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Regularly engaging stakeholders is an important part of any corporation's Corporate Responsibility (CR) platform. Sprint recognizes this and began dialoguing with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and investors regarding CR issues in 2008, with guidance from Business for Social Responsibility (BSR). Based on the positive experience, Sprint built on its initial stakeholder relationships and expanded them so that it had NGO and/or investor engagement on nearly every facet of its CR priorities.
When Sprint joined Ceres in May 2010, it was able to take advantage of Ceres's 20 years of experience in leading meaningful and effective stakeholder engagement. Ceres specializes in bringing companies together with investors, environmental and social-issue experts; public-interest organizations; and other stakeholders in face-to-face dialogues to find smart business solutions to each company's biggest sustainability challenges.
Sprint held its first formal stakeholder meeting in June 2011 with a panel comprised of 12 representatives from relevant NGOs, Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) groups, academia and a key business partner. The Panel reviewed Sprint's revised materiality assessment and proposed three-year plan for CR and offered feedback on Sprint's CR performance for 2010. Sprint provided an update to their feedback in March 2012, which is summarized below.
Stakeholder Recommendations |
Sprint's Response |
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| Governance could be strengthened by formalizing reporting to the board of directors on sustainability issues and designating a board committee for formal oversight of CR. | The CR team presented this recommendation to the CR Steering Committee in November 2011. The Steering Committee was amenable to the recommendation and Dan Hesse, Sprint's CEO, agreed to discuss the opportunity with Sprint's Chairman of the Board. The board of directors is expected to decide whether or not they will accept this responsibility by the end of 2012. The CR team will make its first formal presentation to the board in August 2012 . | |
| Link executive-compensation packages to sustainability-performance results. | In November 2011, the CR team raised the issue of more explicitly linking executive compensation to sustainability-performance results, an idea that the members of the CR Steering Committee were amenable to considering. Sprint's sustainability goals are already incorporated into performance objectives for several members of the executive team. Sprint is assessing the opportunity to have a greater percentage of executives, and perhaps further down in the management chain, require CR objectives as part of their annual performance plan. | |
| Sustainability as a customer advantage. | Sprint views sustainability as a customer advantage and has continued to build interest about the power of our Machine to Machine (M2M) solutions to provide environmental and social solutions for both our customers and our partners' customers. M2M solutions are a true differentiator for Sprint and ones that are expected to receive increased focus going forward. | |
| Capture and publically disclose the ROI of sustainability efforts. | Sprint has taken steps to incorporate sustainability criteria into R&D and capital-investment decisions. Sprint shared ROI data for energy-efficiency projects in its CDP submission this year. Sprint also sees the opportunity as extending beyond ROI — sharing the bottom-line benefits that the company is able to drive through its sustainability and CR efforts. This includes cost reduction, revenue growth, incremental investment and employee benefits (recruitment, retention and engagement). Sprint is beginning to thread some of this content into its CR website, and expects to expand this into all of external CR messaging. | |
| Provide additional details on Sprint's Eco-Logo scoring for products and consider open-sourcing the eco-criteria to advance sustainable- product development. | In January 2012, Sprint announced that it had begun requiring its vendors to take devices through the Underwriters Laboratory Environment (ULE) 110 assessment process as part of Sprint's development process. Furthermore, certification to the ULE 110 standard would constitute 50% of the device score on Sprint's environmental scorecard for its handset suppliers. In throwing its full support around the nascent ULE standard, Sprint is placing greater emphasis on driving the sustainability of all Sprint wireless phones rather than on individual iconic phones. This approach also drives faster market acceptance of the standard. Sprint is currently assessing the future role of its Device Eco-Logo and whether or not it still adds value to the consumer or to the sustainability practices of the manufacturers. The ULE standard was developed through a multi-stakeholder process and is publicly available. | |
Develop goals and targets around social sustainability issues. |
As of July 2012, Sprint is formalizing social targets to complement its sustainability targets. Sprint has already taken an industry-leading approach in important social areas, such as distracted-driving awareness, providing Internet-safety materials to teens and schools, and ensuring that customers of all ability levels have access to communications tools; the company looks forward to increasing its social outreach even more in the future and to creating performance targets to measure success in these areas. | |
| Increase engagement with customers on sustainability issues with particular focus on B2B clients. | Sprint appreciates this feedback and has been actively working to increase its direct engagement with individual consumers and business customers on sustainability issues. Sprint has added the chief sales officer to our CR Steering Committee and the senior vice president of Business Sales and vice president of the Online Channel to our CR Leadership Committee. Sprint has created sales presentations, collateral and business cases for the sales team to use and also expanded the green consumer microsite to include a dedicated section for business services. | |
| Provide additional communication and education around the potential health impacts of mobile-phone usage. | Sprint accepted this recommendation and has now added content on its CR website regarding the potential health impacts of mobile phone usage. In 2012, Sprint expanded the content by adding detailed information on SAR standards in its GRI disclosure within the Telecommunications Supplement. | |
| Increase credibility through further transparency and disclosure, primarily around accessibility, distracted driving, content controls and freedom of expression. | In 2011, Sprint's CR website underwent a complete overhaul. In addition to adding an interactive GRI index (self-rated B level), a sustainability scorecard, materiality assessment, stakeholder feedback and 2010 CR report, Sprint updated and increased information on distracted driving and accessibility, including the launch of a revamped website focused exclusively on accessibility for the disabled, and updates to its distracted-driving site. The CR website was further updated in July 2012 to include additional information regarding content controls, privacy and at other social issues. | |
| Consider playing an active role in influencing public policy, at the state and national level, including on climate/energy policy and recycling or takeback policy. | Sprint has been increasing engagement regarding public policy, participating in areas such as renewable-energy policies, conflict minerals, e-waste and standards development. Examples of this engagement include joining the Public Private Alliance on Conflict Minerals, signing on to an EPA e-waste initiative (as one of three leading U.S. companies to serve as an example of positive e-waste management), providing comments to regulators regarding proposed e-waste legislation, and sending a letter to the leaders of the House of Representatives and Senate urging them to extend the Production Tax Credit for wind energy. Sprint also speaks in public forums about the importance of renewable-energy use in the U.S., best practices in e-waste management, the benefits of sustainable packaging, and other key areas where Sprint can positively influence regulators and other businesses to adopt more sustainable practices. Sprint works with the EPA on renewable energy, energy efficiency, fleet management and operational waste, and also works with the US Department of Energy (DOE) on battery-storage research and hydrogen fuel-cell use for networks. Sprint's CEO, Dan Hesse, joined the Advisory Panel for Climate One through the Commonwealth Club in early 2011. |
In May 2012, Sprint conducted its second Stakeholder Panel session with an in-person meeting at its Overland Park, Kan., headquarters. Three representatives from Ceres and 13 stakeholder representatives attended. The majority of the stakeholders were the same as in 2011. While many of Sprint's senior-executive team participated in the 2011 Stakeholder Panel, this level of engagement increased even further in 2012 with the vast majority of senior executives attending the latter panel in person and taking part in direct communication with our stakeholder representatives through panel discussions, breakout sessions and other outreach opportunities. Sprint CEO, Dan Hesse, delivered opening remarks and spent time directly addressing the stakeholders' questions and concerns. Mr. Hesse also requested and received a briefing the day after the Stakeholder Meeting to understand the feedback Sprint had received and how Sprint could incorporate this feedback.
In addition to the formal Stakeholder Panel, Sprint engages a broad range of NGOs that have experience on specific issues such as green electronics, paper certification, e-waste, human rights and scope 3-emissions measurement. Each CR working committee seeks to establish relationships with one to three NGOs and/or investor stakeholders for dialog on the related issue as well as strategy, proposed policy, measurement and reporting. These relationships have been invaluable and have resulted in more knowledgeable team members on the working committees and stronger, more comprehensive policies that incorporate the perspective of stakeholder partners. The Learn More box at the top of this page provides additional details about these efforts.
In addition to the formal CR stakeholder engagement with Ceres and the working committees, Sprint regularly solicits input from its customers, employees, suppliers and business partners. Each is appreciated as an essential source of input into Sprint's assessment of its performance and future plans.