Profile
December 01 2000
byThink of Boots and you're in Boots the Chemists, the market leader in healthcare, cosmetics, toiletries, and baby and photographic products. And yes, this is a big chunk of the company's business - over 1,400 retail stores in the UK. You might also think of own-brand products manufactured by the company, and Boots opticians - another 300 or so stores there. But Boots now also includes Halfords, the UK's largest retailer of car and cycle parts and accessories, almost 70 stores across Thailand, the Netherlands and Japan, plus interests in property, the development and marketing of consumer healthcare products internationally, and handbag.com - a website for women and the company's joint venture foray into e-commerce.
Diversification and internationalisation are always challenges for the community practitioner. For Boots, place and history seem to exert a stronger interest than in most: after a major review, Boots new national community programme will use Nottingham, site of the first herbalist store run by its founder, Jesse Boot in 1871, as a test-bed for ideas. And the new theme will be health and well-being, core to the company since the very beginning.
Jesse Boot and his wife Florence, both committed Methodists, built the business on a belief in using bulk-buying power to bring a wide range of goods to the public at the lowest possible price. Florence played an important part in developing the business from a pharmacy into a department store, stocking toiletries, books, stationery, picture frames and perfumes. Through her belief in welfare and self-development for both employees and customers, it was also Florence who anticipated one of Boots' current flagship community projects: in 1899 she set up a series of store-based libraries called Books for Booklovers - precursor of the company's Boots Books for Babies , which has seen books issued by libraries to the under-twos rise by over 400% in some areas since its start at the end of 1998. She also encouraged a more holistic, social attitude to shopping, by introducing coffee shops at some stores.
From 1893, a welfare department co-ordinated medical facilities, education and sports and social clubs for Boots employees. Later, in 1920, Boots became one of the first private companies to set up and run a school jointly with a local authority. The Boots Day Continuation School offered all employees under 18 the chance to study arts, sciences, handicrafts, physical education and vocational courses. The education theme continued through the twenties, with Jesse Boot providing massive support for the development of Nottingham University.
Boots was also the UK pioneer of a reduction in the working week to five days with no reduction in pay. During the second world war of 1939-45, Boots sent a Mobile Infant Welfare Unit to blitzed cities, among other contributions.
The next major milestone was 1970, when Boots established its Charitable Trust. The Trust has since donated £7.5 million to over 14,800 charities. However other activities began to run in tandem, prompting Sandra Rose, head of community investment since January 2000, to recommend that the Trust's activities be co-ordinated with these other streams of activity.
Sandra took up the post, after 14 years in public relations and corporate affairs at Boots, with a remit to develop a new, international community strategy for the company. She kicked off with a series of workshops to identify business issues and challenges. Some 35 participants, drawn mainly from outside the business and the Nottingham area, represented interests such as the local Health Action Zone, police drugs prevention work and local voluntary services. Key emerging messages were to associate the programme even more closely with the theme of health, and to build on Boots tradition of developing staff from within. There was also support for a more national, less Nottingham-based approach.
Sandra reviewed some 30 current community projects taking into account factors such as the inputs and outputs involved, opportunities to involve employees, scope for developing and scaling up each project, and any gaps. She also conducted a benchmarking study of nine other companies, both within Boots' own sector and other corporate social responsibility leaders.
Business strategy
The new national community strategy, launched within Boots this summer and to be rolled out over the coming months, focuses on a key business imperative: that Boots is fundamentally about helping its customers look after their health and well-being. Future activities will build on three key themes:
Delivering a wide range of school-based activities, a volunteer reading programme, work placements and school governor opportunities;
Developing long-term, quality partnerships with local community groups and the statutory sector, including Boots Books for Babies ;
Skills for Life , which sees the development of links with employees across the businesses and with community partners.
New projects will be announced as the strategy gathers momentum from Spring 2001, and the company will aim to manage the discontinuation of others as sensitively as possible: its commitment to Boots Books for Babies , for example, has just been renewed for a further five years, leveraging funding and involvement from local authorities and library services to try to ensure sustainability in future.
Employees' community involvement will be more closely allied with their development plans and performance appraisals, through a growing collaboration with the company's human resources department.
Further ahead, there are plans to develop the strategy internationally, reflecting Boots' retail and manufacturing interests overseas.
Flagship projects
For the time being the most high profile projects are Boots Books for Babies , and the Boots Recycling Projec t, which has so far distributed more than £1.4 million-worth (at cost value)_of surplus merchandise this year to community groups. Other projects over the past year have reflected the company's health interests - a ' Look Lively ' event to raise awareness of healthy lifestyles for some 12,000 people from the Nottingham area, for example, and support for charities such as Breast Cancer Care and the National Osteoporosis Society. The company has also used its stores to raise awareness of specific health issues and provide practical advice and support to the public - on eczema, back pain and sun exposure, to name a few.
The Boots Recycling Project is now based, with the Community Investment Centre, at a listed building on the massive Boots manufacturing and warehousing site, still home to some 8,000 employees. Demand for product is huge - 85 bags of make-up and other products had been given away within the first couple of hours of the Recycling Centre's re-opening in its new home.
Programme management
Sandra reports to Alastair Eperon, director of group corporate affairs, and manages a team of eleven. The £4.2 million spend for 1999 comprised:
£2.6m in cash contributions;
£1.4m in gifts in kind;
£188,000 in employee time;
£71,000 in management costs.
In future there will be greater central control and the Charitable Trust monies will be integrated into the total community investment spend to ensure synergy with the new strategy.
Regeneration
Boots sees its commitment to traditional high street locations - rather than out-of-town sites - as a key part of its unique selling point as a business. Boots the Chemists manages this aspect of the company's social responsibility, and gave financial support to more than half the Town Centre Management regeneration initiatives in the UK during 1999. It has invested in the National Association of Town Centre Managers and researched suburban issues with the Civic Trust and Rowntree Foundation. It has also hosted seminars on good practice, and helped produce four publications on effective town centre management schemes.
Boots is also active with Sainsbury's in supporting a town centre management initiative called Talk of the Town - a CD_Rom which offers teachers and students the opportunity to use issues related to town centre development as a context for teaching and learning.
There is a link with community investment here, because employees at local stores are encouraged to support their local communities and Sandra is keen to develop this further.
Community investment also seems likely to assume a higher profile in Boots' branding in future, as part of a move to align the strategy more closely with business objectives.
Boots issued its first environment report for external audiences in 1999, citing targets for energy, transport, carbon dioxide, global warming, waste packaging and water. Some projects supported include the Boots The Chemists Christmas Card recycling scheme, Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust, and tree-planting with the National Trust. A future social report is not ruled out.
Future challenges
Key challenges for the future are:
maintaining the motivation of the community investment staff team through the transition period accompanying the new strategy;
finding the right fit with the company's business direction - making the community strategy part of the company's drive to respond to what customers want;
securing support at top levels within the company, and buy-in throughout all levels;
translating the programme on to a global level, reflecting Boots' interests in diverse markets overseas.
Also keeping under review:
the balance between Nottingham stakeholder interests on the one hand, reflecting the company's heart and history, and national and international stakeholder interests on the other hand, reflecting the company's consumer brand status and presence on high streets around the country (and, increasingly, the world);
Linked to this, how the company's response to urban regeneration issues fits with its community investment strategy.
The company has a strong, 130-year tradition of concern with health, well-being and the personal development of customers and employees, and the new strategy clearly seeks to build on this. Jesse and Florence Boot would doubtless take a close interest in how the projects unfold.