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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.

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Campbell Becomes America’s First Public Company to Acquire a Public Benefit Corporation: In Conversation with Plum Organics’ Cofounder

09 Wednesday Jul 2014

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Redefining corporate law. Targeting the node of enterprise to shift capitalism.

Those were some of the thoughts running through Neil Grimmer’s mind as he joined eight other businesses to welcome Benefit Corporations in Delaware in July, 2013.

As cofounder and President of Plum Organics – along with a small group of parents – Grimmer’s philosophy has been pretty straightforward: Every kid deserves the best nutrition and no child deserves to go hungry.

The result: an organic food line that prioritizes nutrition, environmental conservation, reduced packaging [a supply chain assessment of the traditional glass jar vs. the Plum pouch was undertaken that showed energy consumption for the latter was much less, fossil fuel consumption for their transportation was a ninth, and they’re 14 times less likely to end up in landfills even with aggressive recycling of the glass jars] and an accompanied mission to target child hunger.

Sound like a lot to take on?

Grimmer’s conviction came from experience. As the former VP of strategy and innovation with Clif Bar, he knew a thing or two about product development that infuses innovation with sustainable practices. “At Clif, I looked at sustainability as a journey, not a method. We’ve adopted that here at Plum,” he says.

Plum Organics went from recording $800,000 in sales in its first year [2008] to $93 million in 2012.

Consider these statistics:

  • 60 percent of retailers in the U.S. carried Plum in the latest quarter
  • The No. 3 baby food brand in the U.S. after Gerber and Beechnut
  • The top growing brand in the baby food category by actual dollars and percent growth this year, with 135% growth vs. a year ago

While the numbers tell their own story, here’s the kicker.

A Public Benefit Corporation: The Implications

Plum Organics is a certified Benefit Corporation. And now with Delaware’s recognition of the legal status, parent company Campbell Soup Company – who announced plans to acquire Plum in May Plum_Organics2013 – becomes the only company in the U.S. with a fully owned subsidiary that is also a Public  Benefit Corporation.

“Our business success at Plum has been based on creating a great product in a way that respects the highest levels of corporate citizenship. It is actually good business to be a good corporate citizen – and our success speaks to that belief,” says Grimmer.

Grimmer is excited – about the notoriety as well as joining hands with an iconic American brand, well-known for its altruistic actions and social causes.

“We have a mission centric core: nutrition and solving hunger with our benefit corporation status our secret sauce and innovation driving the entire process. Campbell has a dual mandate: strengthen the core Campbell business while driving new consumers and innovation. It’s a perfect marriage,” he explains.

With global aspirations [“Hunger and health are global issues.”] and a lofty ambition [“Make sure our products get into every high chair and lunch box globally.”], Grimmer “wanted a partner who would drive both [our goals] with us and help us pave the way to address a more global need that kids have. We have innovation driving our core – we launched over 150 products in the last six years specifically addressing nutritional needs of young families.”

Aligning Ambition With Impact

After spending some time with Campbell Soup Company CEO Denise Morrison, Grimmer’s search Plum Organics Super Smoothiecame to an end.

“As our company grew, so did our ability to impact the world,” says Grimmer. And being a benefit corporation meant the added leverage of a model that places impact and profits in the same sentence. Like The Full Effect program, which was launched this year to target 16 million kids who go without daily meals every day.

“We now had the scale and capability built into the business to make an impact. So we designed a Super Smoothie jam-packed with nutrients,” he says.

So far, Plum has committed to producing and distributing half a million Super Smoothies in 2013. Sound familiar? In 2012, Campbell led a similar one-of-a-kind campaign to produce more than 40,000 jars of “Just Peachy” salsa exclusively for the Food Bank of South Jersey, using fresh, local New Jersey peaches that were not able to be sold because of blemishes but were fine to eat. The initial run from last year’s harvest generated $100,000 for the Food Bank of South Jersey through retail sales.

“Collaborating with Plum made sense for us on several levels. They’re a mission-based organization and their focus on eradicating childhood hunger is strongly aligned with our work nationally and in Camden, N.J. – where Campbell is headquartered. That helps build the collective impact we can have.”

“Plum and Campbell are both consumer-centric companies, and we share a focus on innovation, a critical component of success as we continue to marry our citizenship commitments with the Campbell business model,” responded Dave Stangis, Campbell’s Vice President, Public Affairs and Corporate Responsibility.

Side Effects of An Acquisition

Clearly, the stars align for the two companies but at the end of the day, Campbell is a public company with shareholders and the pressures of satisfying quarterly balance sheets. Will the acquisition bring along with it the familiar headaches of layoffs, change in management and perhaps even a shift in models?

“Plum is a standalone business and will remain so. I will continue to lead Plum Organics and our team is staying intact,” says Grimmer, who plans on remaining an active member of the recently established Plum board of directors. The company will also continue to headquarter in California.

Stangis who has been leading the iconic company’s CSR efforts since 2008 was also quick to cut to the chase about the two organizations’ merged path going forward. “We’re in the process of structuring the Board for Plum. We’re proud to say one of our subsidiaries is a founding member of  the Public Benefit Corporation league.”

“We have already begun working with Neil and the Plum team. We are connecting on joint priorities and sharing Campbell’s CSR and sustainability resources,” he added.

“We’re looking forward to leveraging Campbell’s capabilities and skills to grow the Plum brand. As we dig into these opportunities, we will also be looking to focus on aligning our public benefit corporation with Campbell’s mission, model and culture. They have such a strong CSR program that the opportunities to target hunger are endless,” Grimmer explained.

And this is where Grimmer believes the conversation needs to shift.

“There is a new economy emerging of consumers who are looking to purchase from companies with a mission. They’re building a virtuous circle. When consumers support a business, you end up growing quickly with more exposure and higher impact,” he says.

Of course, being a public benefit corporation is but one element of Plum Organics’ success. It’s an exciting business story.

But the bigger story here is about being able to make an impact by combining a good product with sustainable attributes and an associated social and environmental cause. And that is where Grimmer wants to push his colleagues across corporate America further.

“The business community needs to look at how they are creating values alignment with their core consumers in a marketplace where loyalty is getting scarce. Let’s create many more of those virtuous circles.”

Originally written for and published on CSRwire’s Commentary section Talkback on May 1, 2013.

Stakeholder vs. Shareholder Value: Connecting the Sustainability Dots With Philips, Drexel University & Profits4Purpose

09 Wednesday Jul 2014

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Is there a connection between employee engagement and shareholder value?

Several similar questions came up in a recent webinar I facilitated, held in partnership with Profits 4 Purpose with guests Philips and Drexel University. While the question doesn’t have a linear answer – as is often the case with sustainability – it did take us through quite a conversation on connecting engagement with value, how CSR strategies affect business performance, the whole conundrum of measurement as well as what the latest research suggests.

Daniel Korschun, Assistant Professor and Fellow at the Center for Corporate Reputation Management at Drexel University, led the conversation by sharing some of his research with our audience.

“We’re moving into a new phase …since the 1950s we have had a debate about whether more CSR is better than less. While I don’t think this debate has been completely settled, there is general agreement among most practitioners that the core issue today is how we do it, not the quantity. That means we need to concentrate on effectiveness, which is where I have focused my research,” he started.

Employee Engagement: All About Signals

Employees are paying attention to CSR, he said.

And they notice when managers or customers support the company’s CSR initiatives.  When they notice this support, they are more likely to develop CSR and business performance“feelings of membership with a company.” In its most powerful form, we may begin to hear things like “I am an IBMer or a UPSer.” This feeling of membership then translates into a whole host of measurable outcomes like job performance, intent to stay in the job, or intent to volunteer.

For example, Korschun said he finds that people who feel this sense of membership are 87 percent more likely than others to be among the top performers of their company. And these effects hold even after controlling for pay satisfaction, personality traits, tenure, and work experience. The big lesson then?

  • Make CSR an open secret! “The more people who are discussing your behavior, the better.”
  • Have upper management act as champions: “If people don’t feel that management is aligned with your CSR strategy, impact will be muted. Executives don’t need to dictate CSR from the ivory tower but employees must know definitively that their leaders are on the same page, and are committed to social responsibility.”
  • Encourage contagion across stakeholders: “Engage customers in the same CSR programs as employees? Programs that get customers and employees to join forces (especially on volunteering sites) can create a bond…and that sort of contagion can lead to both happy employees and happy customers.”

Philip Cares: Formalizing Responsibility

Melanie Michaud, Senior Manager for Internal Communications with Philips North America took the baton from Daniel to evidence his data and research with how the practice and implementation of employee engagement maps out across a corporation. Emphasizing that Philips USA did not have a process in place till 2010 to vet requests and manage engagement across the company. “It was sporadic and led by employees who cared about various causes,” she said.

After several acquisitions, the company realized they needed a more formal process to align all its community development work with its business and employee base. That led to Philips Cares, through which, the company focuses on environment, education and health.

With tremendous uptick in the number of volunteers [over 8,000 volunteers] and donations in the 15 months since the program launched, Michaud highlighted the following keys to the success of Philips Philips caresCares – crucial for those managing relatively new programs or on the verge of launching one:

  • Do your research
  • Have a clear vision
  • Engage leadership
  • Have a volunteer tracking mechanism
  • Align with nonprofit partners
  • Emphasize local champions
  • Have consistent program branding
  • Engage in storytelling
  • Give employees a voice
  • Walk the talk

Setting a Global Strategy With Local Impact

So how does Philips ensure its CSR strategy is global in scope while local enough to support its communities?

That’s something we’re continually challenged with. We’re always tying everything back to our vision and mission of improving lives through innovation. We’re also doing some research now about rolling out a program like Philip Cares globally. In some areas there is greater interest than others and we’re currently working out how that will all work out,” Michaud responded.

One of the questions that came up during the webinar was around the survey Philips uses to seek feedback and make changes to its program. Emphasizing that the survey was a work in progress, Michaud said questions revolved around identifying causes, target audiences, types of volunteering activities as well as a bunch of open-ended questions for more elaborate feedback.

Practice vs. Software: Connecting Volunteerism With Impact

For Jason Burns, CEO of Profits 4 Purpose, the task was to connect Korschun’s research and Michaud’s practical perspective to how companies can best measure and track CSR and employee engagement activities. “We’re focused on helping companies make employee engagement simple, innovative and relational,” he started.

What are the key components to capture their attention? Burns summarized his comments in three neat categories:

  • Inspiring vision with easy execution: “We see a lot of companies starting with the end goal in mind, asking employees to focus on tracking…that’s less than inspiring. As human beings, we desire to be part of something bigger than ourselves so its important we start with a vision.”
  • Measuring impact: “Excel kills impact…how can we launch a strategy and review it for impact in real time and in alignment with employee engagement, mission and partners? Can we solve a specific problem that fits within the mission of a business? Can we cast a ‘what if’ scenario for employees to be motivated, to make a difference and get involved in a real easy and seamless way?”
  • Sharing a compelling story: “You’ve executed the strategy, and achieved great impact but why is it important? The most powerful piece for an employee when they volunteer is being part of that impact firsthand. The next powerful piece for those who might not be on the ground is communication, the story. It goes beyond the numbers.”

While the P4P platform helps companies do all of the above in one centralized place, what stood out was the fact that it also leverages the data into meaningful stories, disclosure commitments and  p4p_webinar_5filings. As Burns explained, “We saw companies that had the vision but were having difficulty making the management seamless with vendors, contractors and excel sheets. Things were duct taped and often a nightmare and we wanted to open that up to make the process productive and inspiring for all involved.”

Connecting The Dots Between Engagement & Shareholder Value…

But Jason’s iteration of execution versus measurement and reporting brought us back to a core question we began the panel with: how are companies like Phillips connecting the dots between volunteerism, engagement, retention and business growth?

“In terms of definitive links all the way to shareholder value, we have research connecting the steps of a CSR program all the way through. There is, however, no one study out there that links the end point with any one of the steps along the way. My research connects job performance with CSR and others have linked that to shareholder value. So while the connections are there, there is no one study that we can point to,” offered Korschun.

For Philips, it’s still to be determined, said Michaud.

“It is still a bit fragmented but we have moved from a theory to a practical emphasis on measurement and tracking. And the research being conducted is definitely encouraging, albeit complex,” added Burns, highlighting a trend we’ve been seeing on CSRwire as well where researchers are now, finally, being able to grab data on voluntary disclosures and link the connections between measurement, the various threads of sustainability and the question of value.

…Regardless of the Economic Climate…

What does the research then say about the impact of CSR programs on shareholder perspective and behavior irrespective of the economic climate? [Audience question]

While Korschun said he wasn’t aware of any studies that have looked at the influence of economic climate on how CSR drives value, “we generally find that for customers, the effects are clearest when CSR and employee engagementmost other product features are at parity. This suggests that CSR might become a little less important for consumers during a recession, when price becomes more critical.”

He added: “However, for employees, the company is a big part of their identity. So as long as a person feels fairly secure in their job, CSR should still have a similar effect. Putting this together, I would conjecture that ROI might drop a bit overall during a recession, but the drop would be uneven across stakeholders.”

…And Company Performance

“The weight of the evidence in academic studies suggests that there is a small positive effect of overall CSR on overall company performance. In my view, each company will have programs that are more and less effective. Since employees can express their commitment to the company in many ways, it is very difficult to put an ROI figure on any single program. The best way to measure it is usually to choose a couple of outcomes that are critical to shareholder value and then examine the link between CSR program(s) and these outcomes,” Korschun offered.

Final word on the erstwhile ROI of social contributions and impact?

For Michaud, this is a toss-up.

“We have some of the basics in place about measurement but I think qualitative measures are as significant. They’re really the next level of ROI. Of course, media stories help as well but we’re this is a discussion that is really ongoing for us.”

“A lot of companies are surveying employees and getting positive results. Now we need to work on finding the stories of impact,” added Burns while Korschun recommended systemic thinking:

I ‘d like to recommend [to companies] that they start with the goals. If one of your business challenges is employee retention, start with that and work backwards. Ask yourselves what is the right program that can have social/environmental impact and create business value at the same time?

Download the slides.

Originally written for and published on CSRwire’s Commentary sectionTalkback on June 25, 2013.

Creating Access For All: CVS Caremark Sets Ambitious Goals

09 Wednesday Jul 2014

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The neighborhood pharmacy. The alternative to supermarkets. Chances are there is a CVS/pharmacy store within walking distance of your house. Or at least one within a couple of miles.

There was for me. As a new citizen, a kind CVS manager gave me my first American job, taught me how to differentiate between a nickel and a quarter – and the basics of customer service in a country where consumers rule a market spoiled with choice.

So how does a brand with deep community roots across a nation and significant impact support its business mission while keeping its social and environmental missions aligned and relevant? And how do you measure success beyond revenue dollars and flu shots?

I recently checked in with Eileen Howard Boone, SVP of Corporate Communications and Community Relations for CVS Caremark and VP of its foundation, the CVS Caremark Charitable Trust, for some insights into the pharmacy healthcare company’s CSR strategy as well as their unique perspective on community development.

License to Drive Results

“We have a license to drive social impact in ways that are independent of what’s going on in our company,” she began, explaining that the Foundation is the philanthropic arm of the company and reports to a board of trustees, giving Boone and her team some latitude to define their own priorities.

Interestingly, Boone is head of CVS’ Foundation but also heads the company’s communication efforts, highlighting a close alignment between impact and engagement within the centralized organization. “I sit across the company and work with our senior leadership on where we are going and how our
giving strategy fits with our future plans. Embedding the Foundation’s work and mission into the corporate strategy is critical to stay true to our business and values,” she explained.

Of course, as with most foundations, CVS’ Charitable Trust focuses primarily on the annual grant cycle. “Starting in 2012, we decided to focus on four categories: access to healthcare, coordinated care, early intervention and inclusion – a theme we use as a base criteria for all the grants we make,” she said.

“The primary focus through these categories is to measure how we along with our partners are driving impact in our markets. Are our nonprofit partners moving missions? Nine years ago, when I joined CVS, we weren’t measuring the impact of everything we were doing in our communities. It was scattered and not strategic. So we stepped back and asked: how are we living, operating and working in our communities?”

Need for Focus, Strategy

The introspection brought some expected results, namely, the need for focus and more research-based decisions. Eighteen months of research followed – with customers, employees, nonprofits, experts in pediatrics, etc. – on how to tighten the Foundation’s focus while having the most impact. “The idea was to find an issue of opportunity within healthcare that we could support and significantly impact five different ways: awareness, funding, in kind products, volunteerism and strategic counsel,” Boone emphasized.

“We wanted to have the opportunity to engage our employees. They live in our communities – and we were not leveraging their potential as volunteers, activists, decision makers and advisers,” she added.

In 2012, CVS employees donated an equivalent of $1 million in volunteering hours. But with 7,400 CVS Caremark: All kids canstores across diverse communities, volunteering and giving campaigns are effective only when localized. “Our All Kids Can program creates equal opportunity for all kids regardless of disability or situation and as we roll that out across our stores, we find that our employees really like to define “all kids can” in their own way. In one town, for example, it meant supporting the Special Olympics, in others it meant building a new playground,” Boone replied.

And that’s okay.

Volunteerism vs. Grants: Measuring Effectiveness

It’s difficult to have a cookie-cutter approach across 7,400 stores when local impact is the main driver. As the “local pharmacy building healthier communities,” CVS’ mandate is national but hyper-local in intensity. Do grants work better on a local level or volunteerism? With causes aplenty and communities diverse, how does the retailer juggle impact with dollars and employee time?’

According to Boone, monetary grants are definitely the first point of entry.

In 2012 alone, grants made through the All Kids Can program touched the lives of more than 5.8 million children and families. Despite all the benefits espoused about pro bono and volunteerism, the essence and impact of grant making is not lost on Boone who has been working in this sector for more than 20 years, including leading the Office Depot Foundation for six years.

“When we think of our large national partners, we need to understand that once the initial grant is made, there are other opportunities for engagement that we must leverage to extend the impact of that grant. But that initial grant is critical to move the needle and scale programs,” she said, adding, “For example, in a New Bedford school, we sponsored an incoming fifth grade class to connect with
our pharmacists around careers in healthcare, hygiene, health issues etc. In Rhode Island, we supported a free clinic, a multilevel partnership that started with grants, but now sees pharmacists often volunteering to support the clinic,” she explained.

For NGOs, grants from companies like CVS are critical.

And Boone understands the importance of looking at impact through a multidimensional prism:

“Awareness is a big thing that we can bring along with our dollars and other assets for nonprofits. They become better at fundraising and implementing programs after they’ve done some due diligence,” she said. “It gives them confidence, competence and the much-needed publicity support, “she added.

Measuring Impact: Healthcare For All

As a mother of six, however, Boone does feel strongly about CVS’ primary impact area: healthcare for all. And that becomes a tough metric to measure when you take into account the company’s diverse communities’ needs.

“We have learned over the years that we need to be asking the right things. Last year, we announced a partnership with the National Association of Community Health Centers to distribute $3 million over three years, across their centers for chronic disease management programs – and plan to monitor results. Measurement will include everything from number of people served to patient health outcomes.”

“We strive to measure our impact in a variety of ways including quantitative results like the number of patients served or the number of additional days a clinic is open, qualitative measures program outcomes and employee participation. We also place a heavy focus on storytelling and gathering stories from our partners to bring to life the successes of a program.”

Yet, that’s measurement of specific programs.

What is the company’s impact on the sector it sits centrally within, i.e., access to all, quality of life, awareness, hygiene, etc.? How does CVS measure its success as a healthcare retailer? As a conscious business? As a neighborhood pharmacy? As a collaborator with pharmaceuticals?

In Boone’s mind, her footprint – and her employer’s – is pretty clear: “We feel we are successful if our nonprofits are successful,” she said.

It’s that simple.

Originally written for and published on CSRwire’s Commentary section Talkback on April 3, 2013.

PwC Canada Releases 3rd Annual CSR Report: Staying the Course

03 Thursday Jul 2014

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PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Canada released their third annual corporate responsibility report today. It’s nothing groundbreaking. But nor is it pages and pages of images and quotes from top leadership interspersed with hard-to-evaluate statistics.PwC_CR_Report_2011

In true PwC fashion, the report details commitments and achievements in 2011 only to quickly move on to highlighting challenges and the firm’s key plans for 2012 followed by an affirmation of the firm’s social and environmental strategy.

The pressure on firms big and small to report on their non-financial activities is significant. With the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) officially launching in North America last year, CSR and sustainability reports are set to multiply in coming years. What always challenges me are the motivations behind the reporting: Is it simply peer pressure or do firms learn something from the process? Moreover, is the act of reporting an exercise in external communication or more of an introspective activity to improve processes and strategies?

I caught up with James Temple, PwC Canada’s Director of Corporate Responsibility for some insights:

What was the most important lesson learned from the often stressful exercise of putting this report together?

Every time we work on our Corporate Responsibility Report, we’re reminded that this is an evolving journey and one that requires us to be open to adapting to changing ideas, personalities and approaches to developing the most transparent narrative possible.

When you involve such a large number of stakeholders in such a rigorous process, all of whom are passionate about their work and the cause, it can prove to be a balancing act that requires a balance of leadership, managing expectations, and the ability to communicate with empathy and effectiveness.

Most importantly, the process has helped us finesse a blended approach that respects standard reporting frameworks and our unique firm culture and structure to develop a narrative that is representative of the success (and the challenges) we face along the way.”

The report mentions plans for a new three-year strategic plan to guide the next phase of PwC Canada’s CSR program. Any insights you can provide into that?

Over the next few months, we will be completing our environmental scan and a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis to ensure that we are being thoughtful about our dynamic marketplace conditions along with gaining valuable input from our Global Network of Firms.

Philanthropy plays a crucial role in targeting social and environmental challenges through nonprofit partnerships but it’s often the strategy behind these donations that helps make them effective. Any insights on what works well for PwC’s B2B industry?

From the 2011 CR Report: “In 2011, PwC contributed a total of $2,533,000 in charitable donations and sponsorships to community organizations across Canada.”

At PwC Canada, we have adopted a strategy that focuses on educating employees and other stakeholders about the most effective ways to give back to their communities.

We encourage people to utilize our PwC Canada Volunteer Continuum that spells out how a person or organization can deepen their engagement with the charitable sector while developing their skills and experiences.

This could include the ways people use their skills to volunteer, how they look at sharing their community experiences, calling on their business networks for support, or how to allocate their personal or organizational resources in the most effective way possible.  Our approach is rooted in the regular feedback we receive from the not-for-profit sector and considers impact (not just dollars and cents).

What are some points of achievements from the report that you feel especially proud of?

In the fall of 2010, PwC hosted a series of roundtable discussions with representatives from the not-for-profit sector, public and private foundations and major corporations called the Capacity Building Roundtable Project.

The purpose of the project was to raise awareness about how corporate funders could better allocate their resources to help the not-for-profit sector become more sustainable and deliver lasting results within their communities.

The report concluded with a step-by-step process that addressed critical needs identified by the community that could have the most immediate and scalable impacts.

One of the critical findings was the need to encourage other corporations to provide not-for-profits support for core operational expenditures, and ensure they build time for grant recipients to reflect, take risks and test new innovations into grant proposals.

How do you define success in CSR reporting? Metrics? Media mentions? Or a set of internal goals?

We encourage our employees and other stakeholders to integrate a CR mind-set into their day-to-day business operations.  We want to inspire and empower people to look for ways to embed good CR practices into their decision-making frameworks.

A great example of how we’ve engaged our stakeholders in a CR dialogue was through the Citizen’s Reference Panel. PwC Canada brought together people from across Ontario to discuss their views on how to build a more sustainable and cost-effective healthcare system across the province.   We published a piece of thought leadership outlining the results, and it’s something that will help our business, the public and governments have better insights into the development of new healthcare strategies.

Our firm can play in helping to shape the debate on sustainability issues impacting businesses today.

Success means knowing you’ve done everything you can to help develop the CR conversation.

Originally written for and published on CSRwire’s Commentary sectionTalkback on February 27, 2012..

Pathway to Financial Success: Discover Activates Parents

03 Thursday Jul 2014

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Corporate social responsibility has many shapes and forms today. Some organizations continue to use philanthropy as the crutch while others are adopting more expansive and strategic measures to improve their relationship with society and the environment.

For Discover, a financial institution with a history of catering to an elite consumer group with high credit scores and deep pockets, the business model is simple: Provide credit to low-risk consumers while ensuring quality customer service.

However, social responsibility for a financial services provider is a complex debate. I’m a big proponent of context and financial literacy falls perfectly in line with Discover’s core audience and social footprint. But should Discover be educating all consumers on the viability and risks of financial products or simply restrict its outreach to its customer base? Considering that a wide swath of their consumer base is educated and high potential, where should Discover focus its consumer engagement efforts?

A couple of weeks ago, Discover announced a new five-year $10 million program designed to help get financial education into the classroom. Their target: high school students. But this latest initiative, called Pathway to Financial Success, isn’t going to be just about conversations in the classroom.

Financial_LiteracyLeslie Sutton, director of external affairs and head of CSR for Discover, spoke to CSRwire about the initiative. “Not only will the initiative provide grants to public high schools to cover the costs of implementing a course on personal finance and give them access to a standards-based curriculum, it will also emphasize teacher training,” she said.

Further, “through a public service announcement [called Awkward Conversations] and a website, we want to raise awareness of the need for financial education and to encourage parents to talk to schools about incorporating it into the school curriculum.”

Discover wants to activate parents this time in a meaningful way. And in true Discover fashion, they’re doing this in a funny and intuitively intelligent manner.

I caught up with Sutton for more insights:

Why the emphasis on financial education at such an early stage [high school] when most Discover’s customers are elite professionals?

This is one of the ways we give back to customers and our community.

Discover has been involved in financial education for over 15 years. Helping people achieve brighter financial futures is our company’s mission. And getting financial education into classrooms is one of the ways we can help achieve that. It’s critical that kids develop the skills they need to manage their finances to make informed decisions.

Discover sees a clear need for financial education in schools. Statistics show that a majority of Americans lack the knowledge to make good financial decisions. A Sallie Mae study showed that 84 percent of students said they needed more education on financial management topics, yet only 12 states require a personal finance course before graduation, according to the Survey of the States by The Council for Economic Education. That’s opportunity for us to use our resources and platform to compel change.

With an economy built on consumer demand and credit availability, only 12 states?

The problem is multifold. First, many states are not requiring students to learn about money basics at school. And many schools lack the resources to add curriculum. Both teachers and parents say they are uncomfortable talking to kids about money.

We know that we need to get financial education into the school curriculum. It is the only way to get them thinking early. That’s why Discover is awarding grants to public high schools to cover related costs and give them access to a standards-based curriculum with one of the requirements being that the school measure curriculum results, so that we can ensure this information is being retained – not just provided.

How do you plan on engaging parents considering some of them might not be Discover customers – and might not have the tools to activate their school districts?

Talking to kids about money can be awkward and we want parents to know that Pathway to Financial Success can help by providing the tools and resources to begin the conversation at home and in schools. We created a public service announcement to get parents’ attention on this issue. It directs parents to Pathway to Financial Success, where they can find financial education resources developed by independent organizations.

Discover: Pathway to Financial Success

It also contains information to help them become more comfortable talking about finances. And if they want to join us in addressing the inclusion of financial education in schools, the website also provides parents with the tools needed to address that with local school administrators.

How does Pathway to Financial Success align with Discover’s business model?

We have always believed in providing our customers with the tools and resources they need to make informed decisions about money. Through Pathway to Financial Success, we’re helping to ensure that the next generation develops the skills they need before they make decisions that will affect their futures. That’s in everyone’s interest, not just our customer base.

By working with parents and schools to get financial education incorporated into the school curriculum, we want to reach thousands of classrooms and over a half-million students with the hope that by raising awareness of the need for financial education, more parents, schools and corporations will get involved in the effort.

That is in everyone’s interest as well. Financial education and independence is a critical tool in our personal and professional happiness. At Discover, this is much more than consumer education. It is about long-term financial empowerment.

Originally written for and published on CSRwire’s Commentary sectionTalkback on February 23, 2012.

The Justice League’s Latest Mission: Famine & Hunger in Africa

03 Thursday Jul 2014

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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, the creators of renowned characters like Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman, has joined hands with Time Warner and Warner Brothers to leverage the collective power of these superheroes to tackle the troubles of the real world.

Their target: The hunger crisis in the Horn of Africa, an epidemic that has reached frightening proportions while being sparsely reported by the media.

We Can Be Heroes comes with immense leverage [thousands of employees, millions of canvases and platforms, a global fan base] and aspirational goals. In collaboration with three global nonprofits – Save the Children, Mercy Corps and International Rescue Committee – the conglomerates will match dollar for dollar up to a million dollars.

Their two-year goal: $2 million spread evenly among the three NGOs.

“13 million people go hungry in Africa. That is unimaginable. How are we letting this happen?” asked Cokie Roberts, prominent NPR journalist, author and board trustee for international nonprofit Save the Children, at a press junket Monday morning in New York City.

We_Can_Be_HeroesIntegrated Corporate Social Responsibility

Jeff Bewkes, CEO of Time Warner, who opened the event iterated that this cause marketing campaign is much more than straight up philanthropy for the company. “This is our corporate responsibility,” he said, adding, “We Can Be Heroes will capitalize on 90 years of storytelling to a global audience. We can help create far reaching awareness on a famine that can be fixed.”

Alluding to a consumer base already saturated with information, diffused by competitive branding exercises and weakening attention spans, Bewkes said, “Today consumer engagement is more important than ever before. Hunger isn’t geographically bound and our humanitarian care shouldn’t be either. Like the Justice League, together we can be heroes.”

everaging The Power of Herosim — and Interactive Media

This well thought out campaign – there is a merchandising component, a well-designed website and plans to integrate the message on all possible Warner and DC platforms globally – will capitalize on two leverage points: 1) The potent power of our collective strength in making a difference, and 2) The effectiveness of rich storytelling through a vast platform of interactive media.

I often say that half the battle of doing the right thing is telling your story effectively. In today’s connected world, stories matter. And this is where “having the opportunity to do something bigger than ourselves” can prove inspirational and monumental.

Diane Nelson, President of DC Entertainment, put it well: “This [campaign] is about awareness and using the intellectual property our companies own to make consumers aware of the crisis.” Nelson was picking up on something Roberts alluded to in our earlier conversation:

“Americans just need to know about this. We are a wonderful people and once we know that people are in dire need, we respond. Getting that information out there will really save millions of lives.”

There is no arguing that the need for help is indeed great.

As Barry Meyer, Chairman and CEO of Warner Bros., who sat down with CSRwire exclusively for an interview said, it is a perfect fit for the entertainment conglomerates.

“We thought it was a very good fit: Both the messaging and the corporate commitment. We are a big company and we have a lot of ways to communicate with people…to get the message out on what’s going on in Africa. I certainly know many people who are anxious to find ways and mechanisms to help with problems like this including many of our employees outside the United States, who are more aware of the hunger crisis in Africa than frankly, our US employees are.”

With domestic unemployment stoically high, the stock market continuing to rollercoaster and a distracting election year in the U.S., attracting domestic consumers to engage, learn and perhaps most importantly, donate, will not be easy. “That’s where collaborating with three international Justice_LeagueNGOs with feet on the ground is crucial. We expect them to keep us on track, tell us what is working and what isn’t,” said Jeff Robinov, President of Warner Bros. Pictures Group.

For Robinov and team, this campaign falls fair and square within their corporate social responsibility strategy by fluidly integrating philanthropy, engagement, business units with their core competencies – story telling – to drive results for a humanitarian crisis.

I asked Meyer what his hopes are with activating the company’s internal audience:

“We have a significant employee population outside the U.S. We want them to know that we are behind these issues and working on them. As for the employees inside the US, where awareness is low, the aim is to raise that awareness. Make them aware of a huge humanitarian crisis that’s happening halfway around the world.”

With consumer confidence and employee morale low in recent years, it is no surprise that companies are looking for innovative ways to keep their employees motivated and loyal. Referring to the recent Occupy Wall Street protests, Robinov told me:

“See what’s going on with the protests across the country, a lot of that for me personally is related to a lack of human faces for corporations today. We need to be respectful of our bottom-line and our reputation but we are really moved and we really want to help these people. As a company, Time Warner has always reached out to people in times of need. We have a moral obligation to do this.”

CSR: Deploying Core Competencies To Target a Social Issue

At the end of the day, for the companies — and their nonprofit partners — involved, We Can Be Heroes is emblematic of what integrated CSR can look like: Knowing your strengths as a business entity and leveraging them and your stakeholders to target a social issue.

As Meyer told me, “Social responsibility in a certain way speaks for itself. The word responsibility implies an obligation. Big companies have an obligation to society. They make a lot of money and have an obligation to deal with issues that are important to their employee bases…and we feel the obligation very, very deeply.”

He also emphasized that this marks the first time the global brands have come together to target an issue that is long standing and will therefore require long term commitment and out of the box thinking that goes beyond one stop solutions.

The success of WeCanBeHeroes.org will ultimately rely on a global consumer awakening and the belief that together we can all be heroes. Who doesn’t believe in the power of that?

Originally written for and published on CSRwire’s Commentary section Talkback on January 24, 2012.

Revisiting the PR Take on CSR: “Corporate Responsibility is Not Public Relations”

30 Tuesday Aug 2011

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Last year, the Better Business Bureau hosted an event titled Good Business 2010, where the day-long agenda was to analyze the increasing confluence of public relations (PR) and corporate social responsibility (CSR). Here’s what I wrote then on Vault’s CSR blog:

A Belief System For Your Company

Edelman’s EVP for CSR-New York, Michael Holland while highlighting his firm’s approach, emphasized that corporate responsibility was emerging increasingly as an indelible part of brand management for companies, although North American companies, while initially slow to embrace it, were quickly getting on board.

Defining CR as “A belief system for a company” he broke its significance for companies into three segments: 1) the social and legal aspect; 2) its immersion into the operational model; and 3) how to leverage it for competitive share in the marketplace.

What is the ROI for corporate responsibility?

Citing a recent survey conducted by McKinsey, Holland said that the business case for corporate responsibility had never been clearer for companies. “Companies that paid attention to CSR in the last three years reported an increase in their share price of 43% against a 12% increase for those who didn’t.” At the same time, profits for the first segment of companies increased by 16% versus 7%. I’ve often noted that metrics and numbers speak louder than words. These then, need no further explanation. See more results from the McKinsey survey.

Noting that the pressure for accountability was no longer the voice of a few dedicated advocates and had shifted to mainstream demands from all stakeholders for a company, Holland stressed that the tipping point was already here: “CR cannot be ignored any longer. Shareholders, employees and clients are demanding it.”

What is corporate responsibility all about?

Holland, interestingly, chose to answer this by focusing on the key misconceptions about corporate responsibility. Funnily enough his counter-intuitive tactic worked, bringing up several questions from the audience. He put it like this:

CSR ≠ Green
CSR ≠ Strategic Philanthropy
CSR ≠ Public Relations

CSR isn’t PR, it’s About Your Business Strategy

I have discussed in the past the huge difference between conducting brand management and reputation-building and immersing CR as a culture of change into your company’s strategy. I asked Holland how he advises clients to walk that fine line.

“First of all, it needs to start from the top. Secondly, it needs to part of a company’s communication strategy. And finally you need to define what it means to track the progress of your corporate responsibility. The problem is that the marketplace believes that CSR is cause marketing and philanthropy. Our task is to overrule that and teach them that actually it’s about business strategy.”

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Now, with several communications firms announcing CSR practices, where are we headed with the confluence of PR, brand management and CSR? I turned to the latest entrant in the field, Ruder Finn. Take a read.

CSR and Sustainability in Mainstream Media: Citizen Journalism Or Simply Shared Value?

18 Thursday Aug 2011

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One of my most common complaints, after “Why Don’t Executives ‘GET’ CSR?” is why mainstream media hasn’t been giving due diligence to sustainability, corporate governance, employee engagement, social responsibility, the confluence of business, society and the environment, and everything else that connotes CSR.

2010: Professor Aneel Karnani’s Case Against CSR and Michael Porter’s Creating Shared Value

In 2010, there were a few noteworthy attempts. Aneel Karnani’s editorial in The Wall Street Journal on The Case Against Corporate Social Responsibility, which evoked numerous blogs, response pieces, live panels and tremendous conversations.

[READ: Why There Is a Case for Corporate Social Responsibility, Despite WSJ’s Obituary]

Then came Michael Porter’s piece on Creating Shared Value in Harvard Business Review. Not only did Porter start a flurry of debates, white papers and panels, the report even introduced new hashtags for Twitter users: #CSV and #sharedvalue; and a new hangtag for consultants.

Everyone understood shared value, they could contextualize the term, even measure it, and therefore, make a better case for business and social responsibility.

Debating Semantics: CSR vs. Sustainability

At Vault and more recently at Forbes, my effort has always been to highlight issues that needed addressing, questioning, cajoling, and analyzing. Soon after Porter’s piece, I asked two experts in the field to take on the debate, which often gets lost as semantics: Henk Campher, SVP for CSR and Sustainability with Edelman, and Alberto Andreu, Chief Reputation and Sustainability Officer with Telefonica accepted the challenge.

Campher took us through the evolution of the term “CSR,” concluding that corporate social responsibility, does indeed, fit best.

Here’s an excerpt:

We should look at the description of CSR itself. Why do we use these very specific three words to describe what we do? I would argue that the concept is actually a very good description of what we do today. Here’s why:

Corporate implies that this is about business.

  • It not only describes that we are busy with a discipline involving business but goes deeper.
  • It is about profits – how we make them and how we can make more of them today and tomorrow.
  • It is not about charity.
  • It is about building a sustainable business model that will continue to deliver business results for stakeholders – especially shareholders.

Social tells us this is about society.

  • It is about the impact business has on society and how we can manage this impact to ensure both business and societal benefit.
  • Even the environmental part of CSR is about society – how we can minimize environmental impact to benefit society in the end of the day.
  • The new developments in CSR – sustainability – further continue to prove that CSR is about a mutually beneficial relationship between product and service development, and societal value chains.

Responsibility reveals that business does carry a responsibility in this world–to do business in a way that benefits both business and society. Further, this responsibility gives business the opportunity to create new solutions to the needs of society. I would even argue that it is their responsibility to develop these new solutions and benefit by capturing new avenues of sustainable profit.

All three concepts—Corporate, Social and Responsibility—tell us exactly what we do today. CSR is also the perfect reminder of the relationship between business and society, and the responsibility they have towards each other. None of the other concepts proposed today actually tell us what we are doing and what we should be doing.

Andreu on the other hand, prefers sustainability over CSR. His key points:

Using CSR as an expression is not an academic problem but one that has very tangible consequences for companies.

Organizational: The classic case of the left hand not knowing what the right is doing. Most of the time, the rest of the company doesn’t know what the CSR team/executives do.

Defined functional areas don’t suffer from the same vagueness. HR is dedicated to people, the finance team crunches numbers, the operations team is in charge of systems and back up, etc. But how do you identify the team dedicated to such a vast array of duties, i.e., diversity and inclusion, environmental management, climate change, ethics, corporate volunteer management, social sponsorships, entrepreneurship, multistakeholder engagement, transparency, SRI, reputation, and human rights?

What we get instead is a big mess.

Structural: If CSR is about philanthropy, management will accordingly participate in sponsorship, PR and communications exercises because their objective is maximizing the return of investment in reputation building, not responsible and ethical business. For most companies, in fact, it is common practice for the CSR manager not be associated with evaluating social and environmental risk.

Budgetary: Let’s be honest. We all know that it is much easier to ask for a budget to implement philanthropic programs than for mapping out a business’ core environmental risks, or implementing an ethics code, or auditing the supply chain. Even in the best case scenarios, other areas of an organization will manage these issues as part of their day-to-day work but the reality is that when something is difficult to communicate, resource allocation becomes a much harder task.

Management: It’s easy to measure the impact your donations are having by stringing out the appropriate key performance indicators (KPI) for any given year. But what KPI efficiently summarizes responsible behavior? The resulting scorecard is usually so large and convoluted that even the most dedicated executives give it up because of its sheer confusion and lack of focus.

His conclusion:

The concept of CSR has been exhausted, we have to expand it for effective impact, and for that, we have to adopt sustainability. And that’s why I say, “It’s sustainability, stupid!”

The reason these debates work is because they compel people to chime in, share from their own experiences and research, and crowd-source solutions that everyone can agree on. While the debate elicited several comments on Vault, the tweets, comments, advice and feedback continued to pour in for weeks after publication.

Citizen Journalism Or Simply Responsible?

At the end of the day, media — and journalists — have a responsibility to business, to society, and to a global audience as well. Back in India when I was making the leap from kindergarten to first grade, it was The Times of India and other newspapers that became my primary sources of reading, grammar, comprehension and GK (a common monicker for ‘general knowledge’ used by school kids, at least in those days!).

Today, journalists are expected to inform and engage a vocal audience of readers. Bring in social media tools and you have a vocal and ready consumer base willing and confident to discuss, debate and make choices in real time with you. And this is where the CSR debate with Campher and Andreu did well.

For me, as a journalist and a resolute CSR practitioner, it is indeed heartening to see that those small, infrequent attempts are now becoming frequent analogies and commentaries within the circles of mainstream media.

In fact, here are three reports in recent weeks that came to my attention:

While I give kudos to Light, Lahart and Lohr for highlighting these, we — the journalistic community — must evolve to a state of journalism where good and bad business practices and sustainability are part of everyday reporting and dialogue.

The incredible work of Alice Korngold and Ann Charles on Fast Company, my fabulous co-contributors on Forbes’ CSR blog, and Marc Gunther at Fortune must become more commonplace, much more grassroots, more mainstream.

Some call it citizen journalism. For me, it’s just plain professional responsibility. We owe it to our organizations, the economy, future generations, our planet, and at the end of the day, to ourselves.

More:

The 2011 CSR Debate: CSR is an Evolution, Not a Revolution
The 2011 CSR Debate: “It’s Sustainability, Stupid!”