CSR in Practice

Earth Day Mixed Marketing

2011-04-22T09:41:00.000-07:00

Happy Earth Day! For whatever reason, I never thought to explore the origins of Earth Day – something I just accepted as a yearly occurrence since I was a child. According to Wikipedia, the first Earth Day in 1970 was designed as an environmental “teach-in” on university campuses around the country.

More than 40 years later, what has Earth Day become?

Well, it certainly is a bit more visible. And it seems global, both of which are fantastic. But I wonder if we’re headed down a path where Earth Day becomes a “Hallmark holiday,” designed to generate commercial sales and absent of the original organizers’ intent.

As someone who is entrenched in “Corporate America” every day, maybe I’m experiencing this from one particular lens. Since I’m not in a school setting, I don’t know if educators still use today as a touch-point for teaching. There also does seem to be a lot of media this week that aims to educate the public about our fragile planet. In my opinion, however, the loudest Earth Day voices are the corporate ones. Has Earth Day gone corporate? If so, is this a good or bad thing?

Let’s take a look at some Earth Day messaging from the private sector:

Starbucks – Long a leader on all things CSR, Starbucks is offering free coffee to patrons who bring in a travel mug today.

Levi Strauss – The jeans pioneer is continuing to promote its Levi’s Water Tank facebook game, which draws the connection between global access to water and the amount of water that it takes to create and wash a pair of jeans.

Whole Foods Market – Almost synonymous with planet-friendly, Whole Foods is not using any disposable bags today, instead encouraging customers to bring in their own reusable bags and offering some at a discount.

BCBG – The fashion retailer has a collection of items that benefit the Sierra Club. Its “Be Chic, Be Green” campaign is visible online and in its store windows. Some of the products feature recycled materials. Others just seem to look cool.

Microsoft – The company is sparking discussion about the connection between technology and environmentalism through its blog post about cloud computing.

Old Navy – In a partnership with TerraCycle, the discount fashion house is encouraging customers to bring in old flip-flops that will be recycled into playgrounds.

No doubt, hundreds of companies are also focusing inward, encouraging employees to connect back with Mother Earth. Virgin America, CA Technologies and Verizon are three companies whose employee programs are also generating some good buzz.

On this Earth Day, it’s almost impossible to ignore the corporate voices that encourage me to recycle a little more, reduce my disposable containers or conserve energy. And whether it’s the Corporate or the Responsibility in CSR that’s driving these messages, I don’t think it’s doing any harm. I just have to remind myself that maybe a better way to celebrate is actually going outside for a hike instead of ordering a new jacket made of recycled materials.

Sex Education

2011-03-21T09:29:00.000-07:00

Today was one of those days that make it all worthwhile. I feel inspired, that my work is meaningful and that there's a sense of purpose behind what I do.

For a bit of context, let me rewind a day. Yesterday I took one of those very touristy organized trips to the Mekong Delta where foreigners are basically bused and boated from one gift shop to another. It was a very pretty tour, but I just wish there were a more authentic way to see different parts of the world. I did, however, enjoy our tour guide's perspective on Vietnam. At one point she discussed the country's problem with population control, contributed in part by an unwillingness to discuss sex in Vietnamese culture. As a consequence, not only is unwanted pregnancy on the rise, so are STDs like HIV/AIDS.

My tour guide's comments perfectly set up today's factory visit. We recently partnered with a Vietnamese factory to invest in HERproject, a factory-based health education program for women in developing countries, and today I had the chance to observe a training session.

Since the training was conducted entirely in Vietnamese, I didn't understand the content, but I got a sense of the discussion from the condoms, leaflets and birth control pills that were being used as props and handed out. Later, I was debriefed on the content, which was pretty consistent with my junior high school health education class. It mostly concerned how to use condoms, how to avoid STDs and how to prevent unwanted pregnancy.

I was worried that the training session would be fruitless, given my understanding of the discomfort surrounding talking about sex. The women in the session, however, seemed very engaged throughout the doctor's presentation. And when it came time for questions, they were eager to learn more! The participants seemed hungry for this information and it was clear that these concepts were new to them. I was relieved to see this level of engagement and felt good that our investment was not in vain.

Today's visit also included a meeting with the factory's management team, who shared some of their experiences in implementing the program. Sure, they cited some frustrations, but most of them had to do with logistics and not the core content of the training. Everyone seemed to believe in the importance of delivering health training. There are opportunities to deliver the program more smoothly, but nothing that cannot be overcome.

But what I didn't expect was to hear the factory managers cite this investment as a potential competitive advantage. Even though the training program was launched only a few months ago, they already saw participants taking these learnings back to their families and communities. The factory was beginning to earn a reputation as a preferred employer and people in the community appreciated the added investment in worker education. In a time when all factories, across all industries, are facing tremendous challenges in recruiting Vietnamese workers, this is an obvious business benefit.

When I first considered entering the field of CSR over a decade ago, I never would have imagined that I'd spend a day at work sitting in a sex ed class in Vietnam, but today has turned out to be one of the most gratifying days of my career.

A Model Factory

2011-03-15T14:56:00.000-07:00

I'm in Jakarta again, this time visiting some factories we currently work with and assessing some others that are not yet approved for my company. It's unusual for me to get the chance to visit factories we're not yet working with and I'm learning that representing a potential client feels very different from playing the role of the social compliance guy who comes into a factory to see what's unacceptable.

The main difference is that factory management really directs their comments to me, the company representative, instead of the social compliance auditors who usually lead the factory tour. Management is eager to show me innovative practices, sparkling new machinery and practices that might set them apart.

The first factory we visited yesterday was one of the best I've seen from a CSR perspective. The factory managing director was eager to share with me some of the community investment work it has implemented, some at the behest of a customer, but others that it initiated to fulfill business and community needs it identified. Some of the highlights to me included the following practices:

CNG Power - Apparently, Indonesia sits on a huge pool of natural gas, so this factory converted its power supply to compressed natural gas. The factory has realized tremendous cost savings due to this transition and mentioned that the amount saved was so significant that they could not reveal how much it was!

Wastewater Treatment - Years ago, the factory realized it was having a negative impact on the environment when blue geese were appearing nearby, due to the dyestuff in its effluent. Since then, the factory invested in an on-site wastewater treatment facility that ensures all effluent is free of chemicals and harmful dyes.

Infant Mortality Campaign - Apparently, the region where this factory is located has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the country. Factory management found that some women workers would get pregnant, go on maternity leave and their babies would die. The women would suffer from extreme emotional devastation, return to work once their maternity leave was finished, then immediately try to get pregnant again, resulting in less productive workers and the potential of another few months out of the office. To combat this, the factory has embarked on an extensive infant mortality campaign, that includes not only education, but also training and nominating capable midwives for factory workers. The factory has seen great success in reducing workers' infant mortality rates, and continues to find benefit from this investment.

Community Health Clinic - After the factory realized workers would take time off to care for their sick husbands and family, it invested in a community health clinic that provides healthcare services at a substantially reduced cost. The clinic is used by factory workers, their families and others in the nearby community - a visible symbol of the factory's commitment to the community.

Outreach to NGOs - One of the most surprising initiatives is the factory's proactive outreach to local, national and international non-governmental organizations. It's tough to get large multi-national corporations to understand the potential benefits of partnering with NGOs, but this one factory already has seen the power of learning from civil society organizations.

There were some other initiatives that puts this factory among "best in class" in my mind, but what I was most impressed by was the factory manager's attitude toward these initiatives. She understood both the business and social/environmental benefits of these programs, realized where her team did not have expertise so brought in the right community partners and eagerly searched for additional ways the factory could support its workers and community.

If only more factories took this approach, I might be out of a job! But the world would be a better place.

My Friend, Internal Audit

2011-02-14T06:12:00.000-08:00

I spent most of January working with our Internal Audit team, which was focused on uncovering risks associated with our company's social compliance program. The goal of this exercise was to ensure that the company has adequate controls in place to manage the social and environmental risks of a global supply chain.

I'd never been part of the internal audit process to this extent before, since in previous positions I only was responsible for parts of the company's CSR programs. Usually, I was audited to make sure I had properly documented any contracts and kept records on file for the appropriate number of years.

This time, however, I feel like I was working with the audit team nearly every day for a month! I would spend hours with them explaining our program and why we've set it up the way we have, educating them on potential challenges of labor relations in developing countries and walking them through the mountains of paper that I keep semi-organized in gigantic file cabinets.

Some departments really resist the scrutiny that Internal Audit places on their work, but to me, it was a good validation that we had some strong processes in place and a lesson in uncovering areas where we need to improve. At the end of the day, the team was surprised that we have only one person managing all of this work and obliquely recommended that we add additional resources. So in the end, it was a good exercise that will hopefully get me some help!

The Obligatory Year-End Post

2010-12-20T22:33:00.000-08:00

Apologies to my handful of loyal readers (Hi mom!) for not posting in so long! Being in retail, every part of the business heats up as we enter the Holiday period. Add to that all the typical “year end” business (budgets, next year’s goals, etc.) and the annoying tendency for all CSR events and conferences to be scheduled in Q4, it’s been tough to keep up.

But today I find myself on a plane (yet again, but this time for an extended holiday break) with some time to reflect. It’s been a full year for me – one that marked a significant amount of change, opportunity and accomplishment. I do feel like I’m laying the groundwork for some very exciting and challenging work ahead, but I want to acknowledge some of 2010’s highlights.

Net Impact – The 2010 Annual Conference in Ann Arbor, MI was simply incredible. From inspirational keynote speeches by Gary Hirshberg to Majora Carter, this year’s content was top-notch and continues to move me to continue in CSR. And as a Net Impact board member, I’m privy to some exciting information that I truly believe will help launch this organization to the next level. Liz Maw is an exceptional leader and I am thrilled to be part of the team. Everyone should stay tuned to what Net Impact has in store and make an effort to attend the 2011 conference in Portland, OR – the first to be held in a convention center!

HERproject – Our partnership with HERproject has already proven to be one of the most fulfilling initiatives I’ve had the privilege to work on. Attending the kick-off meeting at a factory in Vietnam this fall was an uplifting experience and I’m so excited to see the positive impact I know this project will have on the lives of the women workers in our supply chain.

Playing Professor – I had the chance to speak to an undergraduate business class on CSR at UC Berkeley and left inspired by our next generation of business leaders. These students certainly didn’t hold back any tough questions and weren’t afraid to dig deeper when I gave unsatisfactory answers! These kinds of events not only keep me on my toes, but also help me understand the shifting expectations on companies’ CSR strategies.

Engaging our Executives – Much has been made of the need to engage a company’s executives to gain “buy in” for CSR strategies, so I was glad to have the opportunity to spend half a day with some key executives and CSR experts. The rich dialogue helped to inform our CSR strategy and helped me understand where this work can connect more significantly to our business objectives.

Engaging our Employees – I was invited to speak at our quarterly all-employee meeting last week, something that’s usually reserved for our senior-most executives. Despite my nerves (A live audience of 800, while being simulcast to offices around the country – with our C-level executives seated in the front row!), I managed to make it through the presentation without fainting or falling. And since the presentation, so many employees have reached out to say how proud they feel, working for a company that invests in our CSR initiatives.

Wool Farming – I never thought my job would take me to visiting wool farms in Australia, but learning about more sustainable wool practices was definitely an eye-opening experience. This education helped to turn our company around on a critical issue and allowed us to take a leadership position on a topic that previously had been a challenge for us to fully understand.

It’s been a busy year and I’ve been a mediocre blogger, but I’m looking for more great things to come in 2011. I’ll probably add being a more prolific blogger to my list of New Year’s resolutions, but until then, I’m going to enjoy the holiday break and I hope you all do, too!

Sustainable Wool Farming

2010-10-26T07:31:00.000-07:00

Or ... who'd have ever thought my career would put me in such close proximity to sheep?

A few weeks ago, I went to Australia and visited several wool farms that practice sustainable land management. I learned all about the dangers of over-grazing, how both summer and winter native grasses help sustain food supply throughout the year, breeding techniques that eliminate the need for certain chemical treatments, the benefits of combining a flock of sheep with a flock of cattle (or a few alpaca!), natural ways to reduce soil erosion and that you don't call paddocks "fields."

In contrast to one of the farms we visited, the neighboring field used conventional techniques, including chemical pesticides and infrequent paddock rotation. The differences in the two fields was staggering. One was lush, with knee-high grasses and the other had only little shrubs and very short grasses.

The visits were very interesting and I learned a lot more than I ever expected to. My visit was initially to explore animal welfare issues in the wool industry, but took a truly educational turn once I had the chance to meet with farmers who are committed to improving the land they inherited from their fathers.

Coming into the trip, I didn't realize that the farms were family-run businesses, often passed down through several generations of farmers. At each farm, we were warmly greeted by the farmer, his wife and their adorable children. Over coffee or tea, we discussed issues like sustainable farming, wool prices, yarn quality and animal welfare. Then, we'd have a chance to actually see the paddocks, the sheep and field conditions.

The people I had the fortune to meet were so welcoming and open and generous that I feel very lucky to have spent time with them. For each of the three farms I've visited, it's clearly a family affair with wives and kids contributing to the overall well-being of the farm. It's actually a very idyllic lifestyle and one that's much simpler than the faster-paced city life I'm used to.

When we discuss wool and garments at work, we really don't discuss the human element of the farmers who toil away day after day and whose entire livelihoods depend on raising high quality sheep. We also don't get the chance to see how sustainable farming techniques can help replenish a countryside that has been exploited for generations before - to see how a new way of thinking is turning the land back to a lush, grassy landscape. And we certainly cannot see how much the farmers truly care for their flock and how animal welfare is an important element of how they run their business.

Health Enables Returns

2010-10-03T01:42:00.000-07:00

Thursday was one of those days that reminds me why I love my job. I spent the day in a factory outside of Ho Chi Minh and we kicked off a new initiative with the factory: HERproject. An initiative of BSR, HERproject uses a factory-based peer-education model to improve women's health outcomes.

Essentially, factories invest in health education so that female factory workers gain a better understanding of reproductive health, nutrition and sexually transmitted diseases, among other health issues. In turn, factories experience lower absenteeism rates, reduced turnover and higher productivity, thanks to healthier workers. And investing in women has impact beyond just those who experience the health training. Women take what they learn, apply it to their families and help to uplift entire communities.

I spent the day with factory management, BSR staff, representatives from our buying agent and the local Vietnamese NGO that will be delivering HERproject training and we discussed the plan for the upcoming year. It was simply one of those meetings where everyone walks away brimming with hope and excited for the possibilities.

After the meeting, we had a chance to tour the factory, meet some of the workers who would be participating and discuss additional outstanding issues. The factory tour also proved illuminating because it is a very well-run and organized facility. It's one of the nicest factories I've ever visited, so I'm glad we've chosen a high-performing partner to launch this initiative with.

My company is proud to invest in this project and I feel lucky that I got to participate in the kick off. In addition to this facility in Vietnam, one factory in Bangladesh is also implementing HERproject with our sponsorship. As we monitor the performance of these projects, I'm hopeful that we will be able to demonstrate both health benefits and business benefits so that we can continue to launch similar initiatives with other high-performing garment factories in our supply chain.

Moving Beyond Social Compliance

2010-09-29T18:15:00.000-07:00

Most companies, even if they do not have a "CSR department" have a program in place to monitor social compliance in their global supply chains. For these companies, it is important to protect their brands' reputations by ensuring that the factories manufacturing their goods, often in developing countries, respect workers' rights, pay legal wages and abide by environmental legislation. It's also often from these departments that companies develop a more holistic CSR strategy.

I've spent the past two days in Ho Chi Minh City at the Better Work Vietnam International Buyers' Forum. The Better Work program is described as:

"... a unique partnership between the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC). It unites the expertise of the ILO in labor standards with that of the IFC in private sector development."

That's not a very telling description, but basically it's an effort to develop a sustainable, industry-wide mechanism to promote stronger industrial relations and good working conditions for garment factories in targeted countries (Vietnam, Cambodia, Jordan, Haiti).

Today, apparel retailers have different codes of conduct that they expect their contract factories to adhere to as a condition for doing business. To ensure that these factories are upholding the expectations expressed in these different codes of conduct, retailers employ auditors (either company employees or third-party audit firms) to visit factories and check conditions against their respective codes. With many retailers sharing the same factories, you can imagine that factories are visited dozens of times each year by auditors and out of each visit comes a list of "corrective action plans" for the factory to implement in order to remain in good compliance with retailers' codes.

This approach creates an environment where factories seek to solve specific problems in preparation for the next audit, but they may not take the time to understand root causes of non-compliance. Instead of understanding why they're unable to control overtime hours, factories may look for short-term solutions in order to "pass" the next audit.

The Better Work program seeks to shift the dialogue away from "auditing" and "monitoring" to truly finding long-term, sustainable solutions to poor factory working conditions. In addition to conducting factory assessments (similar to a typical audit, but much more detailed and thorough), Better Work provides factories with consulting services and training (both for management and workers) in order to build factories' capabilities to manage working conditions and industrial relations.

Furthermore, retailers that subscribe to the Better Work program, agree to stop auditing factories and rely instead upon the Better Work assessments for insight into factory working conditions. This alleviates the factories from repetitive auditing and the International Labor Organization provides a credible approach that provides companies with the confidence that factories are being held to internationally accepted labor standards.

To me, it's a win-win situation, but these past two days have highlighted some challenges to broader adoption of this approach. Companies have had social compliance audit programs in place for decades and some are unwilling to let go of their own programs. People who represent companies and auditors have a vested interest in seeing the current environment prevail (They may fear for their jobs.), so they're not necessarily interested in promoting an industry-wide practice. Companies insist that their standards are stricter than the ILO standards and are unwilling to compromise on some points in order to support the Better Work framework.

The Better Work program has its work cut out for them, but I'm hopeful that retailers will embrace this approach more fully and the industry can move beyond the never-ending cycle of social compliance audits toward an internationally accepted, industry-wide system that focuses on the most important goal: improving the lives of garment workers.

The Independent, Third-party Factory Audit

2010-09-25T19:07:00.000-07:00

We employ a third-party social compliance audit firm to conduct social and environmental audits of our factories. In some cases, the purpose of these audits is to check our primary auditor's performance and in others, we rely entirely on these third-party audits. Through using a third-party audit firm, we aim to introduce a neutral party to avoid conflicts of interest and to ensure that we bring in an impartial perspective that does not have a financial stake in our relationship with the supplier.

On Friday, I accompanied our third-party audit firm for a shadow audit in China. It was the first time I'd visited a factory with a neutral party (instead of a company-appointed representative or a company employee) and it proved to be fairly educational.

From the outset, the tone of the visit was very different. Usually, auditors have a pre-existing relationship with factory management. The auditors have been to the factory before, they've worked together over the years and it's a collegial, if not friendly, relationship. With a third-party audit firm that has no previous relationship, the visit has a much less friendly tone. It's strictly professional and both sides clearly are assessing each other throughout the visit.

The factory staff seemed much more nervous than on other audits I've shadowed. It could have been because this was the first time we had ever asked the factory to be audited, or it could have been my presence, representing a customer. Whatever the case, the entire day took on a much more formal environment than I was used to.

When it came time for lunch, the factory management team offered to take us to lunch, but our audit firm steadfastly refused. Typically, I will break bread with the factory managers to build our relationship and to discuss matters like production levels, hiring challenges, compliance issues, etc. in a more casual setting. Our audit firm has a policy to have lunch on its own, again to avoid any conflicts of interest.

And in the closing meeting, when we typically discuss next steps, corrective action plans and timing for implementation, we ended up pointing out the violations we'd found and leaving it at that. We cannot guarantee that the audit firm will return to ensure that the corrective action plans have been implemented. In some cases, companies will send their own representatives to ensure follow-up. In this case, we could only say what we'd found and the conversation never turned to remediation or true improvement.

Friday's visit really highlighted for me some of the shortcomings of the third-party audit system. I still believe they play an important part of any social compliance program, but to rely completely on them would probably not truly work toward improving factory workplace conditions.

Our CSR Summit

2010-09-11T09:57:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week, we hosted a CSR brainstorming session to help three of our C-level executives understand some possibilities of infusing our brand with a more "socially conscious" angle. We invited in several CSR experts and a few CSR practitioners from other consumer-facing companies.

Prior to the event, I spent several weeks trying to convince people from my network to spend a few hours on the Tuesday morning after Labor Day with us in New York City. Understandably, people didn't commit to flying across the country for our meeting, but we did manage to get some strong representation from the New York area.

I also spent time in healthy debate with a marketing VP, whose role is to ensure that we project the appropriate brand image to external guests, including the type of food we have catered, the vases of white hydrangeas placed throughout the room and the color of the foam core (silver or white) we were allowed to use behind flip charts! She wanted bottled water, I insisted we get pitchers. She wanted to use a beautiful trash receptacle, I suggested recycling bins. In the end, since I'm not based in the New York office, she got her way. Despite saying she'd honor some of my sustainability requests, our meeting had bottled water and no recycling (among other things). As expected, several of our CSR guests commented on the "opportunities" to host a more sustainable meeting.

But the meeting itself went better than expected. We had a very robust dialogue, surfaced some exciting possibilities and I think everyone in attendance felt inspired by our brand and its potential connections to the planet and to communities.

The problem we have now is how do we take these ideas and this momentum and bring it to life? My job is to continue to push this work forward, but we don't have the appropriate resources to accomplish everything we discussed. Our Chief Supply Chain Officer pledged that he would debrief with his executive peers and our CEO to get a better sense of priority and I hope we'll then be able to work on a strategic plan to put some of this work into action!

Instead of Stating the Case Against, How About Re-defining the Case For?

2010-08-24T08:01:00.000-07:00

Warning: I’m on the defensive.

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal ran an article called “The Case Against Corporate Social Responsibility” that purported CSR as dangerous for society because it presumes companies are wrong to take on social welfare issues. These issues, the article argues, belong under the purview of government or civil society.

Since I work in CSR, it should come as no surprise that I find this argument flawed. I agree that social welfare issues fall under the jurisdiction of governments and civil society, but why is self-regulation a bad thing? In some cases, companies that self-regulate can set an example for how governments can introduce effective and practical government regulation. In others, CSR as self-regulation is in direct response to the concerns of civil society – the exact response that this article argues is “irrelevant” for companies to pursue. And yet if companies ignore these concerns, they expose themselves to risk - risk that can have a material impact on company operations and profitability.

I’m also troubled by the presumption that pursuing private profits or public interests has to be mutually exclusive. It’s not a zero-sum game and companies that want to be profitable often have to take into account how public interests impact their operations. At the risk of sounding like a cliché, there really are win-win situations.

But you’ll probably be surprised to hear that I actually agree with a lot that the article posits. The author describes a few examples of cases where company interests are aligned with public interest: fast-food chains expanding into healthier food markets, the development of fuel-efficient automobiles. The article characterizes these examples as cases where positive social impact is a by-product of a company singularly pursuing profit. In my mind, these are great examples of how managing CSR strategically has led to more innovation, market capture for companies and greater shareholder value.

It’s my opinion that companies can manage CSR strategically in order to become better-run enterprises, in order to recognize emerging risks and stimulate innovation in order to stay competitive in a dynamic marketplace. These are not concepts that are at odds. It’s only when companies mis-manage CSR or don’t seek alignment between CSR efforts and overall company strategy that they seem to sacrifice profits for social well-being or vice-versa.

I don’t know many CSR managers who advocate for companies to abandon their profit motives in order to chase the “greater good.” We all know that we’re working for companies with responsibility to shareholders. Our work aims to find the impacts our companies’ core business competencies and operations have on society and the environment and either mitigate these impacts or transform them from potentially destructive to productive. This approach does not require sacrifice – just a slightly more enlightened view of the interplay between business and society.

The Travel Bug

2010-07-14T16:11:00.000-07:00

Friends, I apologize for my lack of posts, but I've been all over the place during the past few weeks. Part of what I enjoy most about my job is the opportunity to visit different parts of the world and learn about communities and cultures to which I've previously had no exposure. But when you have those moments when you wake up and your first thought is, "Wait, what country am I in again?" it may be a bit too much.

So, to make writing this post easier, I'll organize my recent travels by location:

Istanbul, Turkey
After a long night of flying, I arrived in Istanbul with several of my Supply Chain colleagues for a vendor summit. We've been working with more and more vendors in the Middle East and Mediterranean region, so we decided to host a formal day where we could get to know each other better.

Representatives from about 30 vendors, suppliers and partners showed up and we gave them a thorough overview of our business, our brand and our supply chain strategy. I spent some time discussing our factory compliance program and shared with them the CSR vision and strategy I've been working on. It's not quite "approved" yet, but it was great to explain to our partners that CSR will be more than just compliance. Our company will be looking for ways to create value from CSR and it's essential our partners understand where we're going.

Casablanca, Morocco
After the vendor summit, four of us traveled to Casablanca and visited a number of factories around Casablanca. We've already been working with one of the factories, but this was an opportunity to tour new factories to see whether or not they have the capability to work on our product. From my perspective, I had the chance to see factory working conditions firsthand and provide my input into potential suppliers.

Furthermore, meeting with Moroccan factory owners gave me the chance to dive into a strange Moroccan labor law with which I was pretty unfamiliar. The law has the potential to negatively impact overtime payments, and in extreme cases could be perceived as a form of forced labor. But because it's the law, we have to work with our suppliers to understand ways to make sure workers fully understand their rights.

Amman, Jordan
Continuing on our tour of potential factories to work with, we headed to Jordan to tour several factories. From a social responsibility perspective, I concentrated mostly on the topic of foreign workers - people who have come from other countries like Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka to work in Jordan for several years. These foreign workers are especially vulnerable to discrimination, abuse and potential cases of forced labor, so it is important for us to learn more about how we can protect their rights.

Biella, Italy
After visiting factories, we headed further upstream and met with textile and yarn suppliers in Italy. For me, it was an education in seeing how yarn is spun from wool and how fabric is woven from threads. It was pretty fascinating and I learned a lot about the impacts that our upstream suppliers have.

One of the most interesting things I got to see was a fully automated dye house. Dyeing yarn can be one of the most toxic and environmentally unfriendly processes, but this particular facility had a state-of-the-art, computerized contraption that required only one person to operate the entire process. And thanks to technological advances, it not only limited human exposure to toxic dyestuffs, it also used less water to dye yarns and highly curbed the amount of effluent released by the process.

New York, NY
After a few days at home and back in the office, I headed down to New York to visit employees in our New York office. My main purpose was to meet with members of our Marketing team and to meet with a consultant, but I easily filled my time there with additional meetings on a variety of topics.

It's always good to meet with my colleagues face-to-face and a quick trip to New York is always worthwhile to build relationships.

My friends and family get excited when I talk about upcoming trips, but to tell the truth, I didn't have any time to do any sightseeing in all the countries I visited. Over the course of two weeks, there were only three days where I wasn't on a plane, and when I wasn't sleeping or visiting our partners, I was usually in a car or a van, traveling from one point to another.

I guess this means I'll have to go back to visit these countries and save some time to actually see some of the sights!

We Are the World

2010-05-22T04:53:00.000-07:00

Everyone talks about the "global economy" and how business is linked with the various countries around the world - either as commercial markets or as sourcing markets. In all my CSR positions, I've had the opportunity to consider the world beyond my own country borders, but never have I had to dig as deeply into country information before my current position.

I sit squarely in our supply chain organization and am focused on helping the company consider entry into and exit out of different countries from a sourcing perspective. And I'm now in the middle of a "country risk assessment" project where I've been tasked with assessing the risks of doing business in those countries where we're currently sourcing and those under consideration.

It's an interesting project and I get to learn about countries like Mauritius and Jordan, but it's been a laborious piece of work as well. Each country requires several hours of research and of course there are many other pressing demands on my time. I've started to engage external purveyors of country risk analysis to see if I can streamline the research process and am now in the position of receiving approximately 20 e-mail newsletters a week that alert me to macroeconomic shifts in different countries around the world.

The problem with these research and information sources is that I simply don't have time to filter through the wealth of information out there. And most of these sources don't do a good job of narrowing down available information to make it easily digestible or relevant to my industry. My full-time job could be to sift through information about China, but unfortunately, I have other things to do.

As I pull these country profiles together for an upcoming meeting (one that's far too close on the horizon), a growing concern is how I'm ever going to keep these profiles current and how I will be able to manage ongoing communication of their contents to my colleagues. It's a weird responsibility, being the keeper of country risk information - and one that I'm not totally convinced plays to my strengths.

After all, how does one person stay abreast of all the economic and political developments in several dozen countries, while considering all the potential implications on our supply chain and business? There has to be an easier way!

The Holy Grail?

2010-05-21T05:24:00.000-07:00

I've spent the past few weeks tweaking a new tool to rate our suppliers on social performance. It's never going to be "perfect," but it's at a point where I think it's workable.

Ever since before I started working in CSR, I'd heard social performance metrics described as "the holy grail." Professors grandly alluded to the possibilities of tying "hard social metrics" to financial performance and building a stronger business case for CSR. Of course, no one suggested that social metrics would demonstrate that CSR does not have business value. That outcome would simply mean the metrics were "wrong."

In any case, I don't know whether or not we'll ever get to the social metrics that hard-core CSR professionals and academics seek. What I do know, however, is that people in other parts of my company need an easy way to understand CSR performance and I need to develop something that gives us directional insight into social performance. As it stands, my metrics system doesn't provide an absolute grade. The important part is that it serves as a springboard for discussion.

And my point in introducing these metrics into our company vocabulary isn't to help our contract factories strive for perfection. When it comes to social performance, it's about continuous improvement and metrics can help describe relative performance between entities or over time. I just hope my business partners understand that I want to provide these metrics in a certain spirit - to cultivate ongoing feedback, dialogue and improvement.

Writer's Block

2010-05-05T06:36:00.000-07:00

It's my own fault, really. In my previous companies, we've had robust Corporate Communications teams who managed the corporate website. In order to make any changes (large or small), requests had to funnel through this department and much strategic thinking went into whether or not the change(s) could be made and how it would impact the company's overall messaging and positioning.

In my current company, we simply don't have the same resources and making changes to our corporate website happens much more quickly and without the same level of thought or bureaucracy.

In the two years I spent in my last position, I joined a battle to elevate the "Corporate Citizenship" section of the website to the main navigation, arguing that today's customers and potential employees expect to see this information front-and-center. It's a debate that predated me joining the company and, to my knowledge, it continues after my departure.

So, I started campaigning early. I'm almost three months into my job and there's now a "Corporate Responsibility" tab in the main navigation of our company's website. It was a much easier and quicker response than I could have ever imagined. Now I have a bigger problem: there's no content!

Without resources to hire a writer, I've been trying to draft content for our website - something that authentically, yet succinctly describes our approach to CSR. I'm stretching to find verbiage that illustrates our genuine commitment without overstating our progress to date. I'm quickly reaching out to other parts of the business to get a fuller picture of initiatives that have been underway for years, before I joined the company. I'm trying to emulate our corporate voice and bring in elements that make this story unique to my company. And most of all, I'm trying to avoid writing the same thing I've written for my past two companies' websites and CSR reports!

So, naturally, I've taken a break from the drafting and turned to blogging for a bit. Hopefully, this little exercise will clear the cobwebs from my brain and allow me to tell our story (quickly!), so that visitors to our corporate website won't see the "under construction" message for much longer.

Who Are Your Champions?

2010-04-30T18:08:00.000-07:00

When I was in business school, I read The Soul in the Computer for one of my CSR classes. What I got out of the book was that individual employees could bring their values to work and make change from within a company - and that it was important to identify and empower these employees in order to create change. The message seemed pretty elementary to me at the time, but after working in CSR for the past several years, the importance of this concept has only increased in my estimation.

If you ask most CSR practitioners, they'll tell you that one of their priorities is to "integrate" CSR into all parts of the business. Some will go so far as to say that they're trying to work the CSR practitioner out of a job. At one company where I worked, a Legal VP described CSR as "an insidious virus" that could spread through the company and take hold of all employees (This was meant to be a good thing!).

But it takes time to identify these change-makers and champions: people in traditional business functions who want to help with the CSR agenda and can help make decisions that are relevant to their particular functions. It's great when these like-minded employees approach you as the CSR practitioner, but I find that I need to plan time to proactively reach out to people who I sense are "of the faith."

The other day, I set up a meeting with someone who manages a very resource-intensive product. Without having ever met her, I simply sent her a meeting over Outlook, showed up to her office and explained that I was curious about her work. As we chatted, I asked about some of the potential environmental impacts and attributes of the raw materials that go into her product category and she lit up!

It turns out, she's passionate about environmental sustainability and had been thinking about these very issues, but never had anyone to discuss the topic with. We talked about some no-cost and low-cost ways to increase the environmental attributes of this product and scheduled some follow-up meetings with vendors to learn more. If our little covert operation is successful, we may be able to reduce one of the company's pretty big impacts, imbue the product with environmental attributes and enhance our brand from a CSR perspective.

Every company has people like my colleague and I see it as my job to start asking questions in order to find them. In many cases, people are simply looking for the opportunity to think these ideas through and will welcome the chance to test CSR-related projects. If you can find them, these champions can act like a special ops team - and lord knows every CSR practitioner could use more help and resources!

Kids, Pay Attention in Class!

2010-04-05T18:27:00.000-07:00

No one in my b-school class would have confused me with a "quant jock." From the moment I stepped foot on campus, it was clear that I was a "poet" through and through. My liberal arts undergrad and my consulting-lite experience cemented my fate as the guy who would write the memo or design the PowerPoint slides in each group project. Leave the hard-core financial models to someone else.

My classroom experiences offered additional data points to show that I wouldn't ever be a corporate numbers guy. I sort of understood the concepts in my stats class and managed somehow to pass, but I knew in the back of my mind that I would never have to rely on unlocking an r-value to earn my paycheck. Queuing theory was an interesting exercise, but Gantt charts made me cross-eyed. I did, however, enjoy my corporate finance classes. Strange, but every data chart has outliers, right?

Fast-forward several years and I find myself in a position where I'm digging deep to remember details from classes I never thought I'd revisit again. Like the teacher trying to dissuade a 12-year old of the notion that he will never need to use algebra in "real life," I'm encouraging all you aspiring CSR practitioners in MBA programs to pay attention to these lessons!

In the past weeks, I've been pulled into conversations about AQLs and NPVs. I've had to seek correlation and statistical significance. My research has delved into countries' GDPs and labor optimization.

As a CSR practitioner, I'm effective at my job only as long as I understand the business I'm in. I find that I'm constantly trying to understand my business better, to figure out my colleagues' pain points and to find interesting social and environmental opportunities.

It's too easy to dismiss CSR as a fringe exercise that has no real relevance to the business, and in some companies, that may be okay. But if you really want to make a strategic difference - both to society and to your company - you'll go out of your way to learn the business, be conversant in important issues and create connections that others may have missed.

The Ethical Supply Chain

2010-03-24T18:27:00.000-07:00

I recently returned from a trip to Hong Kong and China, where I had the opportunity to visit some of the factories that produce our goods. In today's economy, supply chains are global behemoths, with companies balancing, among other things, cost, quality, speed, trade preferences, technical capability, product assortment and "social and environmental compliance."

Obviously, it's impossible to maximize all the different variables, which is why companies also seek to diversify their sourcing base. You don't want to be beholden to one country and/or factory for all your goods. If anything happens to that country/factory, your company would find itself up the proverbial creek without a paddle.

My job is to help maximize the last dimension I mentioned in the opening paragraph: "social and environmental compliance." In my and other industries, "social compliance" is a common term. Many people are surprised to hear that most any western company with a global supply chain has a "compliance" organization. The tricky part for stakeholders is to understand what authority that "compliance" team has and how they approach this work.

Some companies take a "checklist" approach to compliance where they have a list of important attributes for their contract factories to follow. Typically, this includes a no child labor provision, no corporal punishment and paying workers. These companies are minimizing the risk that's inherent in sourcing from developing countries.

Other companies encourage their contract factories to "own" social responsibility and work with them to provide management and worker training. They focus on building socially responsible practices into factories' management systems and seek collaborative partnerships with local civil society organizations to keep all parties honest.

Not surprisingly, more companies follow the former model than the latter.

I had the chance to only visit three factories during my trip to Asia and I was pleased to see that they were all pretty good from a social and environmental perspective. Two factories had pretty robust programs where they self-monitor for social and environmental issues. They had stated philosophical approaches to social responsibility and one had even developed a set of standards that it hoped would be stricter than local law or any of its customers.

In thinking through my own company's approach, we definitely fall between the two extremes I describe above. By no means are we doing the bare minimum, hoping that social and environmental risks will never rear their ugly heads. But we haven't evolved to the point where we are actively building management systems in place for factories to embrace and own social responsibility. It's a journey that takes time and an evolution that requires resources.

I'm lucky that the executives I work with "get it" and support me in my efforts to elevate the company's ethical sourcing efforts. Would I consider my company a leader in the ethical supply chain? Not yet, but if I have anything to do with it, we'll get there.

The Ratings Game

2010-03-08T23:22:00.000-08:00

Last week I had the chance to meet with several corporate CSR leaders and in many conversations, the CRO's annual list of "100 Best Corporate Citizens" came up. Like every other list that purports to rank companies based on CSR, differing viewpoints and minor controversy always arise.

When I mentioned the list last week (usually to congratulate a colleague whose company earned recognition on it), I heard several comments, including:

"You know how it is. It's a game you've got to play and hope to influence."

"When [company name] is in the top 25, you have to wonder how credible the list is."

"Well, it means something only if you agree with the methodology, which I really don't."

Usually, these comments were accompanied by a roll of the eyes, a shrug or a dismissive noise.

In my last two CSR positions, I worked at companies that appeared on the list and part of my job was to furnish SRI investment firms with information that would help them provide accurate and timely information about our company's CSR practices to their clients. Since the CRO list gathers its research from such an SRI firm, I served as the point of contact to provide them with information about our company's efforts.

And while I agree with my fellow CSR practitioners who feel that these rankings create unnatural competition and cannot possibly provide an apples-to-apples comparison of companies' CSR programs, I do believe they can have value.

As one of my colleagues said last week, "At least it gets our CEO talking. He's mentioned it to investors and other business partners." It's a clear and easy proof point for executives to drop in a conversation. It can serve as a "measurable" way to validate the hard work of a CSR team. It can also serve as a framework for a company to organize, build and communicate a CSR program. (Although I wouldn't recommend using the last bit as a driving force for a CSR strategy.)

In the end, I truly do congratulate CSR leaders whose companies appear on this and other CSR rankings list, but I always remain skeptical of where companies are placed in relation to each other, especially when a company can jump 20 spots in either direction in the course of a year. But as long as they encourage companies to continuously improve upon their stated missions to help people, communities and the planet, I'm all for it. Even if it may be an artificial motivator.

Partnership Groundrules

2010-03-07T15:10:00.000-08:00

I've spent the past several weeks trying to figure out how exactly we should be working with our third-party supply chain audit partners. Part of my responsibilities will be to make sure all the factories around the world that manufacture our products respect human rights, labor rights, communities and the planet's natural resources.

I used to work at a company where we had a very big, effective team that would visit factories on a daily basis. Not only did they conduct factory audits to ensure that they were upholding the company's standards, but they also ensured that factories followed up on corrective action plans and worked toward continuous improvement. At my current company, we've decided to contract with two providers of "social compliance."

The benefits of using third-party auditors is that it can be less expensive and time-consuming than building up an internal team, third-party auditors can leverage expertise and relationships from working with other customers and many of these auditors are certified by internationally respected NGOs.

The biggest challenge I've discovered with working with third-party auditors is that they don't have skin in the game. They're required to deliver audit reports, but they're don't necessarily have the incentives to follow up with factories or to do extra work to improve factory working conditions.

With that said, I don't think it's a lost cause. I'm realizing that we have to be crystal clear with what we expect as follow-up to a factory visit and we have to create mechanisms that make our auditors accountable for remediation. We need to figure out ways for our auditors to share our goals and to "own" the responsibility of factory improvement.

So, I've taken a stab at some standard operating procedures, which I hope will get us closer to this goal, but I'm not sure how well-received they will be. Hopefully they'll be strong enough to create a new dynamic of ownership and responsibility while giving us the assurance that these factories are indeed "good" factories when we don't have the manpower or the time to visit them firsthand.

Building the Fundamentals

2010-02-17T15:59:00.000-08:00

When I was interviewing for my new position, I was informed that my role would be to build a program from scratch. So, I expected to think through some of the company's risks, review processes and work toward making recommendations.

Little did I realize that I'd have to take a few steps back!

In my first week-and-a-half of work, I've been working with our Sourcing and Supply Chain teams to build very basic processes such as onboarding a new supplier and determining a scorecard of metrics to rate supplier performance. It's been a very steep learning curve and I've had to not only learn the company, but I've had to familiarize myself with the industry and the intricacies of a global supply chain.

Even though I'm completely out of my element and trying desperately to understand our quality standards, purchase order processes, product capabilities testing, costing and production processes, I've realized this gives me a very unique opportunity. It's been frustrating at times, but I actually have a seat at the table during these discussions and I'm responsible for ensuring that social and environmental factors are included in processes and measurements.

From my past experience and from speaking with other CSR practitioners, I think it's typical for CSR to be "layered" onto existing processes and systems. We focus on finding ways to integrate CSR into business processes and finding opportunities to influence process change. Here, we're building processes and systems together, incorporating CSR considerations from the outset!

While it's forcing me way out of my comfort zone and while we're moving at lightning speed (much faster than I've had to work in a long time), I'm very excited at the possible outcomes and having a voice at the very beginning.

Industry Boomerang and Career Paths: An Open Letter of Apology

2010-02-07T17:34:00.001-08:00

Dear internet friends,

I realize it's been a long time since I last posted, and for this I apologize. You see, since I last posted, I became pretty busy, wrapping up my job, coordinating a cross-country move (which is still in slow, slow progress) and preparing to begin a new job tomorrow.

After only 19 months in the healthcare industry, I decided to return to my roots, accepting a position to begin a vendor compliance and CSR program at a specialty apparel retailer. People have asked me if my time in healthcare was so bad that I lasted such a short period of time, and I insist that isn't the case. Instead, I was lucky enough to be offered an opportunity that will allow me to build a program from the ground-up.

As nearly everyone knows, the CSR "profession" is still a relatively new one. Unlike Corporate Finance, where a career path is relatively straightforward, positions in CSR differ widely from one industry to another - and even from one company to another within an industry. And thus, there is no one "career path" if you want to ultimately lead CSR at a company.

It was early on in my most recent job that my supervisor told me that it would be unlikely for me to find myself in a VP position in CSR at that company. Since she loved her job and continued to be challenged by her own VP position, she had no plans to vacate it. (And why would she?) So, she offered kindly, she would help me find a leadership position with another company, once I was ready for that next step.

Well, I think that next position is now in front of me, even if it arrived more quickly than either my former boss or I expected. The job I begin tomorrow puts me in charge of developing supply chain social and environmental standards and stakeholder engagement, with the hopes of building out a fuller CSR capability. It's in the industry where I got my first taste of a CSR role in a corporation and it's with a brand whose heritage I'm excited to become a part of.

My focus will be shifting considerably: from environmental sustainability to human rights in multinational supply chains. It's a shift I'm excited for, but I do hope to retain the environmental responsibility as well.

As I think about my career, it's important for me to "round out" my CSR portfolio, gaining experience in different focus areas so I may become a more effective CSR leader in the future. It's also important for me to find increasing levels of responsibility and challenge, to grow my skills and stretch myself. So, while I'm sad to leave my last company and the wonderful people I've had the chance to work alongside, I am very excited for this next chapter in my CSR career, where I will hopefully continue to learn and truly make a difference.

So, I apologize for the radio-silence, but I got very busy and I hope to post more frequently moving forward!

Sincerely,
Marcus

Communicating Corporate Disaster Response

2010-01-20T19:47:00.000-08:00

After last week's tragic earthquake in Haiti, many companies, including my own, have been busy determining how best to respond. I'm not directly responsible for organizing our response, but it was sort of an "all hands on deck" attitude for the days immediately following the disaster.

Even though horrible natural disasters happen more frequently than anyone would like, few companies seem to have clear procedures in place for how to respond. I've spoken with colleagues from other companies to benchmark their levels of response and I continue to hear stories of uncertain commitments and tentative communications.

But it does seem like companies take into account a few basic facts before mobilizing resources. At my current and former companies, we would consider a few questions after any major natural disaster:

Do we have major operations in the affected region?
Were any of our employees impacted directly?
Were any of our key customers and/or suppliers impacted directly?
What was the scale of the devastation?
Do our employees seem eager to help?
Which agencies seem best positioned to help quickly and effectively?
Can we offer any unique aid that no other company can?
What are other companies doing?

I don't mean to suggest that companies shouldn't ask these questions or that they're inadequate since every situation clearly is unique. What's interesting to me is the last question in the above list.

Over the days following the initial earthquake, we continued to commit more money, more resources, more products to relief. Our employees donated their own money, time and resources, and our Foundation sought to match employee donations.

Interestingly, media reports began discussing how much money American corporations were committing to disaster relief. Companies started issuing press releases and tweeting. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Business Civic Leadership Center started to compile a list of companies and the value of their reported donations.

For the latter part of last week, I was involved in a very heated e-mail exchange regarding whether or not we should communicate our commitment and which methods might be the most appropriate. Several people felt very strongly that our commitment, while generous, paled in comparison to some companies of our size. Others felt that we should communicate our commitment so that our employees wouldn't miss seeing our company's name alongside other major corporations on lists. Some felt that we should communicate through very select channels so as to avoid appearing "boastful."

During this lengthy exchange, I wondered whether we were missing the point. After all, wasn't it most important that we were doing something, no matter how big or how small? Do people really sit around and compare the monetary value of companies' donations? Am I just being naive?

CSR Reporting: Who's Reading Them and Is That the Point?

2010-01-13T16:24:00.001-08:00

Recently, I flew on United Airlines and noticed that, along with Hemispheres magazine, a SkyMall catalog and the airplane safety card, each seat-back pocket contained a copy of the company’s 2008-2009 Corporate Responsibility Report.

Since I’ve been writing these types of reports for the past several years, I thumbed through it, looking for anything interesting or innovative. Is the data presented in a compelling fashion? Do any headlines stick out as particularly remarkable? Are there any topics that I didn’t expect to see covered?

Even though I’ve been in the reporting business for a while, I’ll admit that I haven’t read that many CSR reports cover-to-cover. But I did read more of United’s report than many others that cross my desk. Why? Because I was trapped on a plane!

To me, this seemed like a pretty ingenious plan on United’s part. When you have hundreds of customers, confined to a space, why not give them the chance to learn about your CSR efforts. Even if they don’t actually read the document, they’ll surely be struck by the fact that there’s a CSR report at their fingertips. And they may even learn something new about the company!

The success of this plan was reinforced a few weeks later when a friend of mine visited from LA and let me know that he’d seen the CSR Report on his flight. He’s not at all interested in CSR, but he knows that I am, and he asked my opinion on some of United’s practices. Here is a customer who wasn’t necessarily searching for this type of information who suddenly knew a lot more about United’s CSR initiatives than he did about other companies' efforts. What a great way to engage your customers.

Apple’s objection to issuing a CSR report because few people read them strikes me as hollow. First, come up with a new way of reaching your intended audience. Second, and more importantly, reporting isn’t simply about one-way communication. The most notable outcome of public reporting, in my opinion, is that companies start to put a stake in the ground and spark internal conversations (and initiatives) around CSR issues. As a CSR practitioner, I’m constantly trying to find ways to engage internal business partners on CSR issues. Publishing a CSR report is one of the most effective ways to do this and to start to shepherd change in a company.

But I think there needs to be more thought around CSR communications, in general. Are CSR reports the best way to communicate? Should you try to engage customers on these issues through a CSR report or are there more appropriate vehicles?

Sometimes, I think companies get so caught up in the idea of creating a GRI-based report, that they miss the bigger picture. After all, isn’t the goal to engage our stakeholders so that we can take a thoughtful approach to our CSR journeys toward meaningful outcomes?

Some Advice for Vendors

2010-01-08T15:00:00.000-08:00

As with any new field, CSR is a growing area in need of support. To fulfill that need, hundreds and hundreds of vendors pop up every day, trying to create solutions that will make CSR practitioners' lives easier and help companies realize their CSR objectives.

Hardly a day goes by when I'm not contacted by someone offering consulting services, software, research or something else. The service providers range from established to start-up and it becomes difficult staying on top of all the different vendors and products out there.

I've had my fair share of interactions with different vendors and it shocks me that some act so unprofessionally. After all, representatives are ambassadors of their company's brands and they should realize that their actions reflect on the product or service they're trying to sell. Below are a few experiences I've had that clearly fall into the "don't" category.

Don't come on too strong. One vendor approached my company with a new service that purported to catapult our CSR communications into the stratosphere. An account manager contacted me, my boss and three people in our Corporate Communications team. Once we realized he'd contacted all of us, I scheduled a meeting between him and some other relevant employees. On the call, he was aggressive and pushy, completely turning us off. We told him that we were not interested in his services and he continued to call anyone he could find at the company, aggressively marketing his product even if they were not connected to CSR. All calls and messages came back to me and I stopped responding.

Don't stand me up. I recently scheduled a conversation with a vendor simply because my boss asked me to. I had no idea what the product was or how it related to CSR and neither did my boss, but she asked me to find out what they had to offer. So, I scheduled a conversation and web demo with a representative and waited at the appointed time, but no one called me. Four hours later, I received a rambling voice message informing me that his calendar notified him of a meeting but that he had no idea why he was scheduled to talk to me.

Don't insult a potential customer. A colleague and I were on a conference call/web demo of a software solution that we were really interested in learning about. Toward the end of the call, when we started to discuss cost and budget, I mentioned a figure that seemed reasonable to me, but was negotiable. One of the executives said that we shouldn't even bother continuing the conversation because they wouldn't do business with us at such a low price. A few months later, when a sales representative called to pitch me a new product, I didn't return his call.

Don't assume I have a ton of money. Right or wrong, CSR is often viewed as a cost center and we don't have huge budgets to work with. The money we do have is often tightly controlled and every penny counts. Just because our marketing department may spend millions of dollars, don't think our department has millions of dollars to spend. On anything.

Don't bash your competitors. I once was on the phone, learning about a service and I asked the sales representative to compare his service to a competitor's that seemed similar in my mind. He then flat-out insulted the competitor's product but offered no points of distinction. It seemed like a defensive, illogical and ungraceful response - not exactly the type of people I like to do business with.

Don't create an unnecessarily awkward situation. This one's debatable, but once a vendor invited me and a few of my co-workers to their company holiday party. The next morning, when I chatted with our account representative, I learned that the party featured a table where a naked couple slowly ate a meal. This, apparently, was performance art. I also started to hear stories about how employees were getting plastered, behaving out of hand and hooking up with each other. I was sort of sad to miss the show, but overall I was grateful I didn't see any of the people I worked with in embarrassing situations.

Data Dependency

2010-01-06T10:07:00.000-08:00

Most CSR practitioners, I believe, continue on a quest for data. We all want data to support our theses that good corporate citizenship adds value to the company. Value can come in the form of cost savings, enhanced reputation, employee engagement or any number of other shapes and sizes.

The tricky part about gathering data to support CSR is that there are very few defined ways to measure impact and value. And as such, there are very few methods or systems to gather meaningful CSR data within companies. Much of my job is spent trying to take the company's existing data and either performing some calculations to arrive at CSR impact metrics or finding proxies for the value I'm trying to describe.

Since returning to work from the holiday break, I've been working a lot with data for two separate projects. One has to do with calculating environmental impacts of a particular process and the other relates to measuring consumption of a particular resource across the enterprise.

For the first project, I've been trying to get at some raw data from other Business Units. In theory, this should be rather simple. I pick up the phone, call someone in another department, explain the project and describe my need. They, in turn, either take some time to "run some numbers" and send me back the relevant information or they refer me to someone else. Usually, it's the latter, so it typically takes a few days (yes, days!) to track down the right person. More often than not, the data that returns isn't quite what I'm looking for, so we work together until we arrive at something meaningful.

Well, this process has been playing out for nearly two months with a particular business partner and his unresponsiveness has resulted in me not being able to deliver on some promised metrics. I hated to throw him under the bus, but I had to bring in a VP to finally get him to send me the data he'd promised back in November. Approximately an hour later, I delivered the metrics that were expected of me.

In the second case, I recently received a spreadsheet with spend data from every cost center in the company (thousands) and I've been diligently pouring through it, figuring out which line item is relevant and which is outside the scope of this project. Essentially, I'm taking the spend data, translating it into units purchased and figuring out the resources necessary to create those units, resulting in the environmental impact of our consumption. The problem here is that I have to make sense of a spreadsheet that isn't necessarily meant for this purpose and is riddled with codes, acronyms and sequences of numbers I don't understand. It's time-consuming work and rather tedious, but hopefully will tell a good CSR story in due time.

With both examples, you see how CSR practitioners must rely on others to supply information before we can produce results. For my business partners, they can simply run a report through an existing information management system, but I have to spend time doing manual calculations because no system exists (or we can't afford such a system) to extract data in the format we need.

Some Tips for Informational Interviewing

2009-12-11T14:09:00.001-08:00

Most CSR practitioners I know usually get many, many requests to conduct informational interviews. I probably average about an interview every week, and I rarely decline. After all, I too was once a job-seeker who begged CSR practitioners to do informational interviews and I consider this payback for all those who were kind enough to meet with me back in the day.

While an informational interview isn't as formal as a real interview, there still are some do's and don'ts that the interview-seeker should consider. Below are some tips for the interview-seeker, given from the perspective of the interview-granter.

1. Research the Company A huge pet peeve of mine is when I meet with someone and they ask me what my company does. No one expects you to be an expert on every company, but it takes a minimum amount of time to visit a company website and understand its basic business. Furthermore, know a little about the company's CSR efforts. It helps guide the conversation and won't make me feel like I would rather be getting work done.

2. Be Clear About Your Purpose Obviously, at the heart of any informational interview is the hope that there's a job opportunity that will be a good fit. But if you're about to ask for an informational interview, it typically means there isn't a job open. So, why do you want to chat? Are you interested in learning about a particular CSR program? Are you trying to get an understanding of how CSR jobs differ from company to company? Are you just learning about what CSR is?

3. Tell Your Story Every company approaches CSR differently. Consequently, jobs look very different from company to company. As someone who's granting an informational interview, I'm happy to help guide you to resources and companies I may know about, but I can't help you unless I have a sense of your interests, experience and goals. You'll get a lot more from the conversation if I know you're interested in sustainable design than if I only know you're currently an MBA student.

4. Ask About Job Experiences You've asked for an informational interview, so you should lead the conversation and ask questions about what I do. If I spend 30 minutes with you and you don't ask about what I do in my role, I'll feel like you're trying to give me a sales pitch. And since we've already established that there's no open job, I have no context in which to absorb your undoubtedly terrific skills and experiences.

5. Be Prepared to Take Notes It's hard to believe, but during our conversation, I may point you to a resource or company you've never heard of. Nothing interrupts the flow of a conversation more than having to pause while you dig around your bag, looking for a pad of paper and asking someone at the cafe table next to us to borrow a pen.

6. Thank the Interviewer I don't mean to sound arrogant, but I appreciate a quick email thanking me for my time. There are many other things I could be doing other than meeting you to chat.

7. Follow Up Let me know what you end up doing! If I've taken a moment to get to know you, I'm interested in learning more about where you ultimately end up. Chances are, if you're in CSR, we'll bump into each other again. Or I may want to call you one day to ask about your job!

These may seem like elementary tips, but you'll be surprised by how often they're broken. At the heart of any informational interview (any meeting, really) is building a relationship. Not only do you want to get immediate information from this conversation, but you ideally will also establish a relationship to which you can turn during the duration of your career.

Sustainable Facilities: Taking a Deeper Dive

2009-12-09T10:15:00.000-08:00

It's said that buildings (the construction and maintenance of) account for nearly half of the United States' greenhouse gas emissions, so companies that commit to environmental sustainability should look to their real estate portfolio for opportunities to reduce their environmental impact. Since we don't manufacture and since we're not in the extractives industry, the majority of my company's environmental footprint comes from the operation of our real estate portfolio.

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not an expert in buildings and facilities management. Our Real Estate team has been exploring energy management technologies, alternative energy generation, water conservation tools and lower-impact construction techniques for years. Stepping into my job as the company's sustainability strategist, I've been playing catch-up and learning about the impact that "greening" our facilities can have.

Last week, I accompanied our head of facilities and a facilities manager at one of our locations to a day-long seminar on sustainable corporate real estate in Washington, DC. I was a bit apprehensive at first, since I don't have expertise in facilities management and I wasn't sure that the level of detail being discussed would hold my interest.

However, I was pleased at the seminar's balance of inspirational thought leadership and practical implementation tips. It's not often that I attend a conference or event where I walk away with some new ideas and ways to bring them to life.

And while we've done a fair amount to make our facilities more sustainable (including Energy Star and LEED certification), I know there's a lot more that we can do. Our primary challenge, like many other companies, lies in the fact that we don't own all the buildings we occupy, so we have to work with landlords who may not be open to our sustainability suggestions. Furthermore, we're rarely the sole tenant in a building and sub-metering isn't available in most commercial buildings yet. It's therefore impossible for us to understand the impacts (from an environmental and cost perspective) that sustainability initiatives potentially can have.

Nonetheless, it seems like there are some interesting tools out there to help practitioners with "greening" their real estate portfolio. A few that I'm planning to review in the near future are Energy Star's Portfolio Manager, Tririga's TREES software (despite a horrible, horrible experience with Tririga at my last company) and another proprietary system used by one of the presenting companies.

In addition, I learned a lot about green cleaning, alternative workplace strategies and some pretty cool new technologies. All topics that, a few years ago, I would never have guessed could contribute to my success as a CSR practitioner.

Looking for No-Brainers

2009-12-02T17:24:00.000-08:00

Thanks to an email I received from an employee at one of our distribution centers, we've identified an unnecessary process that, when discontinued, has the potential to save the company thousands of dollars in paper and postage costs.

Since I sit at the corporate level, I don't have insight into the day-to-day operations of our business units, and this is one of my biggest challenges as a CSR practitioner. How, then, do we uncover all these inefficiencies that can help reduce the company's environmental impact and save money? I've been in my role for approximately a year and a half and in that time, I've received close to 200 unsolicited calls or e-mails from employees around the world with ideas (and complaints!) and it's all thanks to shameless self-promotion.

I'm lucky to have an internal communications team that sees value in CSR and they've been very generous with real estate in company newsletters, our intranet and internal articles. When I first arrived in my role, my position was featured in an intranet article that announced a point person for CSR and sustainability. In our employees' minds, there was now a concrete person to direct inquires. This, however, is a blessing and a curse. While some ideas have the potential to have a significant impact, I find myself responding to and researching many other employee concerns about temperature control and recycling, often in locations across the country.

Beyond that first introductory article, our weekly company news round-up has featured more than a dozen articles on CSR in the past year. We've highlighted volunteer activities, employees who've brought to light a significant environmental opportunity and other accomplishments. This steady stream of internal communication has helped to reinforce the idea that we're working together to get things done. Ideas will be granted an appropriate audience and we will move toward resolution.

At the same time, you have to maintain an "every little bit helps" mentality or you'll go crazy. I recently spent several hours working with employees in Florida, North Carolina and Texas, trying to figure out how to digitize a process and reduce paper usage. I thought this might be a breakthrough that would result in saving tons of paper and a whole lot of money. The result? Approximately $50 in savings per year. But, the employee who brought this idea to my attention was so grateful for the help in getting rid of some unnecessary paperwork.

What Does Executive Buy-in Really Mean?

2009-12-01T08:49:00.000-08:00

The only reason I'm in my job is because someone at our company had the foresight to declare that a commitment to good corporate citizenship and environmental sustainability is important to the company. Fortunately for me, that "someone" was our CEO. Less than a year after his formal declaration to our company's leaders, I was hired to lead our environmental sustainability strategy.

Every academic, pundit and CSR practitioner insists that executive buy-in or commitment is an imperative for CSR to be "strategic" at a company. I don't argue with this notion, but I've come to realize that executive support can take on different forms and degrees of strength, each leading to different approaches when it comes to a CSR practitioner's duties.

I've been thinking about this lately because I'm trying to engage some senior-level executives in our CSR work. While our CEO has declared a formal commitment, I don't think it's crystal clear to those who report to him (and the layer immediately below that) what that commitment means for them. It's my job to help make this commitment relevant to their day-to-day jobs and to give them the insight and tools to bring this commitment to life.

In thinking of the best way to engage these executives, I've been talking to some consultants and to peers at other companies to understand how they've helped their executives "get it." Through these discussions, I've seen a range of executive commitment and the ways that they influence a CSR practitioner's work:

Executive Champion - When your CEO truly believes that CSR will help drive innovation, differentiate the brand and contribute to a company's overall success, the CSR team is in a great position. Within that team, however, are varying roles and each practitioner is likely highly specialized. Some will be setting strategies while others will be managing programs. There are many opportunities for CSR practitioners here, but each person is valued for a highly specific set of skills and experiences.

Engaged Leadership - Company leaders may understand the importance and value of CSR, but they may not see it as a common thread throughout the entire business. This situation can cause some tension between the CSR practitioner and other business units or departments, but from this healthy tension arises potentially innovative solutions. It also demands that the CSR practitioner remain vigilant in expressing the business value of his/her work and brings some rigor to analyzing the benefits of CSR projects.

Limited Scope - Many companies seem to be in this category, where an executive (or a few executives) understand that CSR is valuable to their companies, but they don't see the whole picture. For example, an executive may appreciate the enhancement that philanthropy has on the company's reputation in a community, but may not connect this opportunity to creating a license to operate in new markets. In this case, the CSR practitioner is typically trying to expand the scope of his/her work in order to make these connections clear and seamless.

Executive Curiosity - In this case, an executive wants to understand what CSR is and how it can bring value to the company. They've heard about it from the press or their peers and they're curious to know what shape it might take within their organizations. This can be a golden opportunity for a CSR practitioner (or more likely, a manager in a traditional function who takes the initiative to build the business case for CSR at his/her company). If taken cultivated properly, an executive's curiosity about CSR can mature into a full-fledged strategy that's aligned with the business.

Nominal Commitment - Some executives discuss a company's commitment to CSR, but don't truly believe that it's of any importance. If any resources are devoted to CSR, it's typically in the communications or marketing space. While it sounds bleak, this is also a great opportunity for the initiative-taking manager who can clearly define CSR in new terms. Instead of "CSR," the conversation must shift to other drivers of value. Whether it's cost-savings from environmental sustainability, brand enhancement through ethical business practices or community goodwill from public-private partnerships, every company with a sophisticated CSR strategy started somewhere.

Cold Shoulder - There will always be executives who refuse to engage in CSR and where it may be a losing battle for any employee who's interested in taking responsibility for CSR. This probably isn't the right environment for someone who is interested in CSR as a career. Maybe wait for a change of leadership!

Obviously, these are simplified scenarios, but my point is that many people in this space discuss executive buy-in without really thinking through what that means. Sometimes, the opportunity can be greater at companies where there is no executive buy-in (yet) and some CSR practitioners may be frustrated at other companies where there is an authentic commitment to CSR but not a lot of opportunity to be entrepreneurial.

Greenbranding?

2009-11-25T09:57:00.001-08:00

There's no question that McDonald's golden arches represent an iconic brand. The bold arches on a red backdrop are ubiquitous around the world and signify a variety of things (positive and negative) to consumers everywhere.

Some might associate the logo with happy childhood memories and cheerful television commercials (Who doesn't love Ronald McDonald? Or, at least, the Hamburgler? Robble Robble!). Others may view the logo as a corporate behemoth that has industrialized food and agriculture, dive-bombing a nation's nutrition. A few may also view McDonald's as a pioneer in partnering with environmental nonprofits such as Conservation International, the Environmental Defense Fund or the Natural Resources Defense Council.

It seems this last opinion is one that McDonald's hopes to strengthen in its customers' minds, at least in Germany. By changing the red background to green, McDonald's wants to signify a more environmentally friendly brand, one that innovates in the corporate sustainability space and seeks credit for its progress.

The McDonald's CSR journey is well-documented in business school cases, articles and its own publications. I've had the opportunity to meet many members of the company's CSR team and I can tell you that they take their responsibility seriously and are among the most well-intentioned practitioners I know. Even though I knew of much of the company's work, its Global Best of Green 2009 publication was an eye-opener for me and I was impressed by (and jealous of!) the wealth of ideas that have bubbled up from its employees around the globe.

But I still have to question the company messing with its branding. Does the average consumer truly believe that McDonald's is making honest strides at environmental sustainability? Did the company consider the economic value of its brand equity in making this change? Is it wise to drastically alter the brand promise in one region of the world, but not in others? Will consumers still care about sustainability in a few years?

I don't claim to be a marketer or an expert when it comes to branding, but I'm skeptical of this move. As a CSR practitioner, I'm excited to see a company take on this type of change in such a big way, so I hope my initial misgivings are proven wrong!

Remembering Neal Kearney

2009-11-23T14:43:00.001-08:00

In the world of CSR, there’s much discussion of “stakeholders” and whether or not a company is appropriately engaging them. My last company, an apparel retailer, had an especially sophisticated approach to stakeholder engagement. It’s a years-long evolution that has resulted in very strong relationships.

One of the company’s most important stakeholders is the International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers Federation (ITGLWF), a global union federation that advocates for workers’ rights in apparel supply chains. Neal Kearney, who sadly passed away unexpectedly last week, was the general secretary of ITGLWF and a very passionate, committed defender of human rights.

I had the pleasure of meeting with Neal several times during my tenure at my former company. He was fiercely intelligent and did not compromise when he thought the well-being of workers was at stake. His tireless efforts took him around the world, and his perspective was respected and sought by many multi-national apparel companies.

But beyond the great work he did on behalf of under- (or un-) represented garment workers everywhere, he was a very charming and kind man. As a representative of a major apparel retailer, I often found myself at the receiving end of his criticisms, but once the “work” part of our meetings ended, he’d be the first to suggest grabbing a drink. In these social situations, I found Neal to be funny, engaging and a pleasure to be around. He stood firm on what he believed, but he also knew how to enjoy life.

In Neal’s passing, the world has lost a true champion of the underprivileged. He will be missed.

I Have an Idea!

2009-11-20T11:32:00.000-08:00

Companies are networks of individual people. So, to be successful, you need to build relationships with your colleagues in order to get many things done. This especially holds true in CSR where you’re often part of a very small team with limited resources and you depend on others to help bring your work to life.

One of my biggest challenges in working for a large company is identifying the right person or people to help take a project from idea to execution. I’ve only been with my company for a year and a half, so I feel like I’m still learning the ropes and trying to figure out who’s in charge of what.

As a result, I often spend time following up on e-mails and voice messages that seem to have fallen on deaf ears. For example, I just spent about 45 minutes going through sent messages and either re-sending them to the original recipient or forwarding them to other people, in the hopes that someone will bite.

In my (very humble) opinion, I have some interesting ideas! The problem is, when you’re approaching a busy colleague who has no idea who you are (or what your job is), it’s tough to get them to understand how you can help. In CSR, you’re constantly engaging internally and building not only the value of your work, but also the value of your self.

So, especially during the early days of working for a company, you spend a lot of time re-sending, re-explaining and hoping that someone “gets” what you mean and agrees that you have an idea worth chatting about.

Downstream Pressure and Collaboration

2009-11-19T09:34:00.000-08:00

For those of you who think working in CSR is all about aligning initiatives with a company's strategy, rest assured that there are much more tactical projects that cross my desk. It's no secret that everyone in this field is thinking about supply chain impacts. With Walmart pushing for asustainability index and requiring that its suppliers answer 15 questions regarding their sustainability practices, every company is thinking about how to go about this in practice.

My company is a Walmart supplier. And Walmart's focus on sustainability is great for someone in my position. Here's an important customer that cares about my work and here's a fantastic opportunity to show how what I do adds real, tangible value for our company.

Recently, this "customer pressure" has translated into a new project for me. I've been working with one of our sales executives and several Walmart executives on demonstrating the financial and environmental value of one of our service offerings.

I just got off the phone with members of the Walmart team and I think we have our project mapped out. Now, it's a matter of finding the right people in my organization who have the information and data I need to perform my analysis ... all before our next call in two weeks.

It's an interesting project, but it's one that's very tactical. I'm looking forward to working on something a bit more tangible and data-driven, but it requires me to dig deep and remember some lessons from modeling (financial and otherwise) classes. What's tricky (and exciting) here, is that there's no clear and easy way to approach this. It's a new project and it requires the company to think in a different way. I cannot lean on the past work of other colleagues, but I have to chart a new course.

Having worked on similar projects in the past, I know that the math may be fuzzy and no one will confirm that I'm approaching this in the right way. Instead, I'll get a lot of questions and people will (rightfully) wonder if my approach is the most logical one. There are no clear answers to these questions, but we can arrive at a good approximation of our environmental impacts.

In the end, it's a great chance for me to work with people from other companies and to see firsthand how they approach sustainability. It will give some visibility to my work and hopefully demonstrate that I can be of service to other parts of the business as well!

CSR and Social ME-dia

2009-11-18T09:38:00.001-08:00

As I mentioned, I attended the Net Impact annual conference recently and I noticed that there were many sessions on social media. When I attended my first conference nearly a decade ago, there obviously were no panels on the topic, so it's interesting to see the momentum behind this.

Social media seems to vex many big, established companies. Not only from the perspective of how it should be used with regards to CSR, but also from the perspective that companies want to "control" what is said about the enterprise as much as possible.

Clearly, since I started this little blog, I'm dipping my toe into the social media world. I think I've also figured out how twitter is useful, after playing around with it for the past few months.

But are companies really using social media for CSR? We recently released our biennial Corporate Citizenship Report and were approached by a number of companies that wanted us to tell this story through social media. We decided to use one of these services to communicate the report's launch and to tell some of the stories within it, but I'm not sure I've seen any value from it. As a result of this month-long contract, I find that many of my days are spent preparing content to be distributed through these channels. I re-package information from the report, think through new storylines and I struggle with uploading videos through a cumbersome online portal. It's taking up a lot of my time, but where are the results?

We've scheduled a conversation about measuring the impact of these services, so it will be interesting to see what the company claims as value derived from the partnership.

As part of this social media "campaign," I had to sit for an on-camera interview in preparation for the report's launch a few weeks ago. Even though I've gone through media training a few times, it was still a very anxiety-inducing experience.

Disclaimer

2009-11-18T09:09:00.000-08:00

Having spent my entire professional career in the private sector, I think I need to make it absolutely clear that everything I post on this blog is my own opinion and doesn't represent the position of my employer (present or past), any organizations of which I'm a member, nonprofits on whose board I serve or any community of which I claim membership.

Basically, you can hold me accountable for anything I post here, but don't think that everyone I associate with agrees with me!

Purpose

2009-11-18T08:23:00.000-08:00

With so many corporate social responsibility (CSR) blogs and resources out there, what could I possibly add to the dialogue/noise? And in such a new "industry," certainly no one can profess to have all the answers or claim true mastery.

I can, however, share my experiences and opinions from spending several years as a CSR practitioner in the hopes that this blog helps to illuminate the truth (the good, the bad and the ugly) about my job and others like it.

Recently, I returned from Ithaca, NY where I attended the Net Impact annual conference. It was my eighth conference and continues to be one of the highlights of my year. What I cannot even begin to communicate is the energy and optimism that results from thousands of MBAs and professionals who come together with a more noble vision for the purpose of business and its role in society. At 2,400 participants, it was Net Impact's largest conference to date and it's clear that interest in CSR continues to gain momentum.

What's frustrating, however (and I've certainly experienced this firsthand), is that the idealism expressed by students and professionals who aren't CSR practitioners doesn't always match up with reality. Even at the most "progressive" companies, CSR isn't readily embraced and there are many, many uphill battles and difficult conversations to be had.

So I hope this blog can serve as a resource to those who are interested in learning more about CSR and how companies can play an active role in improving society and the environment. To the fullest extent possible, I'll offer my honest opinion and unguarded insight into my day-to-day world.