From corporate citizenship to a comprehensive corporate responsibility strategy

Challenge

The leading car glass specialist in Germany pursues an integrated sustainability approach with the motto "repair rather than replace". In addition, since 2011 Carglass has been attaching great importance to social commitment within the company with the help of its "Giving Back" foundation. Within the framework of the foundation, Carglass makes a contribution to the support of children and young people. This has established a focus on corporate citizenship projects, which had higher priority than sustainability issues in the core business.

The challenge in this project was to develop corporate responsibility (CR) and sustainability activities beyond the foundation, while at the same time maintaining the great importance of "giving back". The main aim was to expand the foundation's mindset across all departments as part of a holistic sustainability and CR strategy and to provide a conceptual framework for all CR activities. 

Solution and Impact

In order to develop a comprehensive CR and sustainability strategy, various workshops were held together with Carglass on the topics of materiality analysis, strategy development, organizational development, as well as internal communications and marketing. Key sustainability topics were defined for the core business and beyond, the inclusion of the value chain was discussed and, for example, clients from the insurance industry were involved, internal processes were optimized, an interdisciplinary steering committee was established and workshops with the sales department were held. It was crucial to provide Carglass' CR activities with a conceptual framework into which existing measures can be embedded and future developments integrated. The function of the newly established steering committee is to identify CR and sustainability topics and to evaluate them in terms of their relevance for business activities. The steering committee therefore includes members from the most important departments who coordinate all of the company's sustainability activities at the interface between strategy and operations and make recommendations to management. To involve the workforce, an animated film was produced and a booth was set up at the annual employee conference on the subject of sustainability. The aim was not only to convey the importance of sustainability and CR for Carglass, but also to show options for taking action. As a result, several "CR Ambassadors" from various departments could be won over who are committed to sustainability at Carglass.

Within the framework of the project with fors.earth, Carglass was able to further expand its pioneering role in sustainability and CR in the industry and set a good example both internally and externally.