Orient Magazine Issue 73 - September 2019 | Page 41

Orient - The Official Magazine of the British Chamber of Commerce Singapore - Issue 73 September 2019

In Focus:
Suzy Smith, Managing Director, Global Travel Retail, Edrington

3. The Robertson sisters and their Trust established Edrington in 1961 with a strong sense of philanthropy in the culture and values. Can you tell us a little about how this translates to today’s social responsibility within the company and back in Scotland?

The sisters setup The Robertson Trust to ensure that the family business maintained its independence with no shareholders, and to establish specific values for the future. To date, the Trust has donated more than £263 million to charitable causes in Scotland, and a further £10 million has been donated by the International Giving More fund since 2012, where 1% of pre-tax earnings are donated to a cause decided by each local office.
One of our key values is around Giving More. We recently formalised a policy whereby every year, every employee is given three days of Giving More leave to use for charitable giving. This could be participation in company activities or volunteering or fund-raising for a different cause which is special to the employee, the choice is theirs. The company then double-matches all monies raised.
This culture and expectation of philanthropy is established from day one of an employee’s journey with the company, and we have high levels of participation. Each office has a committee that agrees the office recipient of the 1% donation for that year, while employees can support other causes through their Giving More entitlement.
4. As with all companies in the alcohol sector, there is a difficult balance from a values and publicity perspective in the need for profit vs. drinking responsibly. How is Edrington working to support their customers in this?

We partner with a lot of organisations in this area and maintain an Edrington Marketing Code for sales, marketing, events, commercial and procurement employees to undertake and re-commit to every two years. Every year, we run an Alcohol Responsibility week with all employees around the globe to raise awareness and talk about the issues.

In Asia Pacific, we partner with the Asia Pacific International Wines & Spirits Alliance (APISWA) which works on programmes across SEA looking at alcohol responsibility and education. In the UK, we are a contributing partner to the Scotch Whisky Action Fund and work with Drinkaware, and in the US we are represented on the Board of the Foundation for Advancing Alcohol Responsibility (FAAR).

Through these partnerships, we aim to drive these responsibility messages and educate our employees. From a marketing perspective, there is a difficult balance between selling the products and advocating for responsible drinking, but trends can help with this as people start to look at drinking less but at a higher quality, where our premium products are positioned.

5. As a woman in a senior leadership role, how has your personal experience been across your career with finding mentors and support to achieve your goals, and where do you think the industry can improve for the next generations of female talent?
I have been lucky during my career to have great line managers and separately to this, mentors. For the future, we must look to support colleagues and the future generations of talent.
Diversity is important to the company and I have taken a personal interest in helping to drive these initiatives in Asia Pacific and am keen to learn from others. We must understand each locality’s culture and requirements before looking to implement processes as what works in one location may not be as effective in another.