What does your organisation do about corporate social responsibility?

[Sarah Campbell]

My company is about to kick off a carbon footprint programme with real targets, which I think is absolutely fantastic. The trouble is, with a large organisation, some of whom could possibly be disinterested, how do you get people on-board? Why would they get into it if they do not realise that small steps really make a big difference - you know, the whole think global act local thing!

Do you try and make it 'cool'? Attitude and behavioural change has to be right at the core - and starting with the simple things, particularly for all the blissfully ignorant amongst us.

So how does your company go about its sustainability policies / reporting? or does it at all! More importantly, how is the culture around that? Does everyone get into it? Is there a trend between gender or age as to those who 'take action' and 'walk the talk'?

I'm just a little curious. You?

[Nick Lewis]

Hi Sarah - There is considerable research that shows that the most successful CSR programs are 'bottoms-up' rather than top down, meaning the staff embrace, emotionally own and even run the CSR programs, rather than CSR being a corporate initiative run out of the marketing or public affairs office only. For a good primer, have a look at The Economists magazine's Special Report on CSR in their 17 January 2008 issue (http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=1...). McKinsey has also published some compelling articles. So you could start by finding the natural "evangelists" among your staff who can become project leaders, then let them define how each project should work, and help recruit volunteers to help them. For example, we profile CSR projects on Celsias (http://www.celsias.com/projects). In particular, have a look Ricoh's beach clean-up project. Hope that helps! - Nick

[Sarah Campbell]

Great response Nick - thanks very much. I agree that a bottom-up approach is a successful one utilising people with ability to lead and influence amongst circles, sometimes the unsuspecting champions. That article looks to be an excellent read and I have emailed it to my colleagues already!

[Marino]

Hey. I work in a small organisation and I have JUST managed to get people here recycling plastic bottles and paper. The problem here is a lot of people have the "what's in it for me" attitude in that they want some kind of personal benefit from living sustainably. Telling them that it's about making sure there children and grandchildren can have the same quality of life in the future that they enjoyed growing up doesn't seem to cut it as people want to see benefits now. Usually monetary benefits.

If people could see that they could make money from being sustainable, and some organisations have done that, then I think it will be a lot less challenging to sell the idea to them.

[Julie Robson]

Hi Sarah

I work for a conservation organisation in the UK and was part of the 'green team' set up to quantify and address our own environmental impact. By the nature of the organisation people were very keen to contribute. But with high workloads it was still difficult to get some to participate. My experience suggests that buy in from staff is key.

We tried to take a non judgemental approach and had a two pronged approach. Firstly we set up systems for recycling etc and tried to make the changes as easy as possible. Secondly we tried to give people the information they needed to make decisions about their own behaviour. I produced a green guide to the office and we launched this and our environmental policy with a short lunchtime presentation. We followed this up with an evening ‘pub quiz’ event with green prizes and which was well received. I left the country shortly after this but I’m told things are still progressing well.

Our organisation is fairly well briefed on the impacts of climate change but it might be worth incorporating some of these into any activities.

b.w

Julie

[Gareth]

Hard to measure success with issues like this, especially in bigger companies where there will always be a wide range of views and responses. I've been working on improving recycling (25% in 07, 75% now) internally, got a ISO 14001 certification earlier this year and we're in the middle of a carbon footprint project now. Sounds like I have buy-in but there is still plenty of passive aggressive resistance going on throughout the company. Being stubborn helps.

I've decided not to spend too much energy on convincing anyone or trying to make it cool. It is a subject that is fairly polarising so those that care already know what to do, those that don't, wont want you chewing their ear off anyway. My time, energy and passion are precious to me so I will only work with people who understand and want to change but I communicate to everyone, often. I've found that a fairly blunt conversation with the person who has hired you to do this work helps. Along the lines of "you hired me to do a job, if this company isn't ready for this, there's plenty out there who are. I'll tell you the ingredients for change and you tell me if this is possible."

[Aaron Packard]

Hey this is an awesome discussion.
I'm helping to organise the 350 Climate Action Festival at Frank Kitts Park on Dec 6th. See below for details. We want to make sure that we showcase what businesses are doing about climate change. It would be awesome if there is some way that we could involve some of your businesses.
Give me an email if you're interested: [e-mail]
Check out our website: www.350.org.nz
cheers
Aaron

It's time to redesign the Climate Conversation. This December, the 350 Climate Action Festival is leading the way, by launching The 350 Challenge. 350 is an important number: a concentration of 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is recognised by leading scientists as a safe concentration for the planet. We're at 387 and heading upwards by 2ppm every year.

The 350 Challenge is not the typical campaign; it is an invitation and challenge to join the nationwide conversation about how NZ can reach the 350ppm target. How can we act at the individual level, at the community level and at the systemic level? Lets start designing buildings that produce more energy than they use, factories that emit cleaner water than they receive and products that are infinitely recyclable. So come along to our picnic-style event at Frank Kitts Park, between 11am and 4pm on Saturday 6th of December – the International Day of Action. Not only will we be showcasing local bands, food and the multitude of community groups and businesses offering climate friendly options; but we will also be officially launching the New Zealand answer to The 350 Challenge. Its time to get serious and hilarious about climate change!

[Christine Todd]

I'm interested in how business supports social wellbeing. Are employers thinking about their colleagues or employees as people? Do they care? How do they interpret work/ life balance and what kinds of policies are implememted? Does business attempt to address bigger social issues like inequality (gender or other) in their employment practices?

[Lee Stewart]

Sarah,

One thing that we are working with some large companies here in Australia is implementing an ongoing program. We are strong believers that in order to bring about about cultural and behavioural change you need an ongoing program that hopefully goes on for at least 12 months. It's a large commitment but in order to be effective we are doing something every month, mostly online, but also helping build a champions network similar to what Julie mentions in her post earlier.

The content needs to be engaging, interactive and have a purpose. Most people will get on board if they really understand why they are doing it. On the other hand if it's not explained, more like just told to the employee they are most likely to switch off and think that it's just a cost saving exercise for the business.

Good luck with it all, it's a great start and would be very interested in how it goes.

Cheers
Lee

[Nick Potter]

This Net Impact resource may be useful for people looking to make more of a positive contribution in their organisation.

From the website:
Making Your Impact at Work: A Practical Guide to Changing the World From Inside Any Company, is designed to empower current and aspiring social intrapreneurs to find ways to integrate sustainability into their day jobs. Making Your Impact at Work summarizes key themes identified in the experiences of social intrapreneurs and provides a model for future changemakers to follow as they create a positive impact in their own corporate positions.

I haven't actually read this myself yet, but if you find it useful you can let others know here!

[Ainsley]

Hi Sarah, I thought you might be interested in a good news story on this - could be inspiring - when I was working for WPP (v. large media/advertising group) in London the company got involved in CSR because basically it was a selling point when pitching to win a big advertising contract. Yes, so there was an economic reason to do it, but hey it ended up that WPP were investing literally millions and millions per year into pro bono work, charities and donations. I see the discussion has gone into top-down vs bottom-up... I guess in this case it was based on industry demands, so if we all continue our movement to change our level of expectations then I guess we are pushing toward the same thing right?

Here is what WPP are currently doing from a CSR perspective: http://www.wpp.com/corporateresponsibilityreports/2008/

Another good example right now is BNZ's 'closed for good' incentive: http://www.closedforgood.org/home.html

Ainsley