Careers in CSR: Networking Your Way To Success

17 Thursday Jul 2014

Posted by Aman Singh in CSR, Guest Author, HR

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I met PwC Canada’s James Temple at a roundtable of CSR and sustainability leaders brought together by Edelman in Minneapolis in 2011 to discuss how they planned on moving forward on their commitments and what roadblocks they saw ahead.

I was the chosen facilitator for the hour and luckily for me, I got to ask all the questions!

The conversation was busy, high level and revealed a lot about the challenges these practitioners were facing as they worked to change the systems within their multinational corporations. While the roundtable was operated under Chatham House rules, the relationships that were formed that day continue to flourish.

Longevity is a true asset in this sector – and James has continued to be a wonderful resource and a much-needed mentor for those looking to pursue a career in the CSR field – critical as generations turnover across our workforce and expectations and mindsets on corporate social responsibility shift globally. He recently also facilitated a webinar to explore some of the latest trends in building a career in CSR. I asked him to pen some highlights and top tips for readers and here’s what he had to say:

I recently hosted a webinar focused on exploring trends and insights about building a career in corporate responsibility as part of what’s become a semi-annual conversation between hundreds of prospective practitioners and sector trailblazers.

As practitioners in a field that continues to transform, the conversation was dominated by the importance of networking and how to best leverage relationships toward pursuing a meaningful career. Joining me for the discussion were Paul Klein, president and founder of Impakt; Jerilynn Daniels, senior manager of community investment and marketing at RBC; Alex Daprato, partnership marketing associate at TrojanOne; and PwC Canada’s Sustainability Manager Klaudia Olejnik.

After a quick review of the CSR industry, we switched to discussing our panelists’ respective careers. Specifically, how they got there, if they would recommend breaking into the field today or if integrating a CSR mindset into any role is the way to go – and what they felt some of the key capabilities were that would help set an emerging leader up for success.

We also ran a live Twitter stream to help with on-the-spot responses from across the globe. Most of the questions focused on how to transcend the passion behind the industry to a sustainable career focused on embedding and implementing a complex change management strategy.

And how do we do this in a way that facilitates breaking into an increasingly complex field?

What struck me most was a single word: enough.

Too many times we focus on trying to be everything to everyone, but how can we understand corporate cultures in a way that doesn’t become overwhelming and can be communicated effectively? Could this be a building block to create the foundation for a career in CSR?

The panelists suggested that when thinking about who to talk to and what to ask, great networkers should remember that the CSR field is broad and diverse, and that practitioner experiences will be dependent on a variety of factors, including age, maturity of the organization that they are working for, geographic location, cultural norms and industry, just to name just a few. And framing good questions will be key to helping uncover the right information to inform decisions about a career in CSR and the tools needed to succeed.

From the hour-long conversation that featured numerous questions from an active audience, here are three recommendations to help enhance the networking experience:

Brainstorm CSR related scenarios through open-ended questions

Great networkers focus on asking strong, open-ended questions during an informational interview and look for ways to create a knowledge exchange that’s mutually beneficial. When meeting with established CSR professionals, panelists recommended spending time working through scenarios or situational examples to compare diverse perspectives and ideas.

Build a rapport that highlights genuine authenticity

Use networking time to build a rapport. Try to highlight a deep understanding about social issues, examples of continuous adaptation, or the ability to synthesize complex information in a way that can be re-communicated across diverse arrays of stakeholder groups.

Use a shared language and keep the conversation focused around value creation for both people

In CSR, business language can be technical and complex.

Get back to basics, keep things clear and concise and remember to talk within the confines of a person’s role. Don’t overwhelm your mentor with general questions about how to change the world – they probably don’t know how (none of us do)! Instead, share complementary ideas that allow you to learn from each other.

Remember that curiosity is the name of the game, and you’ve got to check your ego at the door: CSR is a profession, not a persona. Let good communication skills guide your networking conversations, don’t let your passion to be a change-maker get in the way, and follow-up with those you’ve met to thank them for their time.

Combined, this might sound pretty basic but it’s the art of synthesizing complexity that will set you apart – and will make sure people remember you for your tact and talent.

About James Temple:

James Temple is the Director of Corporate Responsibility for PwC Canada and has a dual role leading the PricewaterhouseCoopers Canada Foundation. In this capacity, James provides oversight to the Canadian Firm’s internal Corporate Responsibility strategy, representing the ways PwC integrates good social, environmental and economic values into its business operations.

People Get Sustainability, Business (and Marketers) Don’t: 20 Minutes with the CEO of Unilever

11 Friday Jul 2014

Posted by Aman Singh in Capitalism 2.0, CSR, CSRwire

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Last month, Unilever CEO Paul Polman was in town – New York – to receive the Lifetime Achievement award from the Rainforest Alliance. As Rainforest Alliance President Tensie Whelan put it, “Paul has made several lifetimes of difference by leading Unilever to become a game changer.”

The company’s work with the Rainforest Alliance is well-known – by setting targets like sourcing 100 percent of its palm oil sustainably, Unilever has made it easier for other companies to follow suit and helped complex supply chains become comfortable with change and collaboration.

And, the company hasn’t stopped at palm oil.

Today, roughly 50 percent of the company’s tea originates on Rainforest Alliance Certified farms as it works toward sourcing 100 percent of its raw agricultural materials from sustainable origins (that figure currently stands at 48 percent).

Having recently interviewed Unilever’s Marketing Chief Keith Weed on the company’s refreshed goals and commitments, the opportunity to discuss sustainable development from the vantage point of the outspoken CEO was tempting. We caught up over a quick phone call:

The Unilever Sustainable Living Plan:

“When we launched it we said we don’t have all the answers. One of the reasons why we are working so well with Rainforest Alliance is because we share common goals. Take tea for example: Standards are driving up fast in an industry that’s not easy to standardize. [This is where the] scale of Rainforest Alliance is significant – and essential for the USLP to come alive.

“[Its] only been a year since the Rana Plaza fire happened. Those 1,050 women worked in conditions that were little more than modern-day slavery. We’re determined not to let that happen in our supply chain. So we’ve put some goals to match our resolve. We’re going to help more women gain access to training and land rights. The transformation can be substantial.”

Pushing forward in the absence of political will/action:

“In the absence of politicians, we need to move faster. Climate change is a great opportunity for business. Report from the White House is an encouraging sign. Needle is starting to move in the U.S. The tornadoes and hurricanes are starting to drive the message home for people.

“Besides, this is probably the only opportunity we’ll have. The Millennium Development Goals, for instance, are due to be completed next year – the urgency cannot be watered down.”

The most critical challenge for business:

“The biggest challenge is [that] we cannot scale our ambitious goals alone. It’s a major challenge to create the right partnerships and increasingly difficult to get the political sector to participate. How do you create size and scale in a vacuum?”

The changing role of marketers:

“I always say, don’t blame the consumers. There are many examples where consumers are leading business, especially the young ones. They’re changing our lives and systems.

“Consumers are speaking out everyday but we don’t want to see it. Then we say the consumer doesn’t want to change. If we can tap into the enormous movements, we can create change much faster. That’s the job of the modern-day marketers. Their job has changed. It doesn’t work any more to push consumption. We need a new model and get companies to adjust their marketing strategies as well as their job roles.”

People get it, business doesn’t:

“I spend a lot of time on how to develop leaders who can lead us through partnerships, with purpose, can think long-term and beyond 2020. On my way back from Abu Dhabi last month, I was reading an article that reported university students rebelling against the way economics [is being taught]. If teachers are teaching Milton Freidman’s theories, who is going to change the economy? For my kids, sustainability is the new normal. They don’t want to watch TV or buy the newest gas-guzzling car. Their generation is already thinking differently. Yet, marketers keep saying consumers don’t want it.

“Our understanding of consumers [and consumption] is too narrow. We need to get much closer to consumers. If we go to any of the emerging markets – 81 percent of the world’s population lives outside the U.S. and Europe – most of the growth is occurring in climate stretched areas today. They might not understand Rio+20 or climate change language but they know that weather patterns are changing, water is decreasing, etc.”

From mindless to mindful consumption:

“Marketers should switch from asking whether consumers are willing to pay for something to which consumer doesn’t want less poverty, more education, a healthier world with cleaner air and better nutrition.

“We just need to be astute about solutions. Look at the Edelman survey – consumers expect more and more from business, and if business understands this, it is a wonderful time. Children die from diseases which we can solve with hand washing – new market – marketers should be very excited by this. But that connection is not there.”

Three actions to change the world:

“We must get out of short termism because lots of solutions are long-term [climate change, access to education, water shortage, etc.] – and we can only solve them if we invest over longer periods and evaluate the social and economic capital. Then business people can optimize these. For example, 40 of the top 100 companies are already pricing carbon internally. They’ve committed to stay within these limits. Business is leading because they see the cost of action vs. inaction. We have now 40 countries that are pricing carbon including China. We have 20 other countries that are putting a tax on carbon. The system is starting to move.

“We need to give politicians confidence that this [focus on sustainable development and long termism] will not kill jobs or stifle growth. The exact opposite is in fact true but we need to provide the proof points.

“We need to get companies to adopt integrated reporting quickly as well as become comfortable with transparency. It’s going to take much more than a nine-to-five job to bring all of this together. We need leaders and we’re short on them.”

If this was his last interview as the CEO of Unilever:

“We can use our scale to transform systems and change. We need to create a better place than the one we were born in. Ninety-nine percent of people are not in a position to make a difference. We can. We need to force change – it’s our duty to leave the place in a better place. I hope this drives Unilever and everyone else.”

Originally written for and published on CSRwire’s Commentary section Talkback on June 2, 2014.

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

11 Friday Jul 2014

Posted by Aman Singh in Capitalism 2.0, CSR, CSRwire

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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 into 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 also 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.

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

09 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by Aman Singh in CSR, CSRwire

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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 2013 – 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 came 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.

Changing Gears at JPMorgan Chase as a CSR Strategy Evolves

09 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by Aman Singh in CSR, CSR reporting, CSRwire

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In the wake of the financial crisis, your industry continues to face high scrutiny and low trust. How is society better off because of what JPMorgan Chase does?

That’s how The Nature Conservancy CEO Mark Tercek starts off his interview with JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon – featured prominently at the beginning of the financial behemoth’s latest Corporate Responsibility Report. While the interview is meant to address the heightened focus on transparency improvements in risk management and operational sustainability, the key idea is to highlight one main issue: trust.

In fact Tercek’s first question is telling of the intent and content of the interview that follows.

To drill deeper and learn more about JPMorgan Chase’s sustainability activities in 2012 as well as how the institution prioritizes intangibles like customer trust, ethics and responsible leadership into its business strategy and operations, I turned to Peter Scher, EVP and Global Head of Corporate Responsibility.

Leveraging all of its Assets to Invest in Communities: A Bank’s Citizenship Journey

“The most important thing we want to convey through the Report is that we’re using more than just our money and resources to make a positive impact. [Our]scale and global reach puts us in a unique position to not just spend money, but use the core expertise of our company and employees to make a difference for our clients and communities,” he started, adding, “We want to focus on using all of our resources to support our communities.”

In 2012, JPMorgan Chase raised and provided $2 trillion in capital and credit for its clients worldwide. It also donated more than $190 million to nonprofits in 37 countries while its employees volunteered 468,000 hours in local communities.

“We’ve helped over 77,000 U.S. veterans find jobs working with other companies through the 100,000 Jobs Mission. We see investments in our community as long-term investments, just like we would look at investments into our business,” Scher explained alluding to CEO Dimon’s quote in the report:

If we can help our clients grow around the world, they will in turn generate the jobs, small business growth and other economic activity that builds strong, vibrant communities and generates more sustainable economic growth and prosperity for all.

But how does that contextualize into day-to-day operations at the bank?

A couple of ways. Our clients and our business are key components of our communities, not just pieces of a balance sheet. For example, some of our clients are municipal governments, hospitals, and healthcare institutions. We help them provide vital services to people,” he said.

“In 2012, we provided $85 billion to nearly 1,500 nonprofit and government entities in the U.S. and around the world. Despite the crisis in Europe, we didn’t pull out of our investment commitments. We continued to provide billions of dollars in credit and financing to European clients – corporate and sovereign. That was a testament to our values as a company and underlined how we approach business. We are part of these communities for the long run.

At the height of the financial crisis in the U.S. three years ago when lending was lean, JPMorgan Chase announced increased lending to small businesses to boost the economy. It made good on that commitment and today is one of the largest lenders to small businesses in the country. “We also hired 1,000 small business bankers to help us find small businesses to invest in. This commitment has increased every year since then – from $7 billion in 2009 to $11 billion in 2010 and $17 billion in 2012,” explained Scher.

Despite the increased lending and a resolute desire to beat a deepening crisis by focusing on core competencies and a community-based approach, 2012 was a tough year for the financial leader.

We had significant trading losses which cost us money and embarrassment – more the latter since we made record profits in 2012. It also showed that we weren’t immune to making the mistakes other companies made. What we were proud of was that we didn’t try to hide any of it or explain it away,” he said.

For example, the bank – after Dimon’s very public apology – made its Control agenda a top priority leading to a re-prioritization of its major projects and initiatives, deploying massive new resources, and dedicating critical managerial time and focus to the effort. Specifically, the bank:

Established a new firm-wide Oversight and Control Group separately staffed and reporting directly to the Chief Operating Officer with the authority to make decisions top down, in command and control fashion.
Appointed a business control officer in every line of business to report jointly to the line of business CEO and the firm-wide Oversight and Control Group.
Staffed every major enterprise-wide control initiative with program managers and oversight group managers, including COOs.
Made it mandatory for the Operating committee to meet regularly with regulators to share information and hear any criticisms.

I have worked in a lot of different public and private institutions during the course of my own career and have not found one that doesn’t make mistakes. The real test is how we address them. And at JPMorgan Chase, starting with the senior leadership, there was never any effort to hide or explain away our mistakes. In fact, there was a commitment that we were going to use them as an opportunity to become a stronger company,” Scher added.

Building a Culture of Responsibility

Corporate responsibility can be challenging at any company. Particularly for one that belongs to a sector that remains as tarnished for its dealings of the past decade today as it were in 2008. What is JPMorgan Chase doing to shift the mindset and modus operandi of its industry?

Well, we’re starting at home, with our 260,000 employees in more than 60 countries – and we’re letting our employees know how the firm contributes to their communities,” he said.

Are JPMorgan Chase employees driving the demand for non-financial disclosure?

Yes, there’s demand from many of our stakeholders, including our employees, to know how we match up in our actions versus our commitments. We’re also starting to see demand from our clients. The financial crisis really focused people’s attention on what companies are doing and could do to help contribute in a positive way to the community,” Scher emphasized.

“The fact is, if our communities are growing, that’s good for us as a business. More growth means more banking services – and we want to be a part of their future. Besides, clients want to know that companies they work with are responsible and thinking of their impact on society.

Global Footprint, A Comprehensive CSR Strategy

With a substantial community investment commitment as well as programs to rehire military veterans, bolster investment ties among cities in the US and worldwide through its Global Cities Initiative, and impact investing goals – principal investments focused on emerging markets added up to $50 million in 2012, clean energy investments –over $6 billion in clean energy investments in 2012 deployed, the bank is leveraging its global footprint effectively to grow the global economy.

It’s also trying to help address some of the world’s most pressing challenges.

For example, urbanization.

Half the world’s population already lives in or around cities. That’s going to increase to 70 percent in the next few years. That translates into a lot of challenges for what our infrastructure can support: energy, healthcare, water, job creation, etc. And for us as one of the largest lenders for these projects, that has significant ramifications.”

“So we’re trying to use our resources and expertise to help address these challenges. We’re working on understanding how policymakers are dealing with these across the world and trying to bring in some creative thinking to help them shift as the economies transform. We’re also thinking of how we can finance energy exploration and development in a more sustainable way.”

“In the U.S., for example, a lot of these investments have focused on natural gas. We’re identifying best practices and creating a risk assessment framework to help us influence our clients’ policies and procedures and help them conduct their energy operations in a sustainable manner,” he explained.

And how is the bank’s Social Finance arm faring? It launched in 2007 to serve the new and growing market for impact investments – new business models that deliver market-based solutions for social impact.

According to Scher, JPMorgan grew its Social Finance principal investments to nearly $50 million in commitments for funds focused on helping improve the livelihoods and quality of life of people living in poverty around the world, with a particular focus in emerging markets. “In addition to making principal investments, we’re also working to help shape and grow the field of impact investing, by providing client advisory services and data-driven thought leadership,” he added.

At the end of the day, with a Report that runs into 90 pages replete with data, interviews and the makings of a comprehensive CSR strategy, JPMorgan Chase seems to be pulling all the strings it has available to make a positive impact on its constituents – with some appreciable humility thrown in for good measure.

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

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

09 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by Aman Singh in CSR, CSRwire

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aman singh, cause marketing, corporate citizenship, corporate social responsibility, CSR, CSR communications, CSRwire, employee engagement, ESG, HR, Leadership, philanthropy, phillips, profits4purpose, shareholder value, social media, Stakeholder Engagement, Sustainability, sustainability, transparency, Work culture, workplace giving

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 “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 Cares – 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 filings. 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 most 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.

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

09 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by Aman Singh in CSR, CSR reporting, CSRwire

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banking, corporate governance, CSR, CSR report, CSR reporting, CSRwire, Disclosure & Transparency, economy, employee retention, ESG, Ethics, finance, HR, Leadership, leadership, materiality, stakeholder engagement, Sustainability, sustainability, transparency, voluntary disclosure, Work culture

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 support 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 RBS will 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 RBS what 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.

Creating Access For All: CVS Caremark Sets Ambitious Goals

09 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by Aman Singh in CSR, CSRwire

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cause marketing, charity, community development, CSR, CSRwire, cvs, eileen howard boone, employee engagement, grants, healthcare, inclusion, ngo, nonprofit, philanthropy, Philanthropy, volunteerism, Work culture

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 can stores 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.

Earthwards: A Front Row Seat to Sustainability in Action at Johnson & Johnson

09 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by Aman Singh in ESG

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Bill McDonough, biomimicry, Brand Management, clean technology, coleman bigelow, consumer products, cradle to cradle, earthwards, environment, Environment, ESG, green, Innovation, johnson and johnson, keith sutter, organizational development, product design, Supply chain management, sustainability, Work culture, zero waste, zytiga

While hosting a panel last year on responsible business, a discussion ensued on the need for creating change and influencing millions to shift their habits. I was intrigued by a question from the audience:

“Would companies ever be receptive to the idea of ‘embedding journalists’ in their organizations to test the theory of transparency and therefore influence change?”

While many companies might bristle at this idea, it’s something I’ve thought about a lot. I wondered which company would be the first to invite a journalist inside for a closer look at how its commitment to responsible and sustainable business is put into practice. To my surprise, I didn’t have to wait too long before Johnson & Johnson reached out to me with an invitation. They wanted to discuss the possibility of going inside the organization to conduct an objective review of its sustainable product development process, aptly titled Earthwards^®. As Keith Sutter, Senior Product Director of Sustainable Brand Marketing at Johnson & Johnson explained, the Earthwards process was developed as an internal tool in 2009 to assess the environmental impacts of various products and help drive improvements around specific sustainability criteria. The invitation meant I would get an unvarnished view inside a company that has traditionally shied away from the publicity spotlight. So I dived in.

Diving In: The Challenges of Meeting Sustainability Goals

My first exposure to the inner workings at Johnson & Johnson was a recent Earthwards quarterly board meeting. “Early on some of our external reviewers advised us to establish an Earthwards board of directors and appoint people from our legal, marketing and R&D groups, along with several subject matter experts from the outside,” explained Coleman Bigelow, a board member and Global Sustainability Marketing Director in the Consumer division at Johnson & Johnson. “Assembling a diverse group of stakeholders has been an important piece of the puzzle.” As the presentations started, I realized how challenging it could be to change the design, ingredients and packaging of existing products, built on years and years of research and testing. And for a healthcare company, its products must also meet the highest standards for consumer safety, patient usability and efficacy. So, layering on sustainability considerations to the product development process added even more complexity.

Diving Deeper: How High Should We Set the Bar?

One product reviewed by the board that day was Zytiga^®, a drug made by Janssen (the pharmaceuticals group within Johnson & Johnson), used in the treatment of metastatic castration resistant prostate cancer. Through a recent acquisition, Janssen had received the rights to manufacture and distribute Zytiga and the team saw an opportunity to improve the way the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) was produced to decrease its environmental impact and use the Earthwards process to guide the improvements. After the chief scientist for Zytiga walked the group through a formal presentation, the questions began. Now picture a room full of people representing different disciplines across the company – from Product Development to Environment, Health and Safety – and several from outside. The range of questions was broad and impressive: Was the product in competition with another product? Why change the process that was previously used to make the API? Does the product have FDA approval yet? How does making the proposed changes to the design and production of the drug make it safer for the environment? What about the impact on plant workers? And does this change the packaging? More importantly, the group wanted to understand what innovations had led to the proposed changes for Zytiga, and whether these changes could be replicated for other products within the company’s portfolio. Following the Zytiga presentation and discussion, the board took up the next item on its agenda: Should the company move ahead with adding its internally developed Global Aquatic Ingredient Assessment [GAIA] to the Earthwards’ framework? This would allow products in the consumer sector – think Aveeno, for example – to receive one point for their improved GAIA score in the Materials category of the Earthwards criteria. The company developed GAIA to evaluate the impact its product ingredients have on water, and determine if a potential for toxicity, persistence and bioaccumulation exists. Now the group questioned whether adding GAIA as an additional layer to the pre-qualifiers for Earthwards would raise the bar for other products competing for the recognition. As with Zytiga, the questions were far-ranging and complex: Does GAIA only consider the environmental impact of product ingredients, or does the assessment also consider the impact of these ingredients on human health? How do we weigh the toxicity? How does the consumer sector look at human health? With suppliers changing, how do we streamline the process? Does this then become a “hazard assessment rather than a risk assessment?” One example the board used to flesh out the pros and cons of GAIA was Natusan shampoo, which recently earned Earthwards recognition after overcoming a significant hurdle: Scientists had to figure out how to reduce the number of ingredients from 13 to eight to be eligible for recognition. The team explained that while the 13 ingredients used in the initial product were thoroughly reviewed for toxicology to insure that the finished product was safe for human use, the GAIA tool focuses on reducing ecosystem impacts. The board questioned whether the bar set by GAIA would be too high for some products. “We’re pushing for continual improvement while watching for signs of backsliding, and so far 60 percent of our products have continued to make further improvements,” was one sentiment. Another was, “We need to set the bar high but not so high that it discourages product developers from going for it.” Another board member – this time an external reviewer – commented that the allowable limits of “red” ingredients (those that Johnson & Johnson tries to avoid, where possible, due to environmental impacts) seemed reasonable, but cautioned that it might not be reasonable to others.

Complexities Arise: Is Zero the Right Sustainability Target?

As the day wrapped up one thought stuck with me: how high should the bar be when it comes to meeting the sustainability criteria of the Earthwards process? Context is of course key in these discussions. For some products and their ingredients, it’s a fine line between raising the bar and raising it too high. And since most of these products have been tested and retested for years for their impacts, toxicity and formulations, room for improvement is limited and, in some cases, tough to achieve. So how high should the bar be set? That’s the chicken or the egg question for companies today, isn’t it? While Bill McDonough, co-author of Cradle-to-Cradle and chief architect of this concept, promotes zero as the target – as in zero waste or zero negative impact – the reality is that everything we consume is made up of materials that we get from our environment, and therefore has an impact. The question is whether we can replenish the resources as quickly as we take them. And if not, how do we find alternatives? For believers of biomimicry, the answers may lie with nature. And how can a program like Earthwards, which the Johnson & Johnson team insists is not a certification or eco-label – indeed no product carries any indication of its Earthwards recognition on its label – help to push the bar consistently higher while acting as a purposeful motivator for the R&D team, the scientists, the product developers and the marketers, toward more sustainable products?

A Front Row Seat

For someone who doesn’t quite understand chemical equations and bioaccumulation, but does understand cancer, deforestation and the quest for sustainability, the board meeting was a revelation and a front row seat to an often-guarded corporate zone. For a company that earmarks a significant portion of its revenue to R&D, it is encouraging to see the commitment to sustainable product development in action. The board meeting ended on a high note. Zytiga was approved by the Earthwards board for recognition. There was excitement in the air and a belief that Earthwards is moving the company in the right direction. And the coffee pots were empty. All in a day’s work. Originally written for and published on CSRwire’s Commentary section Talkback on February 13, 2013 as part of a series about EARTHWARDS^®, a Johnson & Johnson program designed to promote greener product development throughout the enterprise.

Changing Business from the Inside Out: How to Pursue a Career in CSR and Sustainability

07 Monday Jul 2014

Posted by Aman Singh in CSR

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amd, Apple, Business Ethics, Career advice, career advice, career in sustainability, careers, CSR, CSR jobs, epa, gap, intel, Job search, Jobs in CSR, jobs in CSR, Leadership, Net Impact, Nike, Social Entrepreneurship, social media, supply chain, Sustainability, sustainability jobs, tim mohin, Work culture

What does one do to get a job in the field of corporate social responsibility? And moreover, how do you excel at something so nebulous and undefined?

I’ve spent the last eight years trying to decode these issues and report about what companies are doing to not only embrace the essential message underlining CSR but also integrate a sense of responsibility within their culture. I interviewed practitioners, researched numerous CSR reports, and conducted multiple surveys on the issue to identify what exactly translates into a “CSR career” or “CSR job”.

While feedback, comments and social media indicated that my reporting was helping raise awareness and compelling professionals to think about their choices, I realized that what we needed was a reference guide, an encyclopedia of sorts, a How-To of practical tips from executives who are embedded in large corporations and have experience influencing change, leading behavior change and staying patient when the profits vs. CSR debate rears its head.

Turns out, Changing Business from the Inside Out: A Treehugger’s Guide to Working in Corporations is the handbook I was looking for.

Written by Tim Mohin, Director of Corporate Responsibility at AMD, the book offers critical pieces of advice and practical tips for current and aspiring professionals who believe they can make a difference through their careers.

And that is the segment that Mohin wants to target. He told me a couple of years ago that he wanted to write a book aimed at people who “want to change the world through business.” Then, jobs were few and we were struggling as an economy. Occupy Wall Street was yet to take shape. And corporations were focused on surviving a deep recession not worrying about their social responsibility quotient.

But as we know today, this recession has not only furthered the divide between consumers, employees and corporations on a whole host of social, environmental and economic issues, but also pointed the finger to each and every one of us. Where does the blame lie? How did we get here?

In this vacuum of trust in the marketplace, Mohin’s book is a much-needed antidote for professionals and students who want to restore our economy, while protecting the environment and benefitting society, but lack the practical advice.

Changing Business from the Inside Out: A Treehugger’s Guide to Working in Corporations

We sat down for a heart to heart about the book, his tips, his journey at AMD and much more.

“The book is meant for people who want to use their careers to change the world. I want to enable the next generation to create the change they want to see happen,” he began. For Mohin, a vocal co-supporter of student-led organization Net Impact whose conferences attract thousands of job seekers, students and professionals each year, the field isn’t as “rosy as it looks.” [Note: Net Impact members get a discount!]

“Increasingly I felt that people who wanted to have a meaningful career didn’t understand what the field involves. There are certain sets of skills that need to be acquired,” he added.

The CSR field is growing. And companies are starting to respond to what was primarily a movement driven by activists, students and academia, by creating CSR departments and integrating corporate citizenship into business strategy.

Each of these points of integration, implementation and planning however, requires specific skill sets. And as more job opportunities emerge, Mohin believes it is up to the incumbents to educate and mentor an “army of professionals who can work in CSR and sustainability.”

Should Companies Create CSR Departments?

He likened the evolution of CSR to the quality movement in the 1980s when every company responded by starting a quality department. “Today, large companies realize that they must have someone in charge of CSR. It’s not a new department per se but builds upon the community, public affairs or environmental teams and adds on other parts of corporate citizenship,” he said.

Now, the question of having CSR departments has always triggered opposing reactions among professionals, executives and job seekers. Should CSR be a separate department? Or an integrated element of everyone’s job description? Or a C-suite led initiative?

For Mohin there is no debate, contrary to what several of his peers in corporate America have told me.

“I do think we need a department: it should be senior, small and strategic. Fundamentally, what that department is doing is setting direction, vision and key performance indicators [KPIs]. But the real work is being done by traditional line management functions.”

“For example, most companies need to have a CR council and together we work through top-level goals to meet our vision, execution and measurement. When you look at CSR, it’s too broad for any one manager to manage. By nature, it’s a cross cutting service group that works with others to get the job done,” he emphasized.

“But if there is no one in charge, it gets lost and nothing gets done.”

Preparing for a Career in CSR

But many of the skills, programs and business processes are transferable outside the CSR function, as I discover every time I interviewed a CSR executive and analyze their career’s trajectory. Mohin concurs. “Remember that most CSR functions simply report the news,” he told me, adding, “The news, though, is created in line management and mainstream corporate roles like procurement, HR, legal, and supply chain.”

Mohin’s advice hits home. For years, I have advised students and professionals that to forge a career in CSR, they must first develop a sector expertise, a specific skill set and then decide which element of CSR they can fit into. Using “I want to work in CSR” is never a good starting point.

For the author, it comes down to “Skills, Processes and Programs.”

“In chapter one, I identify how CSR has evolved at companies and how organizational structure affects the practice. Use this to figure out where you fit. Then turn to chapter two, where I list out the skills necessary for a successful career in CSR,” he said.

Once you’ve identified where you fit, chapter three and four offer a crash course in CSR strategy and how to respond to emerging issues. The rest of the book focuses on the many different programs under the umbrella of CSR. “So pick the one that applies to your skills and passion and then understand how to excel in that particular field,” he explained.

Apple, Gap & Nike: Supply Chain Crucial Area for CSR Jobseekers

For example, supply chain is an area that Mohin has devoted part of his career to while at Apple. But his emphasis – two long chapters – on the area of supply chain has more to it than passion or experience. “For me, this area is the No. 1 growth area in corporate responsibility. When you see the trend starting back a few years ago with Nike and Gap’s supply chain woes, and now Apple in the electronics industry, the critical importance of supplier responsibility becomes clear,” he said.

“Now it’s becoming embedded in companies more so than ever before because of outsourcing. Companies have found outsourcing to be cheaper and strategically more efficient for them. But accompanying that, we need a supplier responsibility program, therefore the growing demand for professionals who can understand all the nuances of both supply chain and social responsibility,” he said.

Another important reason that there are jobs in this area: Supplier responsibility is a big, complicated task. “One that requires quite a large team of skilled professionals. At Apple, it started with just me and I quickly hired a small ream but if you compare to Gap, I believe they have about 70 people in labor standards. Disney has even more,” he said, adding, “Now, imagine the scope and scale of managing all social responsibility for suppliers of all the Fortune 500 companies.”

Running a Data-Driven Program: Leading Through Influence

In order to drive a CSR program, however, whether it is supplier responsibility or environmental impact, every project requires a robust method set in place for the collection and analysis of relevant data that can feed strategy and project the achievability of goals.

And that’s where Mohin places his bets for success.

A common thread at every company he has worked for, including Intel, Advanced Micro Devices and Apple, is managing data-driven programs. The ability to set quantifiable goals and measure progress has been a crucial aspect of his career in corporate responsibility. “[Data] has been a hallmark of my career,” he said.

So much so that Mohin has devoted an entire chapter on the need for establishing meaningful goals and knowing what to measure. In the book – chapter four – he uses the examples of Intel, Coca-Cola and Starbucks to exemplify his emphasis. In our conversation, he referred to lessons from his tenure at Intel.

“When I was the environmental manager at Intel, the first thing I did was establish Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) so that we could start measuring our global environmental performance and forecasting the future. As soon as we figured it out, senior management wanted to know. And because we were focused on the data, we were quickly able to identify the process changes and reductions that decreased our emissions even while production was increasing,” he recalled.

His advice?

“[You] need to be able to understand what’s important for your business and your stakeholders and how you can quantify progress in these areas to be successful. These metrics together become a dashboard seen by senior management regularly so they track the success measures and identify areas to improve. Running your program this way ensures that you will get the engagement and buy-in needed for a successful corporate responsibility strategy,” he said.

“Once you start to measure what’s important to your business and your stakeholders, you start to see alignment.”

Finally, I asked him to list the top skills he believes anyone aspiring to excel in CSR and sustainability must have. [Buy the Book]

In Mohin’s words, you must be:

1. A Lifelong Learner

“In corporate responsibility, you have to be flexible and curious. You’re often working in areas that are not your strong suit but if you’re open to new experiences and unafraid to be the dumbest kid in the class, this field is for you. Not everyone has that kind of personality. You have to be comfortable in your skin. And, it helps to have a thick skin.”

2. Able to Lead & Influence Without Being the Decision Maker

“You must be able to lead and influence when you’re not making all the decisions leading up to the end goal. You must be able to understand the system well – such as identifying and building relationships with those who have the budget and the authority to get things done – and be able to work with them and influence across a broad spectrum of people and groups to work toward a common goal.”

3. Able to Communicate Well

“It is one thing to know your business and another to describe it to someone else who may not know your business as well. It’s like talking to your mother about CSR. To be able to do this job, you have to be a good communicator. It’s a critical skill in many fields but absolutely essential in CSR. CSR leaders are like the ‘de-coder ring’ in many companies because they have to understand the inner workings of many business groups and explain it to others.”

4. Social Media Savvy

“The world of communications has changed in fundamental ways and the future will be very different too. We need to stay on top of were communication is headed – and right now, that’s social media.”

“What I learned from social media is that I get more out of it than I put in. I learn something new every day through social media. Communication is happening in real-time with real content and being social media savvy is an essential element to be effective in many fields.”

5. Able to Understand the Importance of Stakeholder Relations

“Remember that the field of CSR is new, it’s evolving. But also remember that social media and hyper transparency are becoming the new normal, which makes stakeholder engagement not just a priority, but essential.”

“The world is watching and CSR is about our behavior as a company. If you’re not asking people ‘how you are doing?’ and ‘how you can get better?’ then you’re flying blind.”

Originally written for and published on CSRwire’s Commentary section Talkback on August 16, 2012.

In Good Company: Singh on CSR

~ Connecting the dots between Business, Society & the Environment

Tag Archives: Work culture

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A Public Benefit Corporation: The Implications

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Aspirational Goals: “Building a Really Good Bank”

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2. Able to Lead & Influence Without Being the Decision Maker

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5. Able to Understand the Importance of Stakeholder Relations

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