Coles.com.au 2017). In order to minimize the problem, Coles Limited started delivering quality as well as affordable products to the customers and improving brand range of brand. Coles Limited takes the responsible services of alcohol very seriously and participates in industry-wide initiatives that are designed for producing better health outcomes for the customers (Coles.com.au 2017).
• Climate change- Coles Limited believes that the world is changing at a faster pace. Climate change is present that include increased weather volatility, frequent weather events as well as higher average temperatures and drier climates that have the potential to impact the operations and supply chains (Coles.com.au 2017). The changes here had already affected people all around the world and continue to have serious implications for the customers, community as well as economy. On analysis, it is found that there are various risks that are controlled or managed by Coles Limited as investing in Australia’s response to climate change will deliver significant economic, social as well as environmental benefits to the community as a whole (Griffith, Hammersley and Kadous 2015).
• Increased carbon footprint- The issue that is faced by Coles Limited is increased carbon footprint (Coles.com.au 2017). To that, Coles Limited is working or rather been committed to minimize carbon footprint to deliver solutions that will help customers and the community as a whole. Coles Limited is constantly working hard to improve the level of performance as well as publicly report on the progress as mentioned in the sustainability report of the company (Edmonds et al. 2016).

According to Beattie (2014), Coles Limited is constantly exploring as well as investing in significant environmental projects and partnerships for reducing environmental impact (Coles.com.au 2017). Coles Limited is committed to offer customers on daily basis by providing quality fresh products and better shopping experience. Coles Limited aims at building stronger, deeper relationships with suppliers through reasonable transactions as well as continuing agreement. In addition, Coles Limited believes in increasing the level of transparency of the supply chain arrangement. Furthermore, Coles Limited works with business and administration for improving contract labor practices for fresh products in Australia. The company drives responsibly as well as ethically sourced products for the brand. Coles Limited promotes mental health with the team members (Beattie 2014). Coles Limited launched Mind your health programs by taking into consideration three pillars of approach that include alertness, management and risk reduction (Coles.com.au 2017). Here, mental health is the main key pillar of Coles Limited safety approach as well as invested in online heath assessments. Coles Limited believes in diverting more waste from landfill as well as expanding use of ecological covering and maximizing store recycling agenda. Coles Limited opened stores and operates for making a step change improvement in safety performance in the most appropriate way. Coles Limited mainly focus on increasing number of women leadership position in and across business. In addition, the agenda is mainly supported by a central plan as well as complementary tailored plan to each of the function in the business. Coles Limited believes in taking a holistic system to Indigenous service as well as have partnered with Excellence program that supports young indigenous Australia for getting access to learning (Drury 2013).

As rightly put forward by DesJardins and McCall (2014) Coles Limited is dedicated towards reducing the impact on the surroundings as well as continuously investing in significant environmental projects and partnerships for attainment of future goals and objectives. Coles Limited is dedicated towards sustaining suppliers where they grow their trade and continues to convey safe products for the clientele. Team members of Coles Limited are passionate about making a difference. The company involves in supporting charity partners as well as reducing the environmental impact as a whole. The main focus of Coles Limited is to continue work towards attainment of sustainable future at the time of supporting Aussie farmers as well as local community (Coles.com.au 2017).

Material Issues Faced by Coles Limited and the Measures to Reduce Them

Coles Limited conducts training and development programs for their team members that they had achieved within the passage of years (Coles.com.au 2017). More than 780 internal appointments are made from the retail leaders as well as retail operations graduate programs. In case of stakeholder engagement, Coles Limited believes in maintaining trust of the customers in offering best quality of products in terms of value. Coles Limited announced launch of Coles Quality Academy for providing Coles brand suppliers with significant superiority organization training as well as providing targeted training to the team members (Deegan 2013).

Safety at workplace is not yet achieved by Coles Limited (Coles.com.au 2017). Coles Limited should maintain workplace safety of their members so that employees feel safe while working in the business organization. Coles Limited faced issues because of increase in manual handling injuries in supermarkets as well as bringing computation method into line with other divisions of Wesfarmers Limited (Chen and Schipper 2016).

Conclusion

It is recommended that Coles Limited should reduce the current issue and find strategies to move towards dealing their operations in a sustainable way. It is suggested that Coles Limited delivers training programs for improving level of safety leadership as well as promoting safety awareness. At the end of the study, it is concluded that Coles Limited introduced two new energy data coverage systems for keeping a track of energy usage as well as energy competence projects. Coles Limited starts working with Green Building Council of Australia for finalizing a Greenstar rating tool for future freehold supermarket developments. Coles Limited engages in energy-saving initiatives as they have opened 620 stores and installed on refrigeration cases for reducing nigh-time energy use. Coles Limited operates in more than 520 stores as well as automatic lighting controls for reducing energy use outside trading period. In addition, Coles Limited engages in operating 420 stores and has access to anti-condensate heater controls that reduces energy use of the heaters in the doors. The study properly explains the current state of sustainability report of Coles Limited and finds ways so that they can deal their operations in the most ethical way.

Reference List

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Chen, Q. and Schipper, K., 2016. Comments and observations regarding the relation between theory and empirical research in contemporary accounting research. Foundations and Trends® in Accounting, 10(2-4), pp.314-360.

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Edmonds, T.P., Edmonds, C.D., Tsay, B.Y. and Olds, P.R., 2016. Fundamental managerial accounting concepts. McGraw-Hill Education.

Griffith, E.E., Hammersley, J.S. and Kadous, K., 2015. Audits of complex estimates as verification of management numbers: How institutional pressures shape practice. Contemporary Accounting Research, 32(3), pp.833-863.

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Reisch, L., Eberle, U. and Lorek, S., 2013. Sustainable food consumption: an overview of contemporary issues and policies. Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy, 9(2).

Smith, M., 2017. Research methods in accounting. Sage.

Williams, J., 2014. Financial accounting. McGraw-Hill Higher Education.