Corporate Responsibility

On 10 June 2011, more than 270 colleagues from our HR teams across the globe took part in the ‘One HR day’. United by one goal to connect with their local communities and each other, HR teams used their skills to improve their local communities, supporting a wide range of organisations.

To make the most of this opportunity and really connect with each other, teams agreed to all volunteer on the same day and to share their experiences and pictures via a global intranet site.

Partnering with 19 NGOs across the globe, teams spent their days tackling contrasting social issues, from working in food kitchens feeding the homeless in Minneapolis, Paris and Melbourne, to helping care for orphans in China and Bulgaria.

In Latin America, CBN, the main news radio station in Brazil praised the HR team for helping assist 180 unemployed people get back into the workplace. Working with a government institution, the HR team used their skills to run resume writing workshops, individual interview training sessions and one to one career sessions.

The day has proved a great success with rewarding results echoed across the regions; not only has it built bridges between teams that couldn’t be geographically further apart, it has also given people the opportunity to see firsthand the powerful contribution one team can make in resolving the challenges facing society.

April 2012 saw us launch our ‘Heart of Experian’; the results of a global initiative to further identify and define our culture. It was led by our Chief Executive Officer, Don Robert, and the aim was to celebrate and reinforce the things that make Experian a successful company and a great place to work.

The culture working party behind the initiative was drawn from the leadership across the business; individuals volunteered for the role after an inspiring session at Experian’s annual growth conference. As part of the process of identifying what it is that makes Experian unique, they quickly recognised that when you look at the diverse family of business units, that all 17,000 employees are united by three common things that despite our variety of roles, we all do, every day: connect, protect, and create. We now think of these three strands as our DNA, they are the things we do that make us who we are and express what we stand for.

Our corporate, and particularly our social responsibility was valued as a central element of the mix that makes us unique and so has been part of the programme of work streams that are now bringing the Heart of Experian to life across the business. And the theme for the 2012 senior management conference is ‘Emerging Growth, Emerging Responsibilities’ and we see it as an opportunity to further embed a sense of social responsibility and context in all we do.

Our regional environmental leaders have worked together, coordinated by our Global Environmental Adviser, to make great steps in improving our environmental performance across all Experian’s regions by setting local objectives. The single thing that has made this more viable has been the formation of virtual teams across the geographies, enabling leaders and data providers to connect with each other to achieve their goals by monitoring and managing their performance and sharing best practice.

Experian has always set global objectives to reduce the carbon emissions generated across our business but enabling engaged environmental teams to set formal commitments has improved reporting performance and accuracy, encouraged more people to report actual data and proved our teams are motivated and engaged to go the extra mile.

The targets vary from ambitions to achieve 95% actual data coverage to reducing electricity consumption by 2% on prior year figures. Using our online reporting tool to generate reports, we have been able to measure and analyse centrally how we are progressing against our objectives and then form action plans with the support of the environmental adviser to ensure goals are reached. So far, results have been impressive; all regions set targets, and four regions over-achieved their targets. Regional management teams will be presented with yearly and half-yearly CR reports including sections on environmental performance demonstrating financial costs, impacts and benefits at a regional level.

This achievement doesn’t just speak about the quality of our data reporting but also about the motivation of our people to become part of a common global framework that contributes to higher standards of managing and reporting our carbon impacts.

In 2011 Experian North America launched an exciting new programme that enables employees to volunteer as financial education ambassadors.

More than 70 employees have completed their training and are now providing financial literacy education on credit topics to consumers in the communities where they live and work and online. Armed with presentations and other financial education resources, they have the confidence to volunteer their services within community groups and schools. Sometimes they are also supporting our clients in delivering customer education events. Our ambassadors are even connecting with their online communities by hosting live discussions on Facebook. In addition to greatly increasing our outreach in financial literacy, the programme equips our employees with the knowledge they and their families need to live credit smart.

The programme is a great example of how our employees are empowering themselves to use their talent, skills and services to benefit society.

2011 and 2012 saw us launch and communicate some important new policies: our global Code of Conduct, Anti-Bribery and Corruption Policy and a global Gifts and Hospitality Policy. Ensuring all our employees comply with these policies is vital but creating the right balance of information, engagement and enforcement is a challenging task across a global organisation. The Compliance team and project steering group have delivered a great mix of tools and materials to achieve this aim.

The communication roll out via global intranet announcements and email messages was only the first step. This was followed up with guidance on where to find and how to complete the computer based training course covering the Code of Conduct and two related policies. The course was informative and challenging with a quiz element that required a pass score. Dates for completion and reminders were issued via email. Managers were required to ensure their direct reports had completed the course and an automated message informed them of anyone still outstanding beyond the deadline.

The Compliance team are monitoring the roll out of the English and translated versions of the course and the degree of completion across all our regions.

Employees are required to report and seek approval for gifts, hospitality, charitable donations and sponsorships plus any incidents of potential bribery and the number of interactions per region is also being tracked. All these actions and progress are reported regularly to the Experian plc Audit Committee.

Central funds are set aside for the regional businesses to bid for with the aim of encouraging business ideas that have a strong social benefit.

They may take longer than normal vision proposals to show a return and the funding is intended to help them through the initial stages of research and set up.

Lowering the cost of making and receiving micro loans

We launched our Experian MicroAnalytics (EMA) business in April 2010, after an initial ‘Big Idea’ research investment of US$150,000 in 2009. The business is now well established, using mobile phone technology to deliver branchless banking through a network of introducers and field agents.

Our μ-bank solution is still unique in the market and overcomes the cost and reach barriers that have prevented traditional banks from providing tiny loans to small SMEs in developing markets, outside the catchment area of a branch network. Alternative models for building financial identities are being developed with additional, locally verified data provided by the field agents. Our clients already include a range of well known banks in the Philippines, Ghana and Indonesia and expansion plans are in place for 2013 and 2014.

Providing a new rental exchange service

This year, Experian UK and Ireland developed a Rental Exchange service that will see landlords and tenants benefit from sharing information about rental payments. This new service will offer a safe and secure way to include a tenant’s rental payment history, with their permission, into their credit history.

At the core of this development was a relationship with Big Issue Invest (‘BII’), the investment arm of a major social enterprise tackling homelessness in the UK. In partnership with BII, Experian is developing a social housing element of the Rental Exchange to provide benefit specifically for the most vulnerable in this sector, with funds from the business permanently channelled into providing financial education support.