Operating beyond social compliance
Richard BoelePartner, KPMG Banarra
The APPEA Journal 57(3) - https://doi.org/10.1071/AJ16280
Published: 29 May 2017
Abstract
Richard's unusual career has included challenging business as an anti-corporate campaigner; working in business as a global public affairs manager; and helping business as a consultant on social licence and human rights. He uses these very different perspectives to help us better understand the dynamics at play in our industry's relationship with society. It's a relationship that has had its ups and downs which has led at times to our social licence being questioned.
Richard's talk reaches back to the 1990s and how the concept of social licence emerged out of an increasingly fraught relationship between the mining sector and global society. He pauses at key moments since then to illustrate both the value and the weaknesses in the social licence concept in helping us understand increasingly complex social and stakeholder operating contexts.
Finally, he reflects on recent social licence developments here in Australia that have seen the Prime Minister, other governments and regulators explicitly use the term social licence to call out certain sectors and the state of their relationship with society - the two most recent being insurance and banking.
Expect Richard to be proactive as he draws on his checkered past to help us think differently about our future.
To say Richard is passionate about human rights is something of an understatement. Richard has spent most of his work life championing the causes of the vulnerable and under-represented in a way that few do, most aptly demonstrated in almost 15 years running his own human rights consultancy, Banarra. Today, as KPMG Partner for Human Rights & Social Impact Services, Richard draws on his cutting-edge social sustainability insights to help Boards and their chief executives navigate the inherent social risks associated with increasingly global and diverse operating contexts. His particular strengths are the social and governance dimensions of sustainability and leading large consultancy assignments in socially and politically complex environments. Richard understands the importance of teamwork. When you're looking to provide advice around difficult and grey areas such as social impact and human rights you have to take a team-based approach because the issues are just so complex. No single person has the solution. His goal is to see the corporate responsibility to respect human rights mainstreamed. ‘KPMG is a fantastic platform from which I can contribute to that.’ When Richard is not at work, he is with his family helping to look after three children, two with significant disabilities. |
