Case Study
- 2010 Corporate Responsibility Report
- 2009 Corporate Responsibility Report
- 2010 Corporate Responsibility Report/ Executive Summary
- Environmental Responsibility at American Airlines
“In working with Framework over the past few years, we’ve found them to be a highly strategic partner in helping us to more effectively identify and communicate our performance on issues of high concern to our stakeholders. They are a definitive resource on corporate responsibility trends and standards and take the initiative to adapt that knowledge in crafting strategic and communications approaches that work for American. Equally important is the personal rapport we’ve developed—we enjoy working with each other!”
–Jim Walsh, Managing Director of Corporate Environmental for American Airlines
“Our intention for the Corporate Responsibility Report is to provide our customers, employees and other stakeholders with the most up-to-date and factual information about our ongoing social and environmental initiatives. Being a good corporate citizen is not only the right thing to do, but it also is a way to help us achieve our business objectives as laid out in AMR’s Flight Plan 2020.”
–David Campbell, Vice President Safety, Security & Environmental for American Airlines
An elevating strategy
The Challenge
In 2009, American Airlines recognized a need to scale up its approach to corporate responsibility reporting in order to better align disclosures with the company’s strategic approach, respond to stakeholder interests, and keep pace with peers. Although American had been reporting for several years, reporting was originally based in separate environmental and citizenship disclosures, so there was an opportunity to better integrate the two perspectives while moving away from heavily technical and overly complex narratives. The company was also interested in exploring new methods of presentation in order to make corporate responsibility information accessible to the company’s full range of stakeholders in the format best suited to each group.
The Solution
Once engaged by American Airlines, Framework developed a new approach intended to drive ongoing improvements to the company’s corporate responsibility reporting. Among the key changes we implemented were:
- Aligning corporate responsibility disclosures with American’s overall 10-year strategic business plan, known as the Flight Plan 2020.
- Helping the company to interpret and implement GRI guidelines more effectively, raising American’s GRI application level from C to B.
- Conducting materiality analyses to identify and assess the significance of corporate responsibility issues based on stakeholder feedback and input from American’s executive-level Citizenship Steering Committee and reporting team; and adapting the report structure to effectively address material issues.
- Making report content more accessible and engaging, which included improvements to reporting tone and voice as well as a format change.
- Switching from a PDF format to a microsite accompanied by a print-on-demand executive summary and a library of stand-alone case studies that explain the concrete impact of the company’s corporate responsibility initiatives through people-focused narratives.
- Helping maintain a consistent vision and consensus for the reporting approach and process despite periodic changes to the make-up of the Citizenship Steering Committee.
The Results
As a result of the work we’ve done with American Airlines, the company has experienced numerous concrete benefits:
- Traffic to the company’s corporate responsibility reports has increased and—since they are now web pages instead of downloadable PDFs—specific click paths and page views are now measurable, which provides valuable data on which areas of corporate responsibility performance are of greatest interest to stakeholders.
- The flexibility of the new formats offers standards-based metrics and indicators for those who need it; anecdotal content that goes beyond GRI requirements; and summary content for those audiences that prefer highlights and overview information.
- American’s 2010 Corporate Responsibility report was a finalist in PRNews’ CSR Awards.
- Most significantly, thanks to the increased disclosure level in recent reports, American Airlines placed higher than any other passenger airline in Newsweek’s 2010 Green Rankings.
