corporate social responsibility

Each day, Randstad’s 34,550 employees in 52 countries put about 670,000 people to work. Serving clients and candidates is certainly good business, but for Randstad employees it means 670,000 unique success stories every day. Each of us takes pride in knowing that we have helped candidates find jobs, gain experience and achieve a higher level of economic and social well-being.

Randstad’s central role in society

Ever since our beginnings in the 1960s, Randstad has been very aware that our success depends on society as a whole benefiting from the positive effects of everyone working together. Randstad is at the heart of a network of many stakeholders, including clients, unions, governments and candidates, and we take our responsibility to them seriously. We take pride in finding suitable jobs for our candidates and suitable candidates for our clients, but our commitment to society does not stop there.

Our merger with Vedior has served to strengthen our commitment to the role we play in society. The additional expertise across our expanded network allows us to impact society and serve our stakeholders more deeply across our markets. As we have grown in scale and scope, it is our ambition to reflect this in our approach to social responsibility. Our presence in over fifty markets globally enables us to make immediate differences locally. It also means we face the challenge of measuring and comparing the impact of activities across markets, which are subject to different definitions, benchmarks, social practices and local regulations.

As we further align our operations and activities across our markets, we are establishing key performance indicators for social responsibility relevant to our business spread and activities.

Reporting indicators and measurements

We base our reporting on the CSR indicators proposed by the Global Reporting Initiative that are of relevance to the HR sector. These indicators are:

• labor market relations and stakeholder dialogue, engaging all the players in the employment sector;
• diversity measures and (re)-integration programs, broadening the talent pool for Randstad and our clients while improving access to the labor market for those marginalized in society;
• career advancement and training, for both candidates and corporate employees;
• health, safety and security, focusing on our proactive initiatives to promote health and prevent accidents;
• client, candidate and employee satisfaction;
• code of conduct and integrity code;
• volunteerism;
• environmental measures, including energy consumption and waste management.

In order to increase consistency and transparency, we have implemented a baseline model for reporting on these KPIs. The model reflects our internal reporting on the defined indicators per percentage of our people measured in FTEs. We aim to increase these percentages each year to illustrate performance and improvements.

To accurately reflect the reporting spread, quantitative, anecdotal and non-consolidated are used to indicate the type of data available centrally across the Randstad Group. ‘Non-consolidated’ refers to data that has not yet been standardized in the data collection process, this year largely due to the integration with former Vedior companies ongoing in this period. The challenge of consolidating data from our new operations is compounded by the fact that existing individual sectors and markets currently adhere to different methodologies and definitions to address these indicators. The task of aligning measurement systems to standardize data will be closely reviewed so that we are positioned to face these challenges more effectively.

In the future, we will supplement this model with detailed aspects for each individual indicator, to provide clear insights into performance and the criteria used to steer policy and CSR activities across the Group. It is also our objective to keep increasing coverage and consolidation each year, so that we eventually cover all aspects in our entire Group with a focus on increasing the quantitative measurements where appropriate.

Labor market relations and stakeholder dialogue
Effective communication is critical to the success of our business and is a priority for us. We fulfill our role as a labor market authority by sharing our knowledge, insights and experience in open dialogue with our all our stakeholders.

Employee participation in social dialogue is encouraged through a network of works councils that bring together managers and employees across the organization regularly to discuss work and HR-related issues. Results of dialogues in the country works councils are fed into an international platform that meets twice a year to discuss policy issues and information relevant to Randstad Group companies. Randstad also actively engages in dialogues with labor unions, both nationally and internationally. UNI-Europa, the representative labor union for skills and services in Europe, are invited to attend the international platform meetings as observers.

At a pan-European level, UNI-Europa and the European Confederation of Private Employment Agencies (Euro-CIETT) meet in the sectoral Social Dialogue committee, a forum allowing union representatives and private employment agencies to convene to discuss issues of mutual importance. Randstad is represented in the delegation of Euro-CIETT, and participates with the Social Dialogue committee for temporary agency work to further professionalize and gain more societal acceptance for the industry. Moderated by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs & Equal Opportunities, the committee met three times during 2008. Discussions included the joint declaration on the recently adopted Agency Work Directive, a joint research on ‘Temporary Agency Work contribution to transitions in the EU Labor market: the example of vocational training’ and the promotion of national social dialogue, especially in eastern European countries. Further, the Dublin Foundation finalized their report on ‘Temporary Agency Work and Collective Bargaining in the EU’ and social partners initiated a project on the European Observatory on cross border activities within Temporary Agency Work, to be concluded in 2009.