A Model Factory

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

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!

Who Are Your Champions?

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!

I Have an Idea!

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.