Our approach
VisionFor Yell, Governance and Responsibility is about:
Providing our shareholders and other stakeholders with confidence that Yell is a well-managed and responsible company.
This vision reflects our commitment both to our shareholders and to the wider community of stakeholders which includes our users and advertisers, suppliers, communities and our people.
Guiding principles
Supporting our governance and responsibility vision are our Guiding Principles of excellence, reliability, responsibility and integrity. They define how we work and underpin our approach to all aspects of our business.
Excellence We have a philosophy of continuous improvement and constantly seek to ‘make the best better’. We have leading brands and aim to provide high quality products and services in the most efficient and effective way.
Reliability We pride ourselves in meeting our business targets and objectives. We provide advertisers with a wide choice of products and services of consistently high quality, and our users with timely access to comprehensive, relevant information.
Responsibility Yell is a long-term business, accountable to all its stakeholders. We operate in a clear and transparent fashion and take responsibility for all our actions.
Integrity We operate with the highest ethical standards in all our activities. We have respect for each other and for all our stakeholders. Trust, honesty and integrity are key values across our business.
Governance and Responsibility framework
Our Governance and Responsibility framework consists of the following elements:
Element |  | Sub-elements |
| The Yell Way | | Culture Roles, responsibilities and accountabilities Business Excellence |
| Baseline compliance | | Laws and regulations Market regulation |
| Risk management | | Internal control and audit Assurance |
| Responsibility | | Environment Suppliers/ partners Yell people Customers Investors Community |
| Brand integrity | | Reputation and brand management Intellectual property Fair selling |
| Accountability and openness | | Reporting Stakeholder dialogue Investor relations Internal communication |
We use this framework to set and monitor governance and responsibility objectives, identify improvement opportunities and ensure that activities are aligned with business strategy.
How we manage Governance and Responsibility
Overall direction for Yell’s approach to Governance and Responsibility is managed by a Steering Group, led by our Company Secretary. This Steering Group reviews our performance against corporate governance best practice and designs and implements policies and procedures to ensure our continuing compliance. It reports directly into our CEO who is our Governance and Responsibility champion at Board level.
We report on Governance and Responsibility in a variety of ways including our Annual Report and Corporate Responsibility Reports. Go to the Annual & Interim reports page or go to the CR Reports & presentations page.
Internal and external review
The Governance and Responsibility Steering Group is responsible for ensuring the information we present is verified through internal and external assessments. In the UK, this includes external compliance reviews against key quality standards, benchmarking of our community programmes by the London Benchmarking Group, and our triennial Investors in People assessment.
Best practice
We share best practice with, and learn from, other organisations and are members of Business in the Community, the London Benchmarking Group, the Corporate Responsibility Group and the Media CSR Forum.
Stakeholder Engagement
We frequently ask our stakeholders for their views on our management of CR. In 2007, in addition to less formal methods, we conducted a research programme with our stakeholders. The results confirm the importance of CR to all Yell stakeholders, and shows that we are seen to strike a good balance between commercial and social objectives. Stakeholders believe we should do more to emphasise the benefits of our CR activities, particularly to customers, who were often unaware of our programmes. These and other findings are being built into our 2008 CR programme.
