October 2008: Launch of Corporate Responsibility Week 2008

Inspiring Excellence 2008 Launch and the 10 ‘Best of Inspiring Excellence'

Business in the Community Ireland, the country's leading corporate responsibility advisory group, today (03/10/08) launched the second annual Corporate Responsibility Week, aimed at promoting strategic and sustainable responsible business practices among the Irish business community.

The week-long programme of activity will feature a number of events taking place in Dublin and Limerick, and kicked off today with the Corporate Responsibility Week 2008 Launch kindly hosted by Ulster Bank.

Today's launch also featured the launch of ‘Inspiring Excellence 2008', a compilation of best practice examples from member companies of Business in the Community Ireland. This is compiled each year and aims to shine a light on the best practice of member companies in order to engage and inspire business in Ireland to promote and communicate their own responsible business practices.

This year, to celebrate five years of Inspiring Excellence, Business in the Community Ireland invited an independent Judging Panel to select the 10 examples that they believed to be the most innovative and outstanding from those collated over the period 2003-2008.

Our Independent Judging Panel comprised Cathal Divilly, MD, Great Place to Work; Ann Fitzgerald, CEO, National Consumer Agency; Sacha Johnston, Manager, Dublin City South Volunteer Centre; Lorraine Fitzgerald, Senior Environmental Consultant, Change.ie. The Panel was chaired by Tina Roche, CEO, Business in the Community Ireland.

Our aim is to highlight these 10 best practice examples by showcasing videos of their stories in order to inspire Irish business to make corporate responsibility practices a priority. The 10 member companies whose examples were selected for 'The Best of Inspiring Excellence' are:
BT, IBM, Intel, Irish Life, Manpower, Microsoft, Oracle, Savills Hamilton Osborne King, Ulster Bank and Vodafone.

Click here to view full Inspiring Excellence 2008 Report and click here to view the 10 Best of Inspiring Excellence' videos.

Other activities that will be taking place as part of Corporate Responsibility Week include a Marketplace seminar on ‘Sustainability in the Supply Chain', a ‘Seeing is Believing' tour of Limerick led by Danuta Gray, O2 Ireland and a Workplace Workshop - ‘Winning the talent war with better Work Life Balance' in conjunction with the Great Place to Work Institute. To conclude our Corporate Responsibility Week 2008 we will be holding a Climate Change CEO Forum.

For further information, contact Moira Horgan, Marketing Manager at 01-8743812, 086-1722105 or mhorgan@bitc.ie

Business in the Community Ireland is the country's leading Corporate Responsibility advisory group. A business driven network, Business in the Community Ireland's membership is drawn from over 55 of Ireland's most progressive companies.