Introducing Scout24's First CSR Report

Scout24 just published its firstCSR report. Besides the performance section, the report contains an exciting magazine section which introduces selected CSR projects with regard to Scout24’s social commitment as well as our responsibility in the core business and as an employer. We sat down with the CSR team to talk about the report’s main topics, its creation process and why its tagline is “Inspiring People, Impacting Worlds.”

Why does Scout24 need to publish a CSR report? What are the objectives?

With the first CSR report we wanted to show our stakeholders the broad range of CSR topics Scout24 is working on. Because CSR means more than social engagement, it also includes topics from areas such as data protection, compliance, environmental management, diversity, etc. Another reason was that at the beginning of 2017 the German parliament passed a law that obligates companies listed on the stock exchange with over 500 employees and more than 40 million revenues to disclose non-financial data and report on sustainability topics. Scout24 fulfills all those conditions, and so we also had to publish a CSR report. It was a great but also exhausting project.

What are the key topics of the CSR report? Why did you choose the tagline “Inspiring People, Impacting worlds”?

The report is structured in a magazine and a performance section. The magazine section covers Scout24’s sustainability stories divided into three different worlds – the working, the digital and the social world. Therefore we asked some colleagues if they wanted to be our testimonials and tell their sustainability stories. In the other part – the performance section – all topics are covered according to the GRI Guideline. The ‘Global Reporting Initiative’ is an international standard for reporting and simultaneously also the most common one.

The tagline ‘Inspiring People, Impacting Worlds’ has actually two roots. ‘Inspiring people’ is the heart of our success in business. ‘Impacting worlds’ shows which impact our responsible conduct has on our internal corporate world as well as the external effect. To visualize this, we created three different worlds in the magazine section.

Since this is the first time that you publish such a report everything must have been rather new for you. What have you learnt during the process of creating the CSR report?

As a CSR team we have learned about our strengths, how much is already being done in some areas and which areas we have to take a closer look at in the future. But not only we learned something, but many colleagues involved in the report did not know before that their topics play into CSR. They learned that their expertise is also valuable from a different perspective. So, the whole CSR report was a learning process, not just for us as the CSR team, but rather for the whole company.

The CSR report is now online but this is only the start. What else is on the Scout24’s CSR agenda?

The next big project will be the Social Day at four Scout24 locations in Germany and Austria. In this year, we will start something like a Social Day road tour. Vienna will start with its Social Day on the 29th June, Cologne will follow on the 7th July. By the way, it is their first Social Day and we are looking forward to the projects and the engagement of the colleagues from Cologne. Berlin and Munich will have their Social Days on the 14th and 21st July. Besides that, the Berlin Social Academy will celebrate its 5th anniversary in fall 2017. We are planning a special event for all our supporters in the last 5 years.

Furthermore, we want to put a greater focus on the topic ‘sustainable urban development’ because it combines our two areas of expertise, mobility (AutoScout24) and real estate (ImmobilienScout24). It remains exiting.