In a knowledge business like Thomson Reuters, people really are a key asset. A lot of companies say that, but this year’s Corporate Responsibility Report highlights the many ways in which our staff do make a difference in their local communities and neighborhoods. This was never more visible than when Hurricane Sandy hit, affecting many of our Stamford and New York colleagues. We had employees working around the clock to make sure that our customers weren’t impacted by the storm as well as some that also found time to help out in their communities through clean up projects or by serving food.

Our learning and development colleagues run some great training programs, from new graduates to senior leadership. But stepping up in times of crisis or when the chips are down isn’t something that is taught in a program. It’s part of our DNA, it’s what we do around here and is something that we can be proud of. Last year we committed 35,661 paid volunteering hours and this year we are aiming to more than double that to 80,000 hours. Now our staff get two paid days per year to commit to the charity of their choice, everyone can do more to make a difference in their local community.

If you want to find out more about our workplace policies and how we support our staff, check out this year’s Corporate Responsibility Report.

UPDATE:

We are now pleased to introduce the online version of our Corporate Responsibility Report for the 2012 calendar year which is ready for you to view and share.

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We are pleased to launch our 2012 Corporate Responsibility Report highlighting some of the fantastic work we do. This second annual report showcases the passions of our colleagues who commit their time and service to their local communities, features products and services which support customers in their CR & sustainability efforts and demonstrates how we live our values across the global workplace.

In the next couple of week we will launch our interactive online report and we will be highlighting more stories and features on this blog.

We encourage you to view and share the 2012 Thomson Reuters Corporate Responsibility Report and let us know what you think.

We were recently recognised by the Ethisphere Institute as one of the 2013 World’s Most Ethical Companies (WME).

This is the sixth occasion, and the fifth year in a row, that Thomson Reuters has been honored for promoting the highest ethical standards. Out of a record number of nominations for the award, Thomson Reuters secured a position on the list by implementing and maintaining upright business practices and initiatives that are instrumental to the company’s success, benefit the community and raise the bar for ethical standards within the industry.

“Our Code of Business Conduct and Ethics and the Trust Principles are a part of how we do business at Thomson Reuters”, said Deirdre Stanley, executive vice president and general counsel at Thomson Reuters. “Everyone acting on Thomson Reuters behalf has a responsibility to uphold the standard of ethics inherent in our policies through their daily work. We are honored to receive this recognition.”

Through in-depth research and a multi-step analysis, Ethisphere reviewed nominations from companies in more than 100 countries and 36 industries.

The methodology for the World’s Most Ethical Companies includes reviewing codes of ethics, litigation and regulatory infraction histories; evaluating the investment in innovation and sustainable business practices; looking at activities designed to improve corporate citizenship; and studying nominations from senior executives, industry peers, suppliers and customers.

Read about the methodology and view the complete list of the 2013 World’s Most Ethical Companies. You can check out the full press release here.

 

Today sees the launch of Sustainability on thomsonreuters.com.  This great new micro site showcases how we leverage our knowledge and expertise to work together on a big agenda – Sustainability.

The site will showcase stories and insights from experts within our business and a diverse range of opinions from external partners. We hope that this will become the “go-to” place for news and commentary on hot topics like climate, energy, health, law and corporate governance to inform, engage and challenge customers, employees, journalists, bloggers and interested citizens.

Check out the new site for yourself and let us know what you think in the comments below.

One of the reasons we produce our own standalone Corporate Responsibility report is to have the space to showcase the detail behind all of our good work. It is a platform for the talent and commitment of our employees; giving greater transparency that many other businesses provide in their annual report or regulatory returns.

We know that our employees are really proud of what they contribute to the organisation’s corporate responsibility footprint and how that story is told in our report. Our customers get to see a different aspect of us and investors have the chance to use key data to add to their assessment of a company’s long term sustainability and profitability.

We report our ESG scores (environmental, social and governance) on our website and following the launch of our first ever companywide CR report we have seen our overall scores improv from B to A-.

Millions around the world watched the London 2012 Olympic opening ceremony and were thrilled at the spectacle.  But did you know that 15,000 volunteers took part, including some of our own colleagues.  Volunteers were first used in the London 1948 games and it’s great to see that this tradition is still going strong.

Volunteering is a key component of our Corporate Responsibility strategy for citizenship and we know it provides benefits for the business, individual, as well as good causes for the wider community.  We support our staff by giving them all one paid day to work for the charity of their choice and last year our staff clocked up over 20,000 of volunteering time. Next year we hope that it will be even more!  Check out our CR report to read more about our activities.

In our recently launched 2011 Corporate Responsibility report we frame our Corporate Responsibility ambitions in terms of “having a positive impact on the world around us”.

We do this directly through our commitment to communities and indirectly with our products and services helping others to make a positive difference to their communities. From Point Carbon providing energy information to markets, to supporting responsible investors with ASSET 4 – our products help global sustainability.

Working together with all our stakeholders, we believe we can extend our positive influence across the globe using events like the World Economic Forum in Davos or the Aspen Ideas Festival to share knowledge and thought leadership

If you want to know more about our great products and services, check out the full report here.

This week we launched our Community Champions Awards programme, celebrating the volunteer commitments of our employees. Over the last 10 years running this programme, we have donated $1m to non-profit groups across the world.

We know from our annual employee engagement survey that being seen as a business driven by an ethos of social responsibility is something that our employees hold dear. More than that we know that this ethos is a key driver in their engagement with our business, leading to increased customer service and satisfaction.

Our Corporate Responsibility report contains more information on the Community Champions programme and all our other community activities.

For more on this and to check out our other community programmes click here.

This week saw the launch of our first global Corporate Responsibility Report looking back over our achievements in 2011.

This is an important first step on our journey to having a more sophisticated and mature approach to CR – going beyond simply reporting on our charitable and philanthropic activities.

In this report we reflect on our 4 core areas: (more…)

The Peter Jackson Fellowship announced  last year was awarded to Siddharth Gopal and Yubin Kim to support cutting-edge research in information retrieval. The students’ research is focused on hierarchical modeling of data and text analysis of social media, respectively. The Fellowship was funded by Thomson Reuters, as well as individual employee and matching gift contributions to honor the late Dr Jackson, Chief Scientist and Vice President of Research and Development.

Dr. Jackson’s research interests included natural language processing, automated reasoning, expert systems, recommender systems and information retrieval. He was passionate about designing and building systems that transform how professionals find, interact with and consume information so it seemed natural that we should create 2 fellowships at former university Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science.  More information on the fellowship and the students can be found here.