our policies
Environment:
Every day, our people travel to work and for
business, use electricity to keep warm or cool and to power
their computers and consume water. Our books and newspapers
use paper and ink and are packaged around the world. While
most of our products are based on intellectual property, we
recognise that our day to day operations have an effect on
the world around us and that we have a responsibility to
manage and measure this impact.
Efficiency is not just about capital. It is also about
making sure that we and our supplier partners do not use up
more natural resources than we really need to.
Pearson has had an environmental policy since 1992. We
reviewed this policy in 2000 and put a benchmarking
procedure in place in 2001 to measure our progress. We have
now surveyed all of our wholly owned businesses. We have set
targets and report on our performance on our website. There
is more to do, but we are committed to continue this work.
Labour standards and human rights:
A commitment to labour standards and human rights is one of
the basic building blocks on what being a good corporate
citizen means to us.
We realise that these are not always easy issues. One
practical way to make real our concern for labour standards
and human rights was by becoming a founder signatory to the
United Nations Global Compact. The Compact sets out nine
principles in the areas of human rights, labour standards
and the environment. Its purpose is to provide a framework
for companies to consider and manage their impact on global
society and the environment - ideal for an international
company with customers all over the world.
In our 2000 Annual Report and Accounts, we codified the UN
principles into a series of guidelines that formed the key
commitments against which we would judge ourselves. Each
year, we report in our Annual Report and Accounts and on our
website on the progress made against our guidelines.
In 2001 we began a process to ensure that we live up to
these commitments by surveying our workforce. We completed
this process in 2002 and the survey now covers 82 business
operations in 41 countries. We are confident that for all
the businesses that we own we meet or exceed the standards
we have set ourselves on equal employment opportunities and
conditions. In 2003 we plan to extend our survey to include
our major sub-contractors.
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