Reporting and Measurement
Monitoring what we have done
Evidencing our corporate resonsibility performance relies on our ability
to access reliable and accurate data, and on our ability to measure
ourselves against documented and accredited robust Performance Indicators
(PIs).
We collect three types of data:
| Type of data | Relevant to, for example |
| Financial Accounting data | Procurement |
| Management Information data | Human Resources |
| Compliance | |
| Event-driven data |
Environment |
| Philanthropy | |
Measuring the integrity of data
Our approach has been to continue building on the controls and processes
established in prior years. Our current process flow is as set out in
the outline workflow below.
The Corporate Responsibility team has previously identified the core PIs to reflect the nature of the business, key resources and associated impacts. This enables us, with a fair degree of accuracy, to measure, track and report our performance as a company.
Our main objective this year has been to extend our data capture to more of our overseas offices. In order to do this we have had to establish a network of data coordinators to prepare and submit data, along with supporting documentation. Much of this year’s analysis has drawn, for the first time, on data from Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, India, Dubai and Ireland. This means that even given our increased headcount, our reported results now represent around 80% of our people.
The data coordinators input this data in a consistent format via our in-house developed ManWorld intranet. This year, we have enhanced our corporate responsibility application to enable greater central administration and review of submitted data, as well as significantly improved functionality thanks to the addition of an Oracle-based report generator.
Evidencing the integrity of our
data
As signalled in last year’s report, we have commissioned the accreditation
services of The Virtuous Circle, who as part of their review process
have thoroughly examined the systems, procedures and documentation which
support the collection, analysis and reporting of our data. As well
as ensuring the integrity of the data and the process by which it was
obtained, they have also assessed the ways it has been interpreted and
reported, to ensure fairness and accuracy.
Our objectives for next year
Given Man Group’s ever-changing dynamics and constantly growing headcount,
the challenges of data collection will not disappear anytime soon. We
see each year as a chance to develop and refine our approach, with a
view to achieving enhanced data granularity and greater understanding.
This year we will need to look carefully at the impact of the intended Initial Public Offering of MF Global on our comparative data and the treatment of resources and their measurement at shared sites. While the reduced Group will certainly have fewer data coordinators, we view this as an opportunity to engage more closely with them, and embed appropriate elements of the data collation process in local offices.
Over the last year, our success in sourcing data from our overseas offices has led to an explosion in the sheer quantity of raw data. We will continue to upgrade our IT systems to enable us to handle it better and deliver improved reporting functionality. This in turn will enable us to automate the consolidation and analysis process as far as possible, thereby minimising the need for manual intervention.
As the benefits from and reliance on our Corporate Responsibility Programme gain increasing recognition and appreciation, there will be a need for more frequent reporting and tracking of PIs. We aim this year to develop for senior management a ‘dashboard’ style quarterly report, not only tracking our PIs but also delivering selected high level ‘gold standard’ indicators to comply with the Business Review requirements of the Companies Act.
Click chart to enlarge