Sex Education

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.

The Obligatory Year-End Post

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!

Moving Beyond Social Compliance

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.