An Post’s Address Point campaign commended at Ireland CSR RepTrak® event
An Post’s Address Point initiative for the homeless community was highlighted as a best practice example of CSR at the Ireland CSR RepTrak 2019 event today. The event was held at the Witness History Museum, GPO and hosted by The Reputations Agency and An Post. Address Point is a free service that provides a fixed address to those without a fixed home. It enables the homeless to receive regular post and access essential services. One third of the adult homeless community have signed-up for the Address Point service from An Post since launch in April 2019.
At the Ireland CSR RepTrak®2019 event Bord Bia was named as the organisation with the best Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reputation in Ireland, according to results of the Ireland CSR RepTrak® 2019 study. Credit Unions (2nd), IRFU (3rd), Kellogg’s (4th) and Google (5th) occupied the remaining top five positions. This is the sixth annual study of the top CSR reputations in Ireland, ranking 100 of the largest and most visible organisations on the three CSR dimensions of Citizenship, Governance, and Workplace. The independent study was carried out by The Reputations Agency and the global Reputation Institute.
Niamh Boyle, Managing Director, The Reputations Agency said, “There is a clear business case for top performing companies to implement CSR initiatives. Our latest Ireland CSR RepTrak® 2019study shows that the public’s perceptions of an organisation’s performance in Citizenship, Governance, and Workplace account for 46% of an organisation’s overall reputation score, helping to build trust, admiration, and good feeling towards these organisations. This emotional bond drives support from stakeholders such as consumers, employees, neighbouring communities, the financial community, government, and regulators.”
“The CSR RepTrak data shows the business value of building a good reputation for corporate citizenship. While only 18% of the general public are willing to buy products or services from an organisation with a weak CSR RepTrak® Index, the proportion who are willing to buy from an organisation with a strong CSR index rises to 62%.”
Address Point is a personal address and mail collection service for people who are homeless or living in temporary accommodation. Anna McHugh, Head of Communications at An Post; Enda Kelly, Joint-Managing Director at JWT, and Catherine Walsh, Head of CSR at The Reputations Agency presented on the Address Point service, from concept to delivery, highlighting the importance of CSR. The campaign has won two international awards since launch in April – A Cannes Lion Award in the Sustainable Development Goals Category, and a Clio Award.
Speaking about Address Point, Enda Kelly, Joint-Managing Director at JWT, said: “An Post has always had a very strong sense of purpose. As Ireland’s national postal service, An Post exists to improve the quality of life for people in Ireland, now and for generations to come, leaving no one behind. But unfortunately, there is one group in society that is being left behind. The homelessness figure has passed 10,000 and we are in the middle of a homelessness crisis. The irony of homelessness is that to get help, you need an address. Without an address, and reliable access to written correspondence, it is often difficult to access essential services like healthcare, education and employment.”
Anna McHugh, Head of Communications at An Post said, “Companies engage in CSR for a number of reasons, including improving employee engagement and satisfaction, increasing customer loyalty, and taking responsibility for the quality of their local environment. With the launch of Address Point, An Post worked to improve the communities they operate in. We can’t solve the homelessness problem but by working with partners we can improve access to essential services. We created an infrastructure that could help break the cycle of homelessness and came up with the idea of Address Point – a digital proxy address, linked to a local post office – giving the homeless of Ireland access to reliable written correspondence.”
Catherine Walsh, Head of the CSR at The Reputations Agency said, “Earning a strong reputation for corporate social responsibility brings both societal and business performance benefits but is a challenge to many organisations who invest considerably but simply don’t get the cut through that they deserve. We’ve built up significant expertise in CSR and, we collaborated with An Post to build a multi-phased, multi-platform CSR communications strategy around the launch of Address Point – a World’s First – which reached over 34 million people. ”
The Ireland CSR RepTrak® 2019 survey asked 7,000 members of the general public to rate how well they felt 100 organisations performed across three dimensions and ten attributes of Corporate Social Responsibility; measuring the degree to which they are seen to act responsibly towards their communities and the environment in which they operate, ensuring that that their businesses are responsibly run, and treating their staff well. The online survey also asked members of the public to name examples of what companies do to make them a good corporate citizen. The study found that the more genuine and authentic an organisation is in its activities and its communication, the higher their CSR reputation.