By Susan Thomas, Assistant Director, Electronic Communications, Boston College Center

Dow has prioritized “Contributing to Community Success” as one of its 2015 Sustainability Goals, a set of seven ambitious goals established to address and solve some of the world’s most pressing problems.

Community relations has been an essential part of Dow’s corporate practices since the founding of the company in 1897. As a global corporate citizen, Dow believes it has a daily responsibility to operate its facilities safely, treat all people fairly and support the well-being of the communities in which it operates.

Community Success ensures that its resources (people, partnerships and funding) are applied to specific objectives that yield the greatest breakthrough improvement in quality of life as defined by the community itself.

Understanding the needs of the communities in which Dow has a strategic presence and responding in a constructive and appropriate way is part of Dow’s role as a member of the community and one to which the company is deeply committed.

“Community is something we all know about. It’s where we live, it’s the people we know and it’s the businesses, schools and institutions closest to our daily lives,” said Cindy Newman, global Community Success director leading the Contributing to Community Success 2015 Sustainability Goal.

She added, “The Contributing to Community Success goal reflects Dow’s values and long-term commitment to the principles of Responsible Care®. We want all people in the communities where we hold a strategic presence to not just recognize that Dow is a part of their town, but to agree that Dow plays a positive role in making their community a better place to live.”

The Process

Community Success drives community relations beyond relationships to goal-oriented actions aimed to raise the quality of life for each site community.

Dow has created a Community Success process which allows strategic Dow communities to provide qualitative and quantitative feedback on their quality of life issues and what Dow’s rightful role is – whether directly addressing community needs or using Dow’s leadership position to influence other organizations.

Determining Dow’s rightful role is a key component of the Community Success process, since Dow cannot and should not solve all of a community’s problems. The way Dow sees it, whether Dow is the one to “do it” is less important than ensuring that it “gets done.” And the results to date are showing that Dow has earned the credibility with community stakeholders to speak up and influence action in situations best addressed by others.

Anonymous community assessments are administered throughout local communities to identify quality of life issues where Dow is a strategic presence. Based on these results, a Community Success Plan is developed through collaboration with site leadership, Community Advisory Panels (CAPs) and other community stakeholders. Along the way, best practices are captured for leveraging to all Dow communities, and consistent implementation of Community Success strategies is emphasized to further advance Dow’s goal progress. Metrics are rerun at appropriate times, and the Community Success Plan is adjusted as needed.

“By first listening closely to our stakeholders instead of presuming we know their issues, we are respectfully prioritizing their needs. This allows us to deliver a more strategic alignment to partnerships, outreach, volunteerism, issues resolution, and charitable contributions from The Dow Chemical Company Foundation,” said Rosemarie Rung, 2015 Community Success project leader.

The process incorporates a “Plan, Do, Act, Check” approach, so there is continuous evaluation based on what the community tells the company through follow-up community surveys, CAP feedback, and local reports and studies.

Success at a Glance

Three of Dow’s sites around the world that served as pilots for Community Success are in the implementation phase with their Community Success Plans:

Terneuzen, the Netherlands

• Quality of life issues – The community’s youth were not confident in their ability to pursue challenging and rewarding job opportunities. They also wanted assurance that their community was environmentally sound.
• Dow’s plan - The site will be a leader in environmental stewardship and a center of innovation for the 21^st century. Dow also recently implemented a program that involved municipal wastewater being purified and used not once but twice at the site’s Benelux production plant. This is the first time that municipal wastewater is being reused on such a large scale in the industry and was the result of innovative collaboration between private industry and local government. View a video about this project.

Bahia Blanca, Argentina

• Quality of life issues – Concern for the environment, followed closely by the economy and education.
• Dow’s plan – Increase communication with the community about environmental, health and safety commitments and performance. Dow has also developed initiatives to improve educational programming so students can be hired directly into industrial jobs after graduation.

Pittsburg, California

• Quality of life issues – Education and the environment.
• Dow’s plan – Redirect charitable giving and employee/retiree volunteer activities to align with education priorities. Signature partnerships and sponsorships will be identified in science and education and the CAP-administered community grants program will be further focused on these issues. The Dow Wetlands site will be more fully utilized for environmental education outreach with community schools.

The Bottom Line

If communities are successful, the schools are better, crime is lower, the roads are better maintained, people are healthier, and the levels of hope, engagement and opportunity are higher. Local governments are more willing to collaborate to find answers and other businesses in town make better partners.

All of these factors also have a direct impact on Dow’s performance as a business. When Dow operate in communities that are better, the company is better. It is smarter. It is more profitable. It creates more jobs and opportunity.

Dow’s Community Success program paints a complex picture of its communities, their concerns and what they think of Dow based on such factors as age, gender and proximity to our site. This data shapes and personalizes its interactions with its community stakeholders – ensuring success in its communities.

Dow believes that is has the ability – and therefore the responsibility – to make a difference in its communities, to identify their needs and opportunities – socially, economically and environmentally – and to work with them to develop effective and sustainable solutions.

For more information on The Dow Chemical Company, please visit www.dow.com.

Responsible Care® is a registered service mark of the American Chemistry Council.

Tags: Community Success, Company Example/Case Study, Dow, Dow Sustainability Goals, In Good Company
This entry was posted by Susan Thomas, Assistant Director, Electronic Communications, Boston College Center on Tuesday, October 28th, 2008 at 12:26 PM, and is filed under In Good Company. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.