Social Enterprise Symposium: Transforming Business for the Global Good

I have the pleasure of joining an esteemed panel of speakers this week to discuss jump starting sustainability in the corporate sector. This is a topic that I talk about extensively on this blog and speak about at many conferences throughout the year. Businesses around the world are rethinking their business models, products and employment engagement programs to address sustainability.

The event is being hosted by University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith’s School of Business and for those who are unable to attend in person, it will be streamed live here at 6.00pm EDT. You can also follow my tweets or post your own tweets throughout the event using the hash tag #SES10. The twitter stream will also be visible here.

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: Some Last Thoughts

This is the last of a series of posts on employee engagement. Not deep and meaningful, rather I have captured a couple of thoughts that didn’t fit neatly elsewhere.

Global Sensitivity is one area that is on my radar all the time as I am the CR lead for a regional operation. Be sensitive to global differences. This could be the topic of a whole series of posts itself but I will save that for another time. The key question is centralized versus decentralized. I recommend tending towards centralized and line of business control for environmental projects, but for social and economic initiatives to tend towards global guidelines and plenty of local discretion on a geographic basis.

What about the skeptics? - I wrote a post on this some time ago and I stand by what I said in that post that we should not dismiss skeptics. In “Legal Doesn’t Equal Sustainable,” I commented on the conflict between sustainability and the advocacy based approach of our legal and political systems that require each side to demonize the other. I think that in the climate change space we have moved into that demonizing mode and as sustainability practitioners we should be setting a better example.

Much has been written on the topic recently. I will end with some other resources worth looking at:

• A recent Green Biz/Green Impact Collaboration http://www.greenbiz.com/research/report/2009/12/03/green-teams-engaging-employees-sustainability
• NEEF’s engaged organization report http://www.neefusa.org/business/report_2009.htm
• From Jagan Nemani at Speak Energy http://www.speakenergy.com/wp-uploads/Engaging-Employees-in-Environmental-Sustainability.pdf

Employee Engagement – Harness Momentum

This is one of a series of posts on employee engagement.

I see employee engagement as having two roles; as an end in itself and as a mechanism to achieve change.

As an end in itself, employee engagement serves to improve morale and enhance retention and recruitment. In that respect, the first role can be accomplished through leadership from the top and building momentum, both of which I’ve addressed in earlier posts from this series. But for the second role, as a vehicle to achieve change in support of the organizations overall CR objectives we need to harness that momentum.

Whereas building momentum calls for flexibility across business boundaries and what I termed ‘allowing the trivial’, harnessing momentum is the time to leverage this energy without losing it.

So, how do you harness momentum? I have used three interrelated approaches outlined below to help achieve this:

• How the Individual Fits - Help the individual understand how their contribution fits into the whole. Look for ways to draw a quantified linkage between action as an individual and the objectives of the organization. In an ideal world our people will know what activities have to occur, and by when, to meet corporate responsibility targets, so they can put their actions in context.
• Materiality – action on trivial impacts help build momentum. It is not necessary to stop those activities, but when harnessing the momentum it is the time to help people understand where the material business impacts are and how they can influence those impacts.
• Functional Application – challenge the business units in the company to examine how they can impact the organization’s sustainability objectives within their core business activities and use the feedback from that to breakdown the objectives into functionally appropriate targets and objectives.

Earlier this week I attended an office party in our New York office catered wonderfully by one of our CSR partners, Project Renewal. I was humbled when two graduates of Project Renewal’s Culinary Arts Training Program told me what a great boost it was to their confidence to be invited in to speak to and work with us. But what great boost our own people get from organizing and participating in these programs. Joe Murphy, a colleague who volunteers with Project Renewal told me that every time he volunteers “I feel better than the person who gets the free meal.”

As corporate responsibility practitioners we must make sure that we harness this momentum to enable real change in underlying problems and not allow it to be a pressure release valve that enables us to allow the underlying problems to perpetuate.

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.