A Partnership for Cross Generational Digital Inclusion

Last year BT decided to allocate some of its community investment to in-country partnerships outside of the UK. Not being one to miss an opportunity, I applied for a share of the funding and today we announced a two-year partnership with One Economy (OE) in the USA involving a grant, volunteering and collaboration.

In this video, Ken Eisner, Managing Director OE Ventures, talks about One Economy and about our partnership from his perspective.

Digital inclusion is a key CR focus area for BT. Access to the digital world is a critical component for social and economic wellbeing in the community. There are many digital divides; geographic, ethnic and wealth based are the most well known. The generational divide is less well known, but access to the internet for older people falls way behind access for the population as a whole. This creates additional hurdles for older generations to access social communications, news, government services, healthcare, financial services and many other necessary components of a modern day life. The FCC’s recently published National Broadband Plan includes reference to the generational divide.

Across the Atlantic in the UK, BT has been working on the generational divide through BT Internet Rangers. It provides young people with an internet based platform and a framework to help them teach their older family members how to use the internet. Our grant to One Economy (OE) is for them to build a US version of the Internet Rangers program, leveraging BT’s lessons from the UK and One Economy’s extensive experience in digital inclusion in the USA. I am sure there will be much learning in both directions.

We will need a new name though so people don’t think we are competing with the Ranger that rides with Tonto or with the National Park Service.

Guest Post from EMC: Speaking of Climate Change…

A couple of weeks back in Some Thoughts on Climate Change I shared some responses to the recent controversies within the climate change space and in particular how corporations should respond. Kathrin Winkler, Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer at EMC Corporation shared her thoughts on the same topic on her own blog Interconnected World. I found them very enlightening and asked Kathrin if I could repost……

The subject of Climate Change has inexplicably (OK, maybe explicably) become a touchy one, particularly here in the U.S. (though I'm assured by a friend Down Under that we are not alone). I'm sure you've seen the polls, not to mention the press. One of the conundrums (conundra?) of being in an environmental sustainability job is deciding how to talk about Climate Change and how to react when the confronted by a challenge to the idea of global warming.

With nearly 43,000 employees, EMC has its share of people who are understandably befuddled by the barrage of conflicting information in the media and simply don't have the time to do the research to sort it out. And yes, we have our out-and-out skeptics and cynics, too. So what do I say when someone says to me "Did you hear? They've found out that the earth is actually cooling!" A woman on our Green Business Leadership team was asking my advice on this question the other day. And I'm not really sure what the best approach is.

We can…

…Tackle the objections one by one, starting with "don't confuse weather with climate".

…Get pedantic, delving into climate forcings and the carbon cycle.

…Go narrow, focusing on energy and how reducing dependence on fossil fuel is good for our wallets, for national security and for the economy.

…Go wide, emphasizing that even without global warming, the environmental insults we are perpetrating on the planet are devastating water supplies, destroying species, and hampering ecosystem services that communities depend on, never mind using up resources like water, tin, copper and much more.

…Appeal to people's competitive natures by highlighting how China is taking the initiative in green technology.

…Be selfish, maintaining that regardless of individual opinion, it's good for business to care about Climate Change since our investors, customers, and partners are asking us to demonstrating that we're responsibly managing the associated risks.

…Deflect. Expound on how increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations are causing ocean acidification that can be measured in the thinning shells of pteropods, endangering this critical link in the food chain. (Warning: this one can stop a conversation dead in its tracks!)

…Dismiss "ClimateGate", pointing out that the behavior of a few scientists doesn't change the science.

…Simply hold our ground with "the science really is unequivocal, and corroborated across many, many disciplines".

… Soft-pedal by only referring to "Climate Change" and avoiding "anthropogenic" (human-caused) so as not to inflame the most rabid skeptics.

…Cite well-known conservatives who have concluded it's a real issue - people like David Brooks and Rupert Murdoch.

…Play the percentage card, by seeking agreement with the challenger that there is at least a reasonable chance that the skeptics are wrong, leading to the conclusion that we can't afford to take that chance.

All of these approaches are legitimate, and I've use all of the above depending on the person, the nature of the comment I'm responding to, and the circumstance of the conversation. The problem is that whenever I sidestep the fundamental question, I feel a bit like a coward. On the other hand, my job is to drive change, and small detours can get you past roadblocks to progress.
How have you handled it?

Are You Happy?

I have noticed more reports than usual about happiness and wellbeing in recent months. Carol Graham’s excellent piece in the Washington Post in January basically concludes that happiness is linked to stable relationships, stable health and enough (but not too much) income.

Gallup’s Happiness poll identified that “Americans' happiest days of 2009 were on or close to holidays, consistent with previous mood index scores showing that days with more-than-normal time dedicated to socializing with family and friends enhance people's happiness and enjoyment.”

The recently published 59 Seconds by Richard Wiseman concludes that fundamental ‘circumstantial changes’ (moving house, getting a pay rise), result in only short term happiness as we quickly adapt to the new lifestyle, whereas ‘intentional change’, in which he includes what seem to me to be less significant activities, such as joining a new club or starting a new hobby, results in prolonged happiness. He also identifies that acquiring new things does not generally equate with increased happiness.

It is well recognized that two of the key challenges for sustainability are consumerism and the requirements for continual and short term growth in financial markets. But if these things do not lead to happiness, why do we strive for them to such a great extent?

I can think of a couple of reasons. One is that economic growth is very measurable and we all like things that are measurable. Another (perhaps related) is that GDP is such a prevalent metric for development. In fact at BT we have linked our Climate Stabilization Intensity Target for carbon reduction to our contribution to GDP to allow for both economic development and carbon reduction.

Graham’s article in the post takes the concept further and talks about the ‘economics of happiness’ identifying how governments are starting to look for metrics much broader than GDP to measure development. It is worth a read.

As a nation dedicated to the pursuit of happiness I think it would be well worth looking closer at the findings of these and other studies and understanding what really makes people (amongst them employees, customers and shareholders) happy. I suspect the findings could change some of the basic principles on which we measure success and allow us to build new foundations that better support sustainability.

Guest Blog Post: The Boeing Company

Veronica Cavallaro directs Research and Measurement activities for Global Corporate Citizenship at The Boeing Company, working with various stakeholders to collect and analyze meaningful data to both inform strategy and demonstrate the effectiveness of our work.

Before joining Boeing, Cavallaro served as chief quality officer at Illinois Action For Children. She began her consulting career at Arthur Andersen working in the areas of bankruptcy, forensic accounting, white-collar crime, and litigation support. She gained significant perspective and experience in management consulting and audit through her work in Europe, Asia and Mexico. Additionally, she spent several years consulting to Illinois-based organizations in the areas of workforce development, technology, transportation, education and housing. Cavallaro is qualified as a Certified Fraud Examiner.

As I sit here at the beginning of a new year, I pause to think of what we are achieving as CR practitioners and how that relates to our business at The Boeing Company. Just before the holiday break, our new generation 787 aircraft took flight. For our company, this was a major achievement in a year where good news in the business world was tough to come by.

As an employee working in our corporate headquarters in Chicago, I am not directly involved in the production of the 787. Most of our workforce on that program is located in Puget Sound (Washington). The first flight of that aircraft was a milestone in a long list of milestones for that program. But this milestone was different.

It didn’t occur to me how different this milestone was until after the plane flew. Certainly, watching the reaction of our employees as the plane took off was emotional and delivered an overwhelming sense of pride straight across all 155,000 of us. Designing and producing an aircraft is a monumental effort that takes people with varied skill sets and perspectives to bring everything together successfully. It takes time, a laser-like focus on the goal, and perseverance.

The first flight was surprising to me because of the attention it garnered from people who do not appear to have a vested interest. Friends and acquaintances from around the world contacted me offering their congratulations. It made me realize that the level of visibility of that singular event was truly global and people from all walks of life took interest.

Having grown up in Detroit where the workforce was linked in some way to the auto industry, I don’t recall a similar excitement from the announcement of a new car. Sure, everyone has their favorite car or car line and new releases are causes of delight for some, but I can’t think of another example that has caused people around the world to connect and be excited. Boeing’s products over the years have tended to do this…from the birth of the company back in 1903 to putting shuttles and satellites in space, to revolutionizing commercial aviation with the 787. It is an amazing and humbling experience to be a part of this rich history.

So, back to my comment about how rarely we have received good news this past year. Perhaps people are just looking for something positive to hold on to. Perhaps these well wishers are actually stakeholders of a different sort? Is it possible that the traditional view of stakeholders – employees, customers, suppliers - is due a rethink or expansion?

Presumably, the folks who contacted me are customers of our airline customers and see the 787 as the product it is – a new generation aircraft that will connect people and places together. However, it strikes me that perhaps the interest people have taken in this plane is due to something much simpler. Maybe people have hungered for a success story and after a year bombarding us with negative news, this is the type of success story they have been waiting for.

Relating back to CR, the opportunity for people to feel good about something – as alluded to in several posts on this blog – is an important element of employee engagement. Perhaps more importantly, it is part and parcel of the human condition.

Sustainable Community Investment or Helping the Needy?

I have noticed some contrasts recently in the sort of giving employees want to do with the sort of giving companies want to do. As a company we want our community investment to be strategic and sustainable. For BT, with core competencies and impact in the ICT space, that means communications and digital inclusion. But employees, myself included, want to do things that involve a hands-on approach and that tackle an immediate need.

From a sustainable community investment perspective it is best to help a homeless person learn a skill so they can get a job, but working in a soup kitchen or donating to a food pantry is a hands-on approach that is more immediately fulfilling. Likewise donating money to help cure people with heart disease seems like a more charitable cause than donating your money towards a healthy living education program – although the latter might be better value. On a personal level most of us want to do things that meet the immediate requirements of a needy person.

In addition, personally, I want to do things that get me out of my normal office environment and working in different capacity. I am sure that why so many people like to work in soup kitchens.

Our emotional drivers as individuals incline us towards programs that help sustain the needy rather than truly sustainable programs that tackle the underlying issue.

Companies can and do address these differences by distinguishing between the drivers and appropriate funding to put behind employee engagement programs versus the drivers and appropriate funding to put behind corporate giving.

But the real trick is to find programs at the intersection of both employee drivers and strategic and sustainable community involvement. I am still working on it and would be interested to hear any you have come across in your sectors.

Employee Engagement – Build Momentum

This is the third in a series of posts on employee engagement. I previously addressed the issue of engaging employees through the first step of demonstrating strong leadership from the top. Step two is to help build momentum throughout the organization.

I am often asked how I get employees to participate in supporting sustainability and CR programs. For the most part I find that people want to take action. In fact, if anything there is pent up demand. I just need to give them ‘permission’ and some framework for what they want to do.

BT has Carbon Clubs as a way to bring colleagues together to discuss climate change issues. Once a part of the BT carbon club, employees are able to share knowledge and ideas with colleagues and take action together. Similar to our program, Walmart has Personal Sustainability Projects. These programs were developed by employees as an outlet for them to embrace sustainability. The characteristics of these and other frameworks are very similar;

• Empower - enable cross functional teams to form
• Seed ideas - provide forums and gathering points through social networking and recognize with publicity and awards.

A couple of characteristics that I would add to the two above include:

• Be flexible with boundaries - for example support activities that might impact carbon footprint outside of work if that is what folks want to focus on. I was briefed a year or so ago on a great example of a grass roots carbon club initiative at our Adastral Park research center. The team arranged to borrow a fleet of electric bikes from a vendor, put a charging station on the campus and loaned the bikes out to employees to try out two weeks at a time. Interested employees could then make their own arrangements to buy a bike instead of driving if that worked for them.

• Allow the trivial - Three years ago and new in the role, I discouraged people who wanted to replace the paper in the photocopier and eliminate Styrofoam cups. We run massive data centers. Styrofoam cups and the paper in the office copier are simply not material and divert attention from what is. I have changed my views on that approach. Most BT employees never see the inside of a data center, but they do see the cups in the canteen and paper in the copier. Our people build their trust in their employer’s position from what they see, possibly more than from what they are told in corporate communications. So supporting the visible is important, even if it is trivial. And then, when those people have an opportunity in their jobs to influence something material they will take the right actions.

Adding these characteristics to your framework will help your organization to build momentum and engage employees in the process.

My next post will focus on the third step of employee engagement: harnessing the momentum.

Employee Engagement – Leading From the Top

This is the second in a series of posts on employee engagement describing what I consider to be three stages to full employee engagement; leading from the top, generating momentum and harnessing momentum.

The first step is to demonstrate leadership and commitment from the top. It is often stated as a foundational requirement for employee engagement, but can be hard to attain as illustrated by the many times I am asked the question , so how did you get your leadership team to support this?

I see an interesting tension between attaining true leadership for an issue while resisting the pressure for the company to change its CR priorities according to the CR priorities of the senior most leadership.

I have observed four characteristics that help distinguish true leadership for a sustainability theme.

Policy – a clearly articulated company position on the issue that includes definition of the extent of its effects on society and on the company, the cause, and the role the company has in mitigation and perhaps adaptation.

Targets – output related targets presented within the context of resolving the issue.

Names – named and visible members of the leadership team who back the policy and associated programs.

Engagement – Skin in the game through visible engagement by members of the leadership team. Examples from BT include Ben Verwayan’s active chairing of the Climate Change Task Force of the Confederation of British Industry as CEO of BT and Sir Michael Rake’s active role as chair of the UK Commission for Employment and Skills.

Historically, when corporate responsibility was philanthropy, the corporate CR theme was often set by the personal priorities of the most senior leaders of the company. An individual felt strongly about a particular theme and so philanthropic donations to that theme did well under their leadership. Today, enlightened companies have integrated corporate responsibility and sustainability into their business. One test of a good sustainability pillar is that it meets the changing needs of society and the changing role of the business in society, but resists change purely due to a change of leadership.

Sustainability Rankings by Industry Sector – Any Better ?

I have written previously about ranking programs and commented that I put more value behind rankings for a particular theme or a particular sector, where the comparison is more likely to be apples with apples and the vagaries of weighting factors are at least somewhat lessened.

Two sector rankings have been brought to my attention recently. I will cover one today (TBR) and one later this week (M&E) when I have collected my thoughts on it.

TBR’s Sustainability Index Benchmark Report looks at the ICT sector. TBR’s scope for sustainability is environmental issues. You can see that Dell, came first followed by BT, IBM, HP, Intel and Nokia.

A comparison with Newsweek’s rankings is possible, although only partial as Newsweek only covers US companies. In Newsweek’s ranking of 500 companies, HP comes first, Dell second, Intel fourth and IBM fifth. It is notable that these ICT sector companies are all clustered in the Newsweek ranking although the order is different.

I see weightings as having a significant impact on ranking even in TBR’s sector specific comparison. For example, how do you rank the relative importance of recycling equipment for BT, which is predominantly a networked services company, with Dell, which sells hardware products in boxes as its core business? (If this sounds like hard feeling’s that we are not #1, it isn’t meant to, I am more than happy that we are well recognized in the rankings).

I suspect that with only a couple of months between the surveys, the different positions between TBR and Newsweek are more likely to be reflecting weighting and methodology rather than performance, so I have to say I remain what I hope is a healthy skeptic on the exact order of rankings, but a supportive of the underlying objective and continued improvement to methodologies.

More to come later this week on M&E rankings in the oil and gas services sector.

Should companies comment on politics?

Back in August, John Mackey (Co-founder and CEO of Wholefoods) was pretty heavily criticized for an opinion piece he wrote in the Wall Street Journal “ The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare.” A story in ABCNews, typical of the headlines generated, carried the subtitle “Branding Experts Say CEOs Should Stay Quiet When It Comes to Politics”

This headline is not confined to this side of the Atlantic. In October, Sir Terry Leahy, Chief Executive of Tesco and Sir Michael Rake, Chairman of BT, were criticized in an opinion piece in the Times headlined “When business leaders start getting political, it is time to switch off” for speaking on the ‘political issues’ of climate change and education.

The fourth dimension in the Four Dimensions of Sustainability is the opportunity that companies have to ‘Inform and Influence’ the views of all stakeholders, including government and civil society. I have proposed there that companies use the opportunity they have to influence stakeholders. In a post back in September “Isn’t the Healthcare debate a CR Issue too” I questioned why more companies were not speaking out on healthcare issues for example.

I have often contrasted the approaches of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) and the US Chamber of Commerce on climate change. While I, and BT, support one of those approaches and contest the other, at no time would I suggest that trade associations, companies or their CEOs should not speak out with a position on the issue.

Companies must represent their interests. If the education system is failing to deliver the required quality of employees or anticipated environmental change is threatening future supplies of a raw material for example, then CEOs are obliged to comment on this. Of course this needs to be within the context of taking seriously their own responsibilities in the particular field. If we want companies to be serious about their impact on sustainability we need them to take an active role in society.

But while corporate leaders must speak out on societal issues that effect their business together with the outcomes they would like to see, should they propose specific solutions? What is the best solution for healthcare cost and availability, which balance of tests and course work is optimum for high school education, cap and trade or tax which is better public policy? I doubt corporate leaders are experts on all these things, but then perhaps neither are political appointees or civil servants in many cases. And it can be hard to draw a clear line between defining required outcomes and suggesting solutions.

In my view the corporate world has been too far away from these important civil society debates in the past couple of decades and the recent increased involvement is welcomed. It is important is that positions should be transparent in the extent to which they represent the view of the individual, the best interest of the company and the best interest of society (for the record, the views in this post reflect mine and mine alone!) I for one would prefer to see C-level execs overshoot a little in expressing their views before we try and pull back, and I think we are far from that right now.

Guest Post: Autodesk

A ‘Wild West’ of Corporate GHG Target-Setting

As I have mentioned in my blog before, at BT we launched our Climate Stabilization Intensity Target in 2008. Until now we have been (as far as I am aware) the only company with such a target. However I am thrilled that Autodesk has now launched a target with a similar approach. Emma Stewart kindly agreed to provide some insights in a guest blog.

Emma Stewart, Ph.D., is the Senior Program Lead at Autodesk’s Sustainability Initiative, where she combines expertise in environmental trends analysis, policy and metrics design, and management consulting. Her award-winning work has been covered by The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Financial Times, Harvard Business, and Forbes, among others.

With the scientific and policy trends pointing to increasing and unprecedented levels of consensus on the scale of global emissions reductions, corporate leadership in defining a path forward remains varied, not comparable, and under-scrutinized. A bit like the Wild West, the domain lacks law, scrutiny and is full of somewhat aimless shooting.

Even amongst the leaders charting the frontier, targets are:

• grounded in little more than ‘guesstimates’
• very short-term in nature
• at risk of accusations of ‘green washing’ because they mask an actual increase in absolute emissions
• opaque due to intensity calculations or derivation from multi year commitment

To address these challenges, at Autodesk we have developed a Corporate Finance Approach to Climate-stabilizing Targets (“C-FACT”), a science-driven, business-friendly and transparent approach, which is grounded in climate science but recognizes that companies are GHG emitters and simultaneously create economic value.

In 2008, BT announced a Climate Stabilization Intensity model, which introduced the idea that corporate carbon reductions should be set relative to economic value-add. Autodesk strongly endorse this idea and applaud BT’s leadership. To make this concept applicable outside of the UK, we have suggested a universally acceptable metric for ‘value-add’.

With consultation from Clear Carbon Consulting, we have built the model to be compatible with existing business reporting norms, replicable and verifiable, accommodating of organic and inorganic changes in business, proportional to company's contribution to GDP and predictable, appropriate to attain climate stabilization.

I see a strong foundation for brand-enhancement through communicating that the approach is data-driven, grounded in science and a rigorous approach to a complex problem.

We applied C-FACT to a set of leading tech companies and found that if they were to adopt this approach, global GHGs could be reduced by a whopping 3,801,112,763 metric tons by 2050, equivalent to roughly 9 percent of the global target laid out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

I hope that other companies will, in the spirit of open source tools, consider this model, analyze its strengths and weaknesses, improve upon it, and then adopt it. For a video tutorial and White Paper that explains the methodology step-by-step, please go to www.autodesk.com/ghgtarget and help Autodesk and BT turn the Wild West into a Renaissance.

Is the Economic Downturn Good or Bad for Sustainability?

When the economy takes a dive, companies take a serious look at their resources and cut down on non-essential spending. Will sustainability programs be considered as an area to cut back on?

The value of sustainability programs are clear - reduced energy costs, increased productivity and efficiencies. I believe companies that are serious about sustainability will continue, if not step up, their focus. At BT, being green has reduced our energy costs, especially so when it comes to energy efficiency, and increased our energy security – so why wouldn’t we step up our efforts? The corporate customers I work with see the same benefits.

At a more strategic level, it is important to consider the impact this crisis will have on the willingness of shareholders to take a longer term perspective of corporate success. Whether considering social or environmental sustainability, I have always felt that taking only a short term perspective on investment is generally to the detriment of substantive sustainability strategies. Just the term ‘sustainability’ really says it all. I believe long-term sustainability initiatives reap true value for a company and its investors.

So a key question is will this economic downturn will act as a catalyst for investors to take a longer term view that gives more support to sustainable practices in the companies in which they invest? In my mind the jury is out on this one. I welcome your thoughts on the topic.