Page 40 External recognition


External awards, accolades and other benchmarking measures not only give Partners a sense of recognition for a job well done, they also help us as a business to regularly check that we're responding to the issues that affect our wide range of external stakeholders. Below, we highlight a selection of our achievements in 2007/08.

(Business and Community Awards 2008 Education logo)
(Business and Community Awards 2008 Healthy Communities logo)
(Business and Community Awards 2007 Companies That Count logo)

A Big Tick in the box
John Lewis was awarded Business in the Community (BITC) Awards for Excellence, known as 'BigTicks', for two CSR initiatives John Lewis Glasgow's school mentoring programme and John Lewis Newcastle's vocational placement programme as well as the Golden Jubilee Trust. BigTicks are awarded to companies able to demonstrate excellence in the way that they organise and integrate their responsible business practices and who can show a positive impact both on society and on the business.
Index linked

For the third year running, the Partnership has been ranked a Platinum company by scoring more than 95% in the BITC Corporate Responsibility Index, the UK's leading benchmark for responsible businesses. The Partnership scored 100% in several areas of the Index, which was published in The Times' Companies That Count supplement in May 2008.


Retail therapy
John Lewis was voted the 'most respected retailer' in the 2008 Strategic Leadership Survey by global recruitment consultancy Harvey Nash. This survey gives an insight into the views of 1,200 chief executive officers and board members from across the retail sector. John Lewis secured 32% of the total vote, knocking Tesco, leader for the last two years, into second place (20%) and leaving M&S (15%) third. According to the report's authors, John Lewis' improved position up from third last year shows that fellow retailers have a more positive opinion of our offer, our brand strength and our investment in our Partners.


Another satisfied customer
In January 2008, retail analyst Verdict's customer satisfaction index saw John Lewis named Britain's favourite retailer yet again. In the survey of 6,000 shoppers, John Lewis increased its overall satisfaction score to the highest ever attained in the Index and has now been ranked first for service for eight years. John Lewis and Waitrose, which came second in the poll, have taken the top two spots in both surveys for the last three years.


In another poll published in January 2008, John Lewis came second (behind Waitrose) in the annual customer satisfaction survey by consumer magazine Which? with a score of 78%. Despite dropping from overall first place last year, we achieved impressive scores from an 11,000-strong panel of shoppers and ranked first in every category we appeared in.

John Lewis also enjoyed success in the UK Customer Satisfaction Index conducted by the Institute of Customer Service (ICS), registering an 'exceptional' customer satisfaction score of 89%.The survey asked 6,000 people to rate companies and organisations in 12 key public and private sectors in areas such as professionalism, complaint handling, quality and competence and friendliness of staff.


Employer of choice
In the Top Employers 2008 survey published in the Guardian newspaper, the John Lewis Partnership ranked 37th with a score of 71.55% and among significant employers with over 10,000 employees, the Partnership ranked ninth. This is a noticeable drop from our ninth place overall last year, but the way the survey is conducted has changed from an open questionnaire, with the opportunity to expand on our efforts with fuller answers, to a multiple choice form.