Corporate Responsibility Key To Future Success

5 December 2008

Corporate Responsibility Key To Future Business Success

Ethical behaviour and business sustainability through planned corporate responsibility programmes are essential to future business success, New Zealand Post Group Chief Executive John Allen said today.

Commenting on the Ethical Governance category award to New Zealand Post Group at last night’s 2008 Deloitte/Management Top 200 awards, Mr Allen said the company had long recognised it is not enough operate merely as a profitable business.

Last year the company further strengthened its corporate responsibility programme. In addition to providing a direct response to climate change, it has established benchmarks for its broader corporate responsibility practices and is working to enhance transparency and public engagement about the Group’s activities.

“As a State owned enterprise, we are required to be as profitable and efficient as a comparable privately owned business,” said Mr Allen. “We are demonstrably meeting our commercial obligations, with our financial performance in recent years reflecting a planned strategy of growth and diversification – including the establishment of Kiwibank and joint venture courier operations in New Zealand and Australia.

“But operating profitably is not sufficient. We must also be a good employer, and we must exhibit a sense of social responsibility for the communities in which we operate. For New Zealand Post Group, our communities are in every corner of New Zealand.

“Business sustainability for New Zealand Post Group is therefore underpinned by these two important factors: Providing a good rate of return to our shareholders – the Government, and therefore all New Zealanders – and an unqualified commitment to our social obligations through an integrated corporate responsibility programme that frames our community, environment, workplace and marketplace practices.

Mr Allen said last night’s award was a tribute everyone in the New Zealand Post Group – “but we are aware that our work in this area is continually evolving and that there is always room to improve. The challenge for us, and for all companies, is not just to keep pace with changing community expectations, but to anticipate society’s needs and keep ahead of them.”

Mr Allen also congratulated Kiwibank Chief Executive Sam Knowles and the minority-owned associate company, Datacom Limited, for being nominated in, respectively, the Executive of the Year and Company of the Year categories.

“Overall, it is very pleasing to see the leadership, performance and sustainability across the New Zealand Post Group being recognised by the wider business community,” he said.

ENDS

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