Three of the top winners of the Best Corporate Citizens Sustainability (BCCS) Award, an annual event organised by the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce (CCC), said taking part in the competition helped them to gauge their standing in comparison to the peers in the industry, when it comes to ‘sustainability’ practices.
People’s Leasing Company (PLC), which became one of the ‘Top Ten Best Corporate Citizens’ in the 2014 edition and also became one of the ‘Top Ten Best Corporate Citizens’ in the 2012 contest, in addition to winning several other accolades in the subsequent events, revealed that BCCS has also given it the opportunity to identify the gaps in its system and learn about best practices followed by other firms.

“Ever since our first application in 2009, PLC took effort in doing more focused and business-related corporate responsibility initiatives in response to stakeholder concerns. PLC also refined its reporting with respect to triple bottom line, adhering to GRI-based sustainability reporting,” the firm added.
Hatton National Bank (HNB), which has been in the prestigious league of winners of this competition in the past, stressed that the biggest achievement the bank has gained by taking part in this competition is that it has uplifted its commitment towards sustainability.

“Today, we have adopted best sustainability practices into our core business and are adapting ourselves to sustain in a world which has numerous environmental and social constrains such as the energy crisis, climate change and health issues, whilst encouraging our key stakeholders to incorporate best practices into their activities,” the bank said.

Access group, the winner of the infrastructure sector at BCCS 2014, in addition to becoming one of the ‘Top Ten Best Corporate Citizens’ during the 2014 edition, said, “These achievements gave us an external verification and reassurance of our vision to be the foremost Sri Lankan business enterprise in value engineering.”

It also said, the BCCS contest helps to assess the standing of a company in terms of sustainability, relative to other corporates and peers in the industry.
The CCC has already started work towards conducting Best Corporate Citizens Sustainability Award 2015 and applications are now being accepted from firms willing to take part in this year’s event. Call Manela on 5588823 for more information.