Wesfarmers' Retail: Detailed Sustainability Analysis & Rating

This report provides a sustainability analysis of Wesfarmers, one of Australia's largest companies, focusing on its retail businesses: Coles, Home Improvements (Bunnings), Department Stores (Kmart), and Office Works. It defines sustainability, explains its significance in annual reports, and offers a brief company overview. Each division's sustainability efforts are analyzed, considering factors like workplace safety, diversity, supply chain transparency, and carbon emission reduction. The report highlights specific initiatives, such as Coles' app-based supplier program, Bunnings' waste reduction efforts, Kmart's energy efficiency improvements, and Office Works' responsible sourcing practices. The analysis concludes with an overall rating of the company's sustainability performance, acknowledging improvements across all departments and a successful year compared to the previous four.

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By student name
Professor
University
Date: 25 April 2018.
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Executive Summary
A report has been prepared on the Sustainability ananlysis of one of the greatest companies in
Australia, Wesfarmers. Sustainability has been defined as to what is its significance, why it is
being disclosed separately in the annual arport, a brief description of the company has been given
and then the brief analysis of each of the divisions of the company has been done w.r.t. the
sustainability. Based on the discussion, a rating has been given as to whether it meets the
expectation or not.
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Contents
Sustainability and its insight........................................................................................................................4
Wesfarmers and its background..................................................................................................................4
Sustainability Report for Wesfarmers..........................................................................................................4
Conclusion...................................................................................................................................................6
References...................................................................................................................................................7
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Sustainability and its insight
Sustainability Report may be defined as one of the business report which gives information about
the company’s or business’s economic, social, environmental and governance performance to the
relevant stakeholders. It is not just meant for collecting, generating data and reporting the same
but its aims to improve the organization’s commitment to sustainable development that can be
explained and demonstrated to both internal and external stakeholders (Chron, 2017).
Wesfarmers and its background
Wesfarmers is one of the oldest conglomerate in Australia listed on the Australian Stock
Exchange. It deals in the products like fertilizers, chemicals, coal minig, retail, safety and
industrial products. It is the largest company in Australia in terms of revenue and the largest
employer as well employing more than 220000 people. It has a number of subsidiaries across the
world and the major countries in which it deals is Australia, New Zealand, Bangladesh, Ireland
and United Kingdom (Alexander, 2016).
Sustainability Report for Wesfarmers
The company has four major divisions namely Coles, Home Improvements and Office Supplies,
Department Stores and Industrial or Office Works division. The sustainability reporting has
become mandatory for the publically listed and public companies from the last few years because
of the increasing importance of the non financial information and the Global Reporting Initiative
Guidelines as they are intended to increase the transparency and accountability of the company
towards stakehoders and environment. In terms of sustainability, the company is committed to
create value for the shareholders, the customers, the employees and the community at large
(Bizfluent, 2017). Some of the major activities include reducing the workplace injusry by more
than 16%, providing for the diversity at workplace by employing around 4231 Indigenous
employees, improving the transparency of the supply chain, reducing the carbon emission from
the business to reduce the intensity of climate change, reducing the greenhouse gas emissions by
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more than 16% since 2013. The entire workforce is made up of 54% women and 46% men with
many leadership positions being held by women thereby promoting diversity in gender. It has
also been involved in ethical sourcing maintaining good relations with the suppliers and thereby
contributing through reducing the carbon footprint. Few of the excerpts have been given below
form the sustainability report of the company to rate its efforts and to prove its continuous
improvement approach.
The company is also committed to provide
the quality on the job training and
development programs to its employees to
help them grow in the organization and take
leadership positions. There is a 360 degree
assessment in this aspect (Saeidi, 2012).
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With respect to the contributions from business divisiosn, Coles gave a rollout plan for the app
based program to help the suppliers in the farming operations in areas of traceability,
performance monitoring and employee training. It was also involved in contributing $63.9 Mn to
the charitable institutions for food donations, fundraising and disaster relief management. It was
also involved in ethical sourcing for sea based food and has one of leading sourcing policy in the
world (Raiborn, Butler, & Martin, 2016).
The 2nd division being Home Improvement has brand named Bunnings famous in Asutralia and
New Zealand focused on maintaining storng processes for procurement of products which meets
the global and local standard. It also contributed towards waste reduction, water conservation
and recycling measures and thereby cost effective reducing in the carbon footprints. This again
recorded a decrease of 15% in the injuries, thereby reducing risk and improving safety.
In the departmental stores division, Kmart which is one of the largest retailer in Australia and
New Zealand, focused and imporved on many of the material issues like maximising the energy
efficiency through LED lighting, etc. It also decreaed the recordable injury rate by more than 9%
during the year therby improving safety measures, it also contributing to the community of
young people self resilience and well being, mainly Headspace and Reach Foundation. It also
reduced the use of PVC bags, thereby minimising the waste across the supply chain.
The last division being office works is leading retailer and supplier of office products and
solutions and it focused on issues like sourcing wood fibre responsibly, improving 24% in terms
of injuries recorded during work, use of recycled products used for manufacturing of furniture. It
also contributed nearly $2.5 Mn to local community for development purposes (Dichev, 2017).
Conclusion
All in all, it can be said that all the departments worked towards achievieng the common
sustainable goals of the organization as the same improvement measures and activities can be
seen in each of the divisions. It was a successful year for the company when compared to the last
4 years. The efforts and achievements in all the above mentioned divisions can be highly rated
considering the above facts and figures.
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References
Alexander, F. (2016). The Changing Face of Accountability. The Journal of Higher Education, 71(4), 411-
431.
Bizfluent. (2017). Advantages & Disadvantages of Internal Control. Retrieved december 07, 2017, from
https://bizfluent.com/info-8064250-advantages-disadvantages-internal-control.html
Chron. (2017). five-common-features-internal-control-system-business. Retrieved december 07, 2017,
from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/five-common-features-internal-control-system-business-
430.html
Dichev, I. (2017). On the conceptual foundations of financial reporting. Accounting and Business
Research, 47(6), 617-632. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1080/00014788.2017.1299620
Raiborn, C., Butler, J., & Martin, K. (2016). The internal audit function: A prerequisite for Good
Governance. Journal of Corporate Accounting and Finance, 28(2), 10-21.
Saeidi, F. (2012). Audit expectations gap and corporate fraud: Empirical evidence from Iran. African
Journal of Business Management, 6(23), 7031-41. Retrieved from search.proquest.com
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