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Priorities Set, JPMorgan Chase Focuses on Stakeholder Engagement with Latest CSR Report

11 Friday Jul 2014

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Despite the upheaval and the effects that continue to dog Wall Street since the 2008 crash, JPMorgan Chase has managed to recover more elegantly than some of its counterparts.

This has been in part due to a robust community development program targeted at local impact, strategic partnerships, a deeper introspection of its practices, as well as a public acknowledgement that it needs to do more to become part of the solution.

I asked EVP and Global Head of Corporate Responsibility Peter Scher to name the biggest challenge from 2013—a year he acknowledged was a mix of difficulties and successes:

“As Jamie Dimon, our Chairman and CEO said in his annual letter to shareholders, last year was certainly a tough year as we worked to resolve legal issues we had with a number of government agencies. But our businesses stayed strong, we continued to serve our clients and communities, and we launched some of our most ambitious corporate responsibility initiatives ever, including New Skills at Work and the Global Health Investment Fund. We’re extremely proud of what we accomplished in 2013.”

Urbanization, the growing discourses around investing in natural gas and helping small businesses scale featured among the company’s goals for 2013.

Highlights from its 2013 CR Report point to progress more close to home:
JPMC New Skills at Work

  • Launched New Skills at Work, a $250 million, five-year workforce development initiative aimed at helping close the skills gap around the world.
  • Created the Global Cities Exchange, a program to help U.S. and international cities develop and implement regional strategies to boost their global trade and investment. The Exchange is part of the Global Cities Initiative, a joint project with the Brookings Institution launched in 2012 aimed at helping metropolitan leaders strengthen their regional economy.
  • Provided $19 billion in new credit to American small businesses and, for the fourth fiscal year in a row, was named the #1 U.S. Small Business Administration lender by units.

The report also alludes to the firm’s keen participation in the impact-investing and sustainable development sectors.

For instance, it worked “with a group of peer investment banks to develop the Green Bond Principles, a set of voluntary guidelines designed to promote integrity and transparency in the growing market for Green Bonds, which are issued to finance environmentally beneficial projects” and collaborated with “The Nature Conservancy to establish NatureVest, a new initiative of The Conservancy that aims to create a platform to advance investment in conservation.”

As for community investment and employee engagement, the numbers are none too shabby:

  • Donated $210 million to nonprofits in 39 countries and contributed 540,000 hours in employee volunteer hours.
  • Provided nearly $7 million in grants to promote consumers’ financial capabilities across the U.S.
  • Provided $2.7 billion in community development loans and investments to build or preserve 45,000 units of affordable housing, create 1,100 new jobs, enable 784,000 patient visits and serve 4,400 students in low- and moderate-income communities in the U.S.

As for the report itself, JPMorgan is experimenting with a new format. Expanding on its 2012 Report, which featured an interview between CEO Jamie Dimon and Nature Conservancy CEO Mark Tercek as the focal point to introduce the report and address its critics upfront, the 2013 disclosure goes a few steps further and uses interviews with key stakeholders to tell the entire story.

Framed as a series of stakeholder engagements, the report unwraps over 45 pages – half of last year’s hefty 90 pages – neatly packaged with data, infographics and narrated through conversations between key partners, internal experts and external advisers. It’s a good quick flip through and indicates a move occurring across industries to complement material data with visual storytelling.

One excerpt in particular caught my eye:

JPMC Walter Isaacson quote

Chairman & CEO Dimon responds:

JPMC_2013_highlights

“One thing to keep in mind is that where we did make mistakes, we’ve acknowledged them and made significant progress toward fixing them. We’re investing unprecedented resources to ensure that our compliance and control processes and culture meet the highest standards. And the changes we’re putting in place are designed to make certain our controls will be robust and effective, day in and day out, over the long term.

“We also fully appreciate that rebuilding trust requires more than talk. Our regulators and shareholders want to see progress and performance – and so do we. There is a lot of progress we can point to already, and, by the end of the year, I believe we will be able to demonstrate the enormous amount more – which I think will go a long way toward restoring confidence that JPMorgan Chase is the safest and strongest bank on the planet.”

Of course, this is all easier said than done – and all eyes are on the firm to ensure long-term sustainability.

As Scher states in his letter, the company’s ability to pull resources and activate its deep relationships—not to mention its talent base—is noteworthy. It is in a unique position to create positive impact, influence investment dollars and foster a more sustainable economy.

But herein lies the rub: can an American icon rebuild trust in the marketplace while doing business with traditional capitalists, a static economy and a model that rewards short-term profits and trading returns?

Originally written for and published on CSRwire’s Commentary section Talkback on May 20, 2014.

Climate Denial, Chauvinism and Making Integrated Reports Readable: SAP, BSR and CDP Respond

11 Friday Jul 2014

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In a recent conversation with SAP’s Sustainability Chief Peter Graf about the company’s second Integrated Report, the conundrum between sustainability goals and economic growth kept coming up. Were the two diametrically opposed? Was the ‘conundrum’ a red herring as Henk Campher recently put it?

Working with the SAP team, we decided to turn it into a live discussion. And along with Graf, BSR CEO Aron Cramer, CDP’s Executive Director Nigel Topping and our partner Triple Pundit, we took to Twitter. For one hour, we discussed the trials and tribulations of pursuing sustainability featuring 232 participants contributing 1,388 tweets and over nine million impressions.

But as is often the case, our panelists were not able to respond to all the questions in the hour. Here then are their responses to all the questions we were unable to answer – some questions have been modified for grammatical purposes.

How does a company reconcile a clear need in the realm of sustainability when it’s not a $$$ win for the company? What mechanisms can be used to overcome this barrier? [from @bradzarnett, @beltwits,@thesustoolkit]

Nigel Topping: “Ultimately sustainability issues are business issues and thus addressing them must change the value story. If it changes the story short term you get a P+L benefit, if long-term then through enhanced quality of earnings, talent retention, market share or some other metric, which can also be converted sustybiz-snapshotinto an economic measure.

“Sometimes this is easy – reducing energy waste saves money so the GHG reduction may just be sustainability icing on the cake. But this same action may be making the company more resilient in the face of likely regulation. Remember that value creation is part science part art.”

Aron Cramer: “”As things stand today, market structures and incentives don’t make it easy for companies to make the long-term investments that are often needed to work towards sustainability. We all know that for publicly traded companies, markets often push decisions towards the short-term. As such, emerging efforts to redefine financial success with more attention to long term value, such as integrated reporting, are crucial.”

Peter Graf: “If company itself has no economic reason to do so then the only levers I know of are consumer/customer pressure, public pressure or legislative pressure. If those are applied, then what seemed like an ‘externality’ again becomes revenue and cost relevant.”

Most companies see CSR as taxation without representation. What can companies do to circumvent this view and start acting now? [from @Odyamvid]

Topping: “Companies who see CSR in this way are most likely right! And at the same time leaving value on the table precisely because they are stuck in a mindset, which starts with the assumption that CSR is nothing to do with business. We really do need to see the back of woolly CSR initiatives where no one knows why they exist. There must be a value creation story – it could be direct via resource efficiency or risk mitigation or it could be indirect via brand value enhancement, talent retention, building capacity early to respond to expected consumer trends.

“If you can’t find those plausible stories, which you can tell with conviction to your front line staff, then best just to save your money – you are creating a bigger risk by acting in-authentically. Shareholders can rightly criticize you for wasting their money and NGOs can rightly criticize you for not taking issues seriously.”

Cramer: “This reflects an outdated and discredited understanding of CSR. Indeed, sustainability is about aligning strategy with changing operating conditions and not “taxation.” That said, there are issues where companies should be more active in promoting public policy frameworks that create the right kinds of incentives.  One great example has to do with supply chain labor issues, on which governments have de facto outsourced the responsibility to enforce labor laws to the private sector.”

Graf: “CSR needs to be perfectly aligned with the strategy and how the company creates value. At SAP we focus on education and entrepreneurship in our CSR projects, because they help us drive long-term success as a business. If CSR is not focused on this type of shared value (value to the company and value to society), then it is only a brand building exercise with little substance.”

How can a corporation reconcile short-term needs of shareholders and longer-term sustainability objectives? [from @greengageEnv]

Graf: “Short and long-term value creation do not need to be in conflict. In essence, it’s a balancing act, like always in business. For example, companies have always balanced investments into the future and current revenues to manage their margin.”

Topping: “Companies need a portfolio of innovation to address different time cycles of the dynamics which exist in markets.”

What role do business leaders have regarding climate denialism by other businesses like the stand taken by the U.S. Chamber? [from @kayakmediatweet]

Topping: “Very few business leaders are climate deniers. Even if they don’t believe the science, they have to respond to the growing level of regulation (22% of global emissions are now subject to a price). Leaders have a responsibility to see major change coming and to get out ahead of it, but not too far ahead!

“Climate change is rewriting the rules in many industries – just look at Tesla outselling BMW in California and with a market cap half of General Motor’s already! Leaders also have a responsibility to manage risk. As Bob Litterman, former Chief Risk Officer at Goldman Sachs keeps reminding us – there is an inevitability about the coming price signal on carbon and the less a company is prepared the harder it will be hit. This is already starting to play out in the oil and gas sector with investors pushing dividend returns instead of risky exploration expenditure.”

Cramer: “Businesses very often see further out than governments do. Businesses also like to innovate.  Organized business associations, more often than not, take a lowest common denominator approach that is in fact inconsistent with business interests. Leading companies should use their voice to call for smart regulation and then innovate and compete to succeed. There is a huge opportunity for just such efforts in the run-up to COP-21 in Paris in late 2015: the business voice should be heard, and if it is, companies will help lead the way to  low carbon prosperity. Leaders recognize the importance of this step.”

Graf: “I have personally never used climate change as part of the business case for any sustainability project. Not at SAP. Not with customers. Unless you’re in an industry that depends on climate to be stable (e.g., agriculture), the much better way to argue is the cost of energy, and not the implications and risk of climate change. Energy cost is something I have to deal with today, tomorrow and every day thereafter. There’s zero argument around the probability around that.”

Is the biggest challenge for Integrated Reporting adoption around SME supply chains to ensure sustainable business? [from @mbauerc]

Topping: “No, integrated reporting will impact large listed companies primarily – and the way their integrated thinking leads to changed supply chain engagement will impact the SMEs. In many cases this will allow for disruptive innovations from the savvy small guys.”

Graf: “SME’s adopt more sustainable practices because their customers are expecting it from them. The push is coming from the mega-buyers like the retail giants and trickles down the supply chain from there.”

Integrated reporting is great but how do you get people to read it? [from @angryafrican]

Topping: “Make it the story of your business. I hear more and more business leaders explaining how new graduates are interviewing the companies for evidence of integrated thinking, awareness of the systemic challenges faced by society and a coherent company approach that uses the power of the corporation to make good money by adding real value to society. Telling the integrated story starts at recruitment and goes all the way to analyst calls – it will need to become the same story.”

Cramer: “This challenge affects ALL forms of reporting. But a more broad-minded report is likeliest to attract attention: Integrated reporting could ‘save’ reports.”

Graf: “You need a great overarching story (one story, not many), and use video, interactive charts, etc. to make it interesting. Moreover, use social media to promote it.”

When reporting on energy, carbon, GHG, how can we make it relevant and benchmarked? Standalone figures too abstract to mean much? [from @miamiaki,@jackwysocki]

Topping: “At CDP, we help companies benchmark many environmental indicators and practices against their peers – that’s just good practice but of course it requires good data. Benchmarking process as well as output is important to drive learning and change – for example, what percentage of capex is committed to energy efficiency, does this get same or better payback than average? This sustybiz-tweetalso helps overcome any lagging perceptions that these  metrics are not business-relevant.”

Graf: “We always like to talk in visual explanations. Like ‘SAP consumes the same amount of electricity as a 250,000 people city.’ Or ‘Our customers collectively emit at least one sixth of the world’s man made emissions.’

How has the cloud affected our lives besides our ability to reduce environmental impact? [from @orange_harp]

Graf: “In all the ways that we all experience every day, from music, video, smartphones, millions of apps, social media, social platforms, etc.”

Where do we stand on CSR across the tech industry? Is our personal info staying private? [from @mr_rosenwald]

Graf: “Let me put it this way: I am very conservative about which information I am sharing on the web. The industry is running the risk of losing customer trust. We have to work together to ensure that’s not happening.”

Cramer: “While attention has so far focused on tech companies, almost every business has access to personal information. Companies can look to the principles established via the Global Network Initiative to ensure that this information is treated properly.”

Is part of the gender gap problem that the tech sector is too much of a chauvinistic culture? [How can we] attract women through culture change? [From @angryafrican]

Graf: “I am very proud that SAP has set a target to increase the ratio of women in management positions to 25% by 2017. We have gone up about 3.5% over the last years.”

Originally written for and published on CSRwire’s Commentary section Talkback on May 12, 2014.

Examining The Sustainability of the Royal Bank of Scotland: Facing Your Demons

09 Wednesday Jul 2014

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The finance sector continues to ride on the coattails of what started as a severe decline in trust, market performance and profits in 2008. And Royal Bank of Scotland [RBS] was no exception, facing its own share of customer distrust and instability as well as a government bailout.

However, in its most recent CSR Report, the bank – as compared to its contemporaries – makes a marked effort to address these concerns and makes a public promise to examine its “financial stability, our customers, the way we use the resources around and the practices that we have.”

What really piqued my interest was the press release issued by the bank, which right from the headline – Royal Bank of Scotland Extends Meetings with Biggest Critics – told me change was afoot.

I caught up with Duncan Young, Deputy Head of Sustainability who is also in charge of producing the bank’s annual CSR Report. We began with an obvious question – I couldn’t hesitate – about a specific statement in CEO Stephen Hester’s quote that highlighted the Report’s very first page: What will it take to “build a really good bank”?

Aspirational Goals: “Building a Really Good Bank”

“There’s been debate about how aspirational that statement is…and a recognition that the sector has had a difficult time in recent years. We want to regain the trust of our customers and wider stakeholders – and we’re not going to become a really good bank till we do that,” he explained, adding: “We’ve spent the last few years working to make the bank secure and stable again. And made fairly significant progress. But as we go through the process of regaining trust with wider society, we think we need to deliver the kind of solutions that equate with us being a good bank.”

Fair enough. But what does an overarching statement of “becoming good” involve for an organization that serves a cross sector of business and consumer populations?

“We have significantly enhanced the remit of our Group Sustainability Committee this year. They will now cover wider reputational issues, impact on customers as well as U.K. industry practices, where too often, in the past customers were taken for granted. Today, we want to put customers at the heart of what we do to make sure we don’t make those mistakes again,” he said.

As for the committee’s expanded remit, “The committee will operate at the board level with full  RBS_Report_Cover_Alternativesupport from our leadership. Members will meet six times a year to review its larger mandate, which now includes conduct, culture and reputation, a very current issue for the industry.”

Underlining this is of course a sense of loss. As Young put it, “We are well aware that we have suffered heavily since the financial crisis and need to rethink how we work with our customers.”

“After the crisis, we were bailed out by the taxpayer. Our fundamental goal since has been to make the bank safe and secure. We’re getting there. Our loan to deposit ratio – traditionally held as a good measure of a bank – was at 140 percent at one point. Now we’re down to 100 percent, which is deemed to be a measurable sign of a stable bank,” he said.

“We’ve also repaid key aspects of government support. But it’s important that we focus on maintaining a culture now that ensures past mistakes do not recur. We have a much stronger focus on conduct risk and our engagement efforts are making sure the bank’s leadership are much better placed to pick up on issues of market behavior, reputation risk and have an understanding of what customers’ expectations are from us. That’s another reason why we have significantly increased our disclosures,” Young emphasized.

Transparent Leadership: Engaging With Critics

So how does the company plan to address and interact with its critics?

“We have had a program where the sustainability committee meets with our biggest external critics where they can make the case about their interests in how we operate directly to the executive team. Last year, we held three engagement sessions with 14-15 separate groups attending. This year, we transparency at RBSwill have six more. In fact, even as we talk, committee members are meeting with a few organizations to discuss cyber security and its impact on the bank and our customers,” offered Young.

The leverage and stature of the committee has proven an important approach in increasing the bank’s stakeholder engagement, according to Young, because of the members’ ability to represent critical points of view and risks directly to the leadership. “This ensures that our top leadership does not lose sight of our key stakeholders and the dialogue informs their decision-making and specific business-related outcomes,” he added.

The CEO Speaks

Another first for the bank: Publishing a Q&A with its CEO that makes a mighty honest effort at addressing issues like trust, stability, its lending practices as well as the 2012 LIBOR rate-fixing scandal. Highlights:

On sustainability:

“Our long-term success will be determined by how well we understand our customers and communities, and how well we can service their needs in a responsible way. 2012 was a very challenging year for the sector, but it certainly served to underline that point.”

Lending to small businesses:

“It’s a difficult environment at the moment. Ongoing economic uncertainty has unsurprisingly driven down demand from businesses. SME loan applications were down 19% from 2011. Nonetheless, we continue to provide significant support to customers. RBS advanced more than £74 billion to UK businesses and homeowners in 2012. We’re approving a higher proportion of loan applications than ever – 93% in the last quarter of 2012.”

Royal Bank of Scotland CSR Report

The impact of the LIBOR rate-fixing scandal:

“There is no place at RBS for such behavior. That’s why we’re determined to correct the control and risk management failures that originated in RBS during the financial boom years, of which attempted LIBOR manipulation is an example. This is a painstaking task, that’s been undertaken over several years and we can’t detect and solve every problem as fast as we would like. The aim is to create a safe and secure RBS that serves customers well and that, in the right way, creates value for those who rely on us.”

On customer trust:

“Staff don’t set out to serve customers poorly, but banks too often had other priorities before the crisis. They saw customers as a means of making money.”

On executive pay:

“The investment banking bonus pool has gone down by 20% on last year, despite operating profits in the markets division being up by nearly 70%. In fact, since 2009 our investment banking bonus pool has shrunk by more than 70%. We’ve also increased transparency around pay. But there’s a balance – we need high quality people if we are to achieve the goals we set out in 2008. So we must deliver reform, while not making the business unmanageable.”

Regaining Trust with External Stakeholders…

The report’s materiality map, worth a look by anyone interested in disclosure and how it can increase shareholder value and business performance, shows customer trust as the bank’s number one material risk. I asked Young how his team was planning to address this:

“Stakeholder engagement is one piece. We make our senior leaders available to the media, release quarterly disclosure and take advantage of public forums to explain where we’re taking the company, how we’re working on renewing customer trust and engaging with enterprise,” he said.

Other efforts include programs like “Working with You” where relationship managers spend a minimum of two days a year working with their clients to get a real understanding of those businesses, an accreditation scheme to ensure our bankers are suitably skilled and qualified, and simplifying our product range to make life easier for our High Street customers.

“It’s not just about the products but also how we offer them. We have to acknowledge that we’re operating against the backdrop of a tough regulatory landscape and immense pressure. The repercussions of offering the wrong products in the past continue to be felt across the organization and we have to get this right,” he added.

…And Employees

What about the bank’s internal culture? With massive layoffs having made headlines not too long ago, Employee retention at RBSwhat is Young’s team doing to retain and attract top talent? “Despite all the changes and the restructuring, our employee engagement measurements stack up very well. We’re quite pleased, for example, with our ongoing commitment to demo gender diversity at the executive level. We’re not at the optimum point but we’re getting much better at employing more women,” said Young.

Take a look at the report and you see Young’s sentiments reflected right from Page 1. It is commendable that the bank, despite its difficult regulatory environment and consumer marketplace, is facing up to its critics, shifting its cultural rotunda and putting programs in place that can ensure 2008 does not repeat itself. As Young put it, the report manages to “strike a realistic tone and successfully acknowledges that we did have a difficult year.”

After all, we’ve gone hoarse advocating to reporters that they mustn’t view CSR/sustainability Reports as yet another marketing document but as a piece of disclosure that is tied to materiality, engagement and business performance.

Final words? “If people read nothing more than the first 15 pages, they would get a good oversight of our challenges and how we’re responding. That’s mission accomplished for us,” offered Young.

Originally written for and published on CSRwire’s Commentary section Talkback on May 15, 2013.

Access to Medicine, Transparency & Ethical Governance: GlaxoSmithKline’s 2012 CSR Report

09 Wednesday Jul 2014

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When a company is manufacturing critical need medicines and popular consumer products, how does it address increasing access to innovative products while managing its energy use?

On the launch of the GlaxoSmithKline’s 2012 Corporate Responsibility Report – a comprehensive read at 75 pages – I caught up with Director for Global Corporate Responsibility Clare Griffin for some updates.

Looking Ahead: GSK Switches Focus

For the first time the report, while focusing on the company’s 2012 performance, also includes a set of 23 forward-looking commitments across GSK’s business. The first thing that caught my eye in the report was the framework used to connect the firm’s vision with its business mission, assets, purpose and bottom line [see below]. How did the team use this chart to define CR’s focus at GSK?

“Lots of companies say they don’t have separate CR strategies; that they are completely embedded, etc. But how can you demonstrate that integration? This chart, for us, is a good way of explaining how CR is interwoven into our business. We have our business assets, our people, our priorities, our values, which leads us to create innovative products and drive access where people need it the most,” she explained.

“That’s the vision we want to create. We believe that if responsibility is absolutely integral to how we do business, we will deliver sustainable business growth for shareholders and benefits for our other stakeholders,” she added.

It’s all interrelated.

glaxosmithkline csr report

“For example, in the world’s poorest countries, our Developing Countries and Market Access (DCMA) operating unit has a clear objective to increase access to medicines and vaccines, while expanding our market presence and ensuring our business is sustainable for the long-term. This model is increasing our volume sales while increasing access to essential medicines and vaccines.”

Transparency, Pricing & Carbon: Challenges Ahead

“We will see through the implementation of our commitments on transparency of clinical trials data, continue with our commitments on pricing, and look to further harness manufacturing technologies to improve our carbon footprint,” writes GSK CEO Andrew Witty in the report.

Lots of promises in that one statement, I asked. How will these be implemented?

“We have a pretty diverse product line. Although pharmaceuticals are the majority, we also produce vaccines and consumer healthcare products. To improve our carbon emissions, we first invested in mapping our carbon footprint. For example, we found out that Amoxicillin, a very popular antibiotic, is Horlicksthe third-largest contributor to our carbon emissions due to the manufacturing process,” she said. “Our green chemistry team in Singapore has found a different way to produce Amoxicillin through using an enzyme instead which will cut carbon emissions from this process by 36,000 tonnes and reduce waste by 2,400 tonnes as well.”

Similarly with Horlicks, a popular malted milk drink: “We are working to further enhance an Indian government program aimed at modernizing milk production, and looking at introducing alternative energy generation, for example low-carbon biomass energy generation using waste wood to replace coal. Essentially, we are focusing on where we believe we can have the biggest impact,” she added.

Creating Access: Sharing Data From Clinical Trials

As for the transparency piece, while GSK has shared the summary results of all of its clinical trials – whether positive or negative – on a website accessible to all since 2004, the firm has committed to going further and now making anonymized patient-level data available to researchers.

“We’re setting up an independent panel which will review each request to make sure it is appropriate and will be using the data for valid scientific reasons. We also want the researchers to share their results back with the scientific community. We hope this initiative will be of value in developing and catalyzing a wider approach in the industry,” she explained.

Ethical Standards: Reinstating a Culture of Responsibility

Our discussion would not have been complete without taking into account, GSK’s rough tidings last year with the U.S. government. With the firm having to pay $3 billion to the U.S. government to settle allegations of unethical misconduct – failure to include information, etc. – in its sales and marketing practices around drugs Paxil and Avandia, several questions arose about the company’s corporate governance, accountability and sales practices – how do you move forward, I asked.

The company has taken significant steps to move beyond that, responded Griffin. “We have implemented a new incentive compensation system (Patient First) for our professional sales representatives who work directly with healthcare professionals in the U.S. The new system eliminates individual sales targets for these representatives as a basis for bonuses, and instead bases compensation primarily on sales competency, customer evaluations and the overall performance of their business unit,” she said.

glaxosmithkline csr report

The company has also brought together different Codes of Practices across regions and business units to create one Global Code and introduced standards that reinforce clear distinction between scientific dialogue and promotional activities. “These new standards govern the way we engage in scientific activities, such as advisory boards, publications, scientific congresses and medical education,” she said.

Other steps: A Corporate Ethics and Compliance Program for all employees, strengthened training programs, setting up an anti-bribery and corruption initiative and setting in motion disciplinary actions when needed.

“The 23 forward-looking commitments cut across the four areas of GSK’s responsibility: Health for all, Our behavior, Our People and Our Planet. It was important that we picked a time frame that is close enough that the current cadre of employees will be the people delivering the commitments while giving us enough time to create sustained change,” Griffin emphasized, alluding to the firm’s 2015 and 2020 goals.

Goals & Commitments: Highlights from 2012

So what were some of the year’s highlights for GSK?

  • The potential to bring around 15 new medicines and vaccines to patients over the next three years
  • 3.5 million pounds invested in R&D
  • 5 million pounds invested in the Tres Cantos Open Lab Foundation in Spain to fund research on solutions for diseases in the developed world
  • A concentrated focus on creating access, including monitoring the influential Access to Medicine Index, that measures what pharmaceuticals are doing to bring more medicines to more people [GSK won the top spot for the third time in 2012 although Griffin was quick to point out that “the index is a measure of what we’re doing, not the reason why we’re doing it.”]
  • A number of commitments around transparency established in 2012 including participating in the All-Trials Initiative, marking the next level of details on releasing results of GSK’s clinical trials.

What’s next?

“In 2013 we will continue to focus on innovation, access, and operating with transparency across the business. Specifically we will work to see through the implementation of our commitments on transparency of clinical trials data, continue with our commitments on pricing, and look to further harness manufacturing technologies to improve our carbon footprint,” finished Griffin.

Originally written for and published on CSRwire’s Commentary section Talkback onApril 16, 2013.

Empowering Women Through Education: Talbots and BSR’s HERproject

03 Thursday Jul 2014

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It is often said that an empowered woman can lead to happy families, successful team projects, and a flourishing economy.

BSR_HERproject_1With women increasingly accounting for a higher proportion of our workforce — and supply chain — empowering them with healthy alternatives, training and access to medical information is critical. BSR’s HERproject has a similar objective in mind. The project, built around private-public partnerships, believes that businesses that invest in educating and empowering women in the workplace enjoy higher efficiencies, lower absenteeism and turnover rates, and higher return on investments.

In fact, “BSR’s HERproject has demonstrated the power of providing women’s reproductive health education in the workplace to transform individual lives, workplaces, and communities,” says Marcus Chung, Director of Corporate Responsibility at Talbots, a women’s apparel, shoes and accessories retailer.

Chung, in partnership with BSR’s Racheal Yeager, will lead a session at the upcoming Ethical Sourcing Forum in New York on some of the results, challenges and lessons learned from collaborating closely on implementing HERproject in Talbots’ contract factories.

Public-Private Partnerships to Drive Women Empowerment

Talbots has partnered with BSR since 2010 on creating, investing in and implementing curriculum to educate female garment workers around the world. What makes partnerships like these tougher to implement – but much more critical to push for – is that these workers are not Talbots employees – and the factories are not owned by Talbots either.

Return on Investment: BSR's HERproject“HERproject emphasizes partnering with local NGOs to deliver training to high potential workers, who in turn become internal trainers. We focus on health and nutrition issues which ultimately lead to increased confidence and competency among the workforce,” he says.

Chung admitted that besides higher rates of productivity, participation and loyalty, these exercises also help discern high potential candidates for leadership opportunities.

So far Talbots has launched the project in its factories in China, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia and Vietnam.

An Educated & Healthy Employee

There are some side benefits too, he agrees. “At one factory in Vietnam, management told me that other factories’ workers were approaching them to ask how they could join the factory to take advantage of the educational and training opportunities,” he says.

They have since seen higher rates of applications pour in.

For Talbots – a women-centric brand – this initiative has been crucial in driving social impact and demonstrating worker responsibility. But, according to Chung, it is much more than that. “HERproject also made it very easy for us to scale and take our philanthropic platform across our factories in a very real way,” he says.

“Of course it also helps with vendor dialogues: Our conversations with our suppliers and vendors used to be restricted to garment costing and quality. Now we have much more dynamic conversations.”

For retailers and manufacturers, HERproject, he says, offers a practical way of working with nonprofit partners and internal champions to bridge the complex cultural and economic divides that surround a global company’s supply chain.

Statistics have shown that a woman shunned is a dangerous woman. While an educated and empowered woman invests in the future and drives change for her family, herself, and her employer. Who wouldn’t want such a powerful employee on your side?

Originally written for and published on CSRwire’s Commentary sectionTalkback on March 1, 2011.

2011: The Year Business Learned to Say Mea Culpa

02 Wednesday Jul 2014

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These were just some of the things that kept us busy in 2011. While some represent the changing marketplace, others are age-old struggles between activists, consumers, employees and corporations. Yet, they all represented the emergence of new forces at play in our corporate corridors.

Yes, 2011 represented despair for many – the jobseekers, the underemployed, the single parent, the shopper, the CEO, the trader – but with despair, as CSRwire’s CEO Joe Sibilia noted, comes hope, adaptability and often, solutions.

And it is at that stage that most of us converged in 2011.

Transparency: Is Business Ready?

Take, for example, the recent BSR conference held in San Francisco. My panel addressed a topic that is bound to get most of us shifting in our chairs: Sustainability in a Hyper-Transparent World. Ouch, right? Joined by executives from Oxfam, Intel and SourceMap, the conversation included several uncomfortable moments (I offered up Zappos as an example to the audience, citing that the company livestreams its all hands meeting in order to live its mission of “building open and honest communications.”) and featured several probabilities, suggestions, and potential solutions by a group that included lawyers, sustainability executives, CSR officers, reporters, strategists, entrepreneurs as well as nonprofit leaders.

“When you are increasingly naked, fitness if not optional.” – Macrowikinomics

That the panel attracted a full room of senior executives willing to discuss difficult issues like privacy, corporate governance and stakeholder responsibility is a start.

The C-Suite Headlines Sustainability

Till last year, while much was being written about CSR and sustainability, executives were largely absent from the dialogue. In 2011, this changed ever so subtly. Earlier in the year, Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn took the stage at one of the year’s most prolific conferences, the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship’s annual conference. He discussed the importance of employee wellbeing, organizational design, transparency (Kathleen Edmond was the first Chief Ethics Officer to start a blog on ethical issues in the workplace) and the importance of stakeholder engagement.

“The more you peel the onion, the more you realize there is to be done. You just need to be constantly excited about peeling the onion.” – Brian Dunn, CEO, Best Buy

At Net Impact, Nike’s Hannah Jones took the stage as did REI CEO Sally Jewell. BSR kept the momentum going by featuring Ofra Strauss, CEO of the Strauss Group, Autodesk CEO Carl Bass and Anheuser-Busch CEO Carlos Brito.

These chiefs weren’t exactly looking to gain brownie points. They were after all speaking to the choir in some respects and to an audience that for the most part, gets business and social responsibility. But what made each of them stand out was their honesty about the difficult problems facing us today – a first? – agreement on the role of business in adding to today’s social and environmental mess.

“In the last few years, business has lost tremendous trust in the marketplace. That we are GOOD now rests on us.” – Ofra Strauss, Chairperson and former CEO, The Strauss Group

Mea culpa, they all said. Followed by: Here’s how we are trying to change ways, rethink growth, repurpose missions and reengage stakeholders.

That’s a start.

Social Media Engagement: 140 Characters Rule

Despite all the naysayers of social media, there is no denying that for any organization that sells a product or service today, having a dedicated presence on Facebook and Twitter is a prerequisite. With engagement reaching never-seen-before proportions, even Chief Sustainability Officers are learning to communicate in 140 characters or less.

“We must see social problems as business opportunities.” – Carol Cone, EVP, Edelman

But several companies dipped their toes in active engagement by trying out new formulae: Best Buy released their annual CSR report by hosting a live webinar (that I moderated) with their Sustainability team and a parallel conversation on Twitter. As I quizzed them about the report, questions poured in from Twitter: What was Best Buy doing in the area of conflict minerals? What about human rights? Recycling? How about consumer education? And why the low diversity ratio of employees?

Squirm they did, admitting that the issues were complex they did, but answer they also did.

They weren’t the only ones though.

Timberland (that was acquired by VF earlier in the year) launched their new Communications portal, McDonald’s hosted a live chat on Twitter with VP of CSR Bob Langert, UPS held several chats during the holiday season from sustainable gifting to green packaging choices.

Communicating your sustainability story is an important cog in the wheel called trust and the choice to engage is no longer a valid option. How you choose to do so, however, will continue to differentiate you from your competitor.

Making Business Sense out of Sustainability

Several large organizations came forward in 2011 asking jobseekers and students applying for jobs in sustainability and CSR to understand how to relate their core competencies and knowledge to the issues facing us today, i.e., water depletion, carbon emissions, climate change, etc.

How can depleting levels of water relate to a professional services firm, for example, or a bank? Why must a software company invest in engaging and educating its supply chain?

Climate Corps: Creating Jobs & Savings

The Environmental Defense Fund’s Climate Corps program is one of very few initiatives that have managed to tie sustainability with business strategy and growth while creating jobs out of the process.

From placing seven MBA candidates as summer fellows in 2008, the program has quickly grown in popularity, placing 96 students at 78 companies in 2011. The fellows spend an entire summer working with their host companies on identifying energy efficiency solutions, implementing carbon management processes and helping diverse businesses embed environmental sustainability into their strategies.

The results: Millions in savings. While few get direct job offers from the Fellowship, most have had success finding jobs where their unique mix of experience, passion, and the ability to tie business strategy with sustainability, is appreciated and utilized in changing processes, setting standards and adapting organizations to a fast-changing reality of limited resources.

This is a start.

Organizational Design & Sustainability

Where does sustainability fit in your organization?

Everywhere, really, is the only correct answer, irrespective of where the chief sustainability officer sits. This, finally is getting addressed by what I consider a crucial component at any company: The HR and recruitment teams. In collaboration with IE Business School, I moderated seminars with recruiters, HR directors and organization design consultants on the value of CSR in candidate recruitment and retention.

We discussed the relationship between productivity, values, respect and growth. We heard from students who want to work for socially responsible companies and executives who are redirecting their organizations to instill a culture of ethics, responsibility, accountability and pride.

Mea culpa, most of them said. That’s a start.

Originally written for and published on CSRwire’s Commentary section Talkback on December 30, 2011.

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Translating Business Responsibility: An interview with Warner Bros. CEO & Chairman Barry Meyer: Now LIVE on CSRwire!

24 Tuesday Jan 2012

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Translating Business Responsibility: An interview with Warner Bros. CEO & Chairman Barry Meyer: Now LIVE on CSRwire!

When the Justice League comes together to fight evil, evil stands little chance. In a world of economic uncertainty and social unrest, superheroes provide children with mentors, entrepreneurs with lessons in responsibility, and the rest of us with inspiration. Now, DC Entertainment has joined hands with Time Warner and Warner Bros. to launch We Can Be Heroes.

Their target: The hunger crisis in the Horn of Africa.

Their spokescharacters: The Justice League

CSRwire In Conversation with BCLC: The 2012 CSR Outlook

10 Tuesday Jan 2012

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Join CSRwire’s Editorial Director Aman Singh in conversation with Stephen Jordan, Executive Director of the U.S. Chamber Business Civic Leadership Center and a group of MBA graduates virtually for an intimate conversation about what happened in corporate social responsibility (CSR) in 2011 and what the field has in store for 2012.

When: Friday, January 13, 2012; 9:00am EST

Where: Livestream & Twitter

Register for the FREE live stream and join the tweetchat at #BCLConCSR!

The 2012 CSR Outlook is the first in a FREE six-part forum series being conducted by the Center. The U.S. Chamber BCLC’s Conversations with Stephen series is produced and moderated by founder and executive director Stephen Jordan. Guests engage in thoughtful, solution-oriented discussions and debates about the CSR field. The six-part 2012 series is offered at no charge as part of BCLC’s commitment to share knowledge and best practices with current and upcoming CSR practitioners.

We look forward to hearing from all of you @AmanSinghCSR, @CSRwire and #CSRwire or #BCLConCSR!

Related:
2011: The Year Business Learned to Say Mea Culpa

KPMG’s Citizenship Director: Occupy Wall Street Protests Must Drive [Business] Transformation

31 Monday Oct 2011

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“The greatest way to change the world is _________.”

That’s how KPMG’s Director of Citizenship and Diversity Lord Michael Hastings started the opening keynote at this year’s Net Impact Conference in Portland, Oregon.

In the next half an hour that followed, the former — and the first ever — CSR director of BBC offered observations that felt alternatively poignant, realistic and perhaps unattainable.

On America’s prison system:

We must recognize that social dysfunction is a critical part of our reality and is perilously expensive.

On 9/11:

I say this with the utmost respect in my heart for the victims of 9/11: It has cost us one trillion dollars and over 6,700 deaths to avenge one event. Within hours, what was supposed to be the war on illiteracy – remember the picture from that day of President Bush reading to a classroom of kids? – became the war on terror.

Today, we are facing the repercussions of that decision. Now, we must switch on our acutest sense: Our intuition and listening power.

On Occupy Wall Street:

[We have to figure out] how do we respond? Because we have to. These protests must drive transformation, which can only come through sacrifice, only by accepting responsibility.

On the answer to changing corporate culture and mindsets:

The answer is cynicism. This is an understanding that I am responsible for the conflicts around me, that I absorb the duty, steel my back and face society to do the unexpected.

On reputation:

We cannot build a reputation on what we are ‘going to do.’ Our moral fiber, clarity of values, past record and leadership contribute to our ultimate reputation.

On the role of people in business growth:

A change in reporting is occurring that will correctly calculate the real assets of a business. Integrated reporting offers this framework for the future. We’re in a time when the idea of responsible capitalism is becoming a part of business strategy. We must continue with it.

And his answer to the earlier question?

“Overcoming cynicism”

Occupy Wall Street: The Average Joe Interprets Corporate Social Responsibility

19 Wednesday Oct 2011

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Earlier this week I was at the annual PRSA conference in humid and beautiful Orlando, Florida. Before you think that I have switched tracks from journalism to PR, stop right there! I was on site to speak on an interestingly personal topic: Sustainability: Walking the Walk.

Sustainability: Walking the Walk with CSRWire & Ethical Markets

Joining me on the panel were CEO of CSRwire Joe Sibilia and Executive Director of Ethical Markets Rosalinda Sanquiche. Sibilia started off the panel by talking about Occupy Wall Street. Not because he wanted a room full of dissent but because for Sibilia, as he emphasized on a recent Fox Business show, OWS goes to the heart of corporate social responsibility: A responsible capitalist system that takes into account a business’ social, economic and environmental stakeholders.

From a room of roughly 45 attendees, almost everyone raised their hands. However, when he followed up by asking how many understood what the protestors are demanding, the hands fell to a single digits. So, before I go any further, here’s a two-part question for you:

And:

Here’s the thing: Because so many continued to disagree with the holier-than-thou voice of CSR, claiming it is another cost business doesn’t need, a burden, not a business priority, so on and so forth, Michael Porter gave us an easier concept to embrace: Creating Shared Value.

You Don’t Get CSR? How About “Shared Value”?

Many more understood the economical efficacy offered by shared value than the tardy, accusatory and undefined acronym of CSR. But CSR as well as creating shared value are concepts spearheaded by economists, business leaders, researchers and activists.

Now we are all being forced to recognize and acknowledge a movement created by the average Joe (no pun intended!) demanding business to be more responsible, equal and just.

They want to be able to work, to have a home, a family. They want the right to live comfortably.

In other words, corporate social responsibility.

Yes, it’s one and the same thing, except now it’s not the activists or the bloggers taking up the case but an undefined mass of people who come from different backgrounds, experiences and age but are commonly united on one front: Fairness.

Regardless of whether you physically join the Occupy Wall Street protestors, it is far more important that you understand their message and recognize that this is your one chance to make things right.

Yes, You the Average Employee Can Make a Difference

So, go ahead: Nudge your boss to offer job sharing opportunities to candidates.

As a job candidate, question the recruiter on the company’s mission, values, priorities. As a student, ask your faculty to discuss business cases in context of economic recessions, environmental degradation and social upheaval.

Ask the tough questions, the right questions. As Michigan’s Ross School of Business Professor Aneel Karnani recently said, “You get the kind of government you vote for.” We as professionals and students get the kind of corporation we choose to work for.

This is your chance to influence business as an employee, a manager, and as a prospective candidate. For the longest time we have been told to vote with our dollars. Now it is time to vote with our expertise and professional skills.

Question is, are you up for it?