Part 1 - Corporate Social Responsibilities (CSR)

Conduct a research on the CSR initiatives/ programmes that had adopted by Tesco Hypermarket for the past ONE (1) years.

     Tesco has contributed to society by adopting many CSR initiatives and programmes with their every year systematic planning. Tesco is a large company and its activities affect the lives of many people in societies around the world. Tesco thinks that Corporate Social Responsibility is not only an ethical issue, it is also a strategic issue.  It is central to defining Tesco’s identity and defining it in a way which integrates their customers’ values with their own. They have given considerable thought to the existing business and to the changes taking place in society. They have been used their scale for good. Now, we are going to discuss the corporate social responsibility that have been adopted by Tesco Hypermarket for the past one year which are to create new opportunities for youngsters, to improve health and to reduce food waste globally.

      First, Tesco has ambitious to create new opportunities for millions of young people around the world. Tesco realizes that 75 million young people are unemployed. Tesco knows that young people need support and opportunities to make the most of their lives. They provide job opportunities for young people by hiring them. This is because Tesco wants to draw from their capability to hire and train people’s careers to address the challenge of creating new opportunities for millions of young people. Besides that, they want to inspire young people to realize their own potential. For example, by establishing a new UK school outreach program, Tesco leaders will be matched with local schools, which they can visit to share advice and bring variety of skills needed in business careers. They also want to equip them with the social and specialist skills that they need for work. For example, Tesco for Thais Foundation (TfTF) is the one program which has worked well at Tesco Lotus in Thailand and provides young people with opportunities for improved education. Tesco for Thais Foundation (TfTF) offers up to 5,800 scholarships each year to students who need support. They have been able to support the economic recovery and welfare of the local community by creating 165 new jobs. Their aim is to use these programs to create even more opportunities for young people.

      Other than that, Tesco also want to stimulate their customers and colleagues to have healthier lives. Tesco can play a significant role in tackling the global obesity crisis by helping their customers and colleagues live more healthily. Campaigners and health experts from around the world have been looking for a way to help people make healthier choices. They believe that they need to help tackle the problem. Tesco has planned to help them to live healthier lives by these two basic ways. One of them is, Tesco has created a store environment that encouraged and promoted healthier choices. The other one is, Tesco has provided services and advices that enable a balanced lifestyle. Tesco has worked together with their 500,000 colleagues to discover the right way to encourage healthier lifestyles in all the countries in which they operated. Tesco has provided a health motivator by sharing more of their Clubcard data with their customers so they can understand how their shopping impacts their health. They are currently defining how best to do this to help customers make a healthy difference in their lives.

      Furthermore, Tesco also wants to reduce food waste because researcher proven that almost one third of the world’s food is lose or wasted, approximately 1.3 billion tons of food each year. This adds pressure on land and natural resources, and causes the unnecessary emission of greenhouse gases. It also adds significant unnecessary costs. This is a serious matter that takes Tesco’s attention to take action on this. Tesco’s method on reducing food waste is by optimizing case sizes, reducing lead times for orders and improving how they run in-store operations. Besides that, they has used blueprint to reduce waste in Tesco stores in all their markets. Furthermore, Tesco commits to reducing food waste not only in their own operations, but also through effective partnership with their producers and suppliers and by helping our customers. Over recent years in Hungary and the UK Tesco work closely with the Hungarian Food Bank and Fare Share, respectively, to ensure that unsold food is put to good use. This is because they try to minimize any waste. For example, by reducing to-clear foods close to their expiry date in stores.