Marketplace Expectations
In the context of significant social strife and pressing environmental challenges, expectations of corporations and their role as global corporate citizens has changed profoundly. Stakeholders -- from employees to investors -- increasingly believe corporations have a responsibility to apply their core competencies for impact and to assume a greater voice and role in building an equitable future.
The new leadership imperative: a company’s expertise, values and social accountability must align.
Values-driven Vision, Strategy, Narrative and Reporting
Since its founding in 1899, The Timken Company has been an authority in reducing industrial friction for customers like NASA and Boeing. Today the company is a global industrial leader with a growing portfolio of engineered bearings and power transmission products.
Throughout its history, Timken’s engineering knowledge and experience has focused on product sustainability -- a core competency that now informs the company’s approach to CSR. To create Timken’s first-ever global CSR vision, strategy, benchmarks,and communications, we mined this core competency and identified specific areas of focus that dovetail with the company’s long-standing values. Timken measures and expands its CSR efforts through the lens of this vision, in parallel with its GRI reporting. While global challenges and the demands of corporations will undoubtedly shift, Timken’s CSR platform provides the company with a clear but flexible framework to guide and evolve its efforts and reporting into the future.
This strategic initiative was overseen by Corporate Communications and publicly launched in 2018 with the first-ever CSR and GRI report by the company. The initiative has grown continually and in 2020 Timken was named one of “America’s Most Responsible Companies” by Newsweek.