In Good Company: Booz Allen uses its natural resources to aid nonprofits
In 2007 Booz Allen Hamilton set out to help small nonprofits in the Washington, D.C. area gain access to expert advice and guidance on management and fundraising that was otherwise unattainable for them due to cost. In the four years since, the Booz Allen Hamilton Nonprofit Development Conference Series has grown exponentially and now successfully serves more than 400 unique nonprofit organizations with top tier guest speakers from around the metropolitan area who provide the sorely needed advice and guidance.
The key to this successful innovation, according to Joseph Suarez, Executive Advisor, Community Partnerships & Philanthropy, is to trade on Booz Allen’s intellectual capital and to do what they do naturally as consultants – identify problem areas and then leverage intellectual capacity to address those challenges. Suarez calls intellectual capital the “sweet spot of Booz Allen.” (more…)
Aman Singh, corporate responsibility editor at Vault.com, just posted this blog. She had some interesting insights and observations…
Two interesting—and conflicting—pieces of news hit my inbox this week.
40% of Job Seekers Look at Sustainability Record
The first one is a new “readers and reporters 2010″ survey commissioned by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) that claims that prospective employees are actively seeking information on companies by looking at its sustainability report.
In fact, according to Online Recruitment, “Almost 40 percent of surveyed readers said they use sustainability reports in decisions about seeking employment with an organization.” The survey, which polled 5,000 readers and writers of sustainability reports, and conducted by Futerra—a sustainability communications firm—SustainAbility and KPMG, was designed to find out why people value the reporting process.
The report goes on to quote Wim Bartels, the global head of sustainability assurance for KPMG:
“These findings place sustainability reporting right at the heart of business and reinforce its relevance and pivotal role. Reporting impacts whether business can attract the best talent, which without any doubt is a critical success factor for future success in the market.”
MBAs Don’t Care For Social Responsibility
The second piece of news comes via BNet, which reports a new study that says, despite the financial crisis, when students evaluate a job offer, reputation has only marginal value. This piece of research conducted by Melbourne Business School’s Pat Auger and four other academicians from the University of Technology, Sydney, asked 303 MBA students to rank “28 attributes of a hypothetical job offer, including salary, bonus structure, potential for overseas postings, travel requirements, and the company’s corporate reputation.”
According to BNet, “They were then asked to list the top five companies they’d like to work for after graduation, and to list the five factors that made those companies appealing.”
In the answers, “high ethical standards,” received less than 10 percent of the votes. Next, when the students were asked to compare hypothetical job offers. Top choices were concerns about salary, advancement, and time and travel demands.
Sustainability vs. Corporate Social Responsibility?
So, what are we really saying? Jobseekers care for a company’s efforts to make their operations green and more sustainable but not overall social responsibility?
Another statement from the second study that gives might offer clarity: Responses from students differed according to the field they wanted to pursue. Specifically, those anticipating careers in marketing, general management, and (wait for it) information technology cared most for corporate reputation.
Does this distinction make understanding these reports easier or more convoluted?
I’d like to throw this open to readers. How do you perceive these studies that, at least in my mind, are contradictory? For me, sustainability is a vital tenet of corporate social responsibility. But am I wrong?
Our surveys have shown there is a significant gap in corporate citizenship knowledge in companies. According to the 2010 Profile of the Practice, only 27 percent of respondents indicated that their middle management is “very informed” about corporate citizenship issues. Why is this so commonly the case?
CSR scholar Sharon Jackson at Cranfield University’s Doughty Centre for Corporate Citizenship suggests that the problem lies with “sensemaking.” In her article titled, “Mind the Gap: Making Sense of Sustainability from a Business Manager’s Perspective,” Jackson describes why managers in companies that publicly espouse corporate citizenship often take no action on their own part to further the company’s corporate citizenship goals and values.
Jackson uses the theory of sensemaking, a process by which people subconsciously notice information (scanning – through words and cues) which they then make meaning of (interpretation – in their own world reality), which subsequently influences their actions. There are several places that corporate citizenship messages are getting lost during the sensemaking process. First, Jackson finds, operational managers are not reading internal corporate citizenship material. Instead, they get their cues from other sources such as external consumer‐focused marketing materials, CEO communications, and from their own day‐to‐day role, where their function is explicitly involved with corporate citizenship‐related activities. Even when managers are getting the cues, they often do not act on their own part to further the company’s corporate citizenship goals. Jackson believes that in many cases managers do not associate corporate citizenship activities with their own roles – everyone thinks it is someone else’s job.
So what can you do to help your managers make sense of corporate citizenship and act on your strategy? You likely need a new approach to internal communication. Jackson suggests trying different engagement methods, such as discussion forums and communities of learning that involve managers early on in the process. Several of our members are trying out “lunch and learn” discussions, where employees gather to learn about and discuss important issues. Or you might try meeting one on one with department heads, or joining in their team meetings to brainstorm how everyone can incorporate corporate citizenship into their daily jobs.
How are you creating ownership and engagement of corporate citizenship in your company? Is it working?
It’s time to enter your corporate citizenship video in the 2011 Film Festival sponsored by the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship. Winners will be announced during the annual International Corporate Citizenship Conference, April 10-12, 2011, in Minneapolis.
Submit your video by February 16. The public will be asked to vote for their favorites from February 23 to March 10.
Videos entered in past competitions clearly demonstrated the power of video to communicate the positive impact of each company’s work in its community and around the globe. The tens of thousands who viewed the videos and voted for their favorite sent a resounding message: There is an audience interested in seeing the corporate citizenship story on video and companies welcome new opportunities to engage employees and partners.
PriceWaterhouseCoopers took first place in the 2010 competition with a powerful and inspiring presentation of its program that sponsored 100 college students who took on several service projects to help rebuild communities devastated by Hurricane Katrina:
Best Buy has launched a new program that makes it easier and less expensive to keep pace with the latest technological innovations and keeps more electronics out of landfills. The new Buy Back Program gives consumers an opportunity to purchase a protection plan as a hedge against obsolescence.
Somewhat similar to a warranty plan, the Buy Back Program lets consumers pay an upfront fee when they buy laptops, netbooks, tablets, post-paid mobile phones or televisions. The program price ranges from $40 for some smart phones to $350 for a high-end television.
Customers enrolled in the program get up to 50 percent of the product’s original purchase price back, paid in the form of a Best Buy gift card, if they trade up to a new device as soon as six months after their initial purchase. If they choose to wait two years for the latest and greatest device, they can get a gift card worth 20 percent of the original product’s purchase price. And on TVs, even if the consumer waits four years to enhance the family room viewing experience with a new cutting edge television, the Buy Back window is still open for a 10 percent gift card.
Unlike typical retail trade-in programs, customers don’t have to wait for repayment, and can immediately apply money from their Buy Back product redemption to the purchase of new products at any Best Buy or Best Buy Mobile store.
“We recognize that technology is changing faster than ever, and our customers tell us they want to enjoy these devices without worrying about when the next or newest version will launch,” said Brian Dunn, chief executive officer of Best Buy. “We call this ‘future-proofing’ because our customers can now have more confidence that they’re protecting the value of the products they’re purchasing today. With the Buy Back Program, consumers benefit from assurance, convenience and transparency so they can stay current and stay connected.”
Beyond the opportunity for gizmo aficionados to stay at the forefront of electronics evolutions, the Buy Back program will help Best Buy reach its goal of collecting one billion pounds of e-waste over the next five years. It’s just a matter of transforming one consumer’s electronic trash instantly into that same consumer’s techno-treasure.
This past semester marked the second year of collaboration between Verizon and Boston College to instill the importance of corporate responsibility among the MBA students of Boston College’s Carroll School of Management. Once again, Verizon partnered with the university to sponsor a corporate responsibility case competition to tap into the innovative ideas presented by the business leaders of tomorrow.
More than 100 students were formed into 20 teams and each was asked to address the challenge of taking a corporate responsibility perspective to create a win-win idea for Verizon that aligns business value with social benefits through the use of its broadband technology. The students were required to analyze the corporate responsibility opportunities and challenges facing the company and develop a business plan for consideration by Verizon. Two members of the winning team will receive paid internships in the summer of 2011.
Three of the 20 teams were invited to the final round of the competition where they presented their ideas to a judging panel of Verizon executives and Boston College faculty members. In late November, the judges selected the FiOSenior Spotlight Program team as the winner of this year’s case competition. The team’s proposal recommends packaging content relevant to the senior community through Verizon’s FiOS video network.
The FiOSenior Spotlight Program strategy creates business value for Verizon in the form of increased FiOS subscription revenues among the senior community and provides social value in the form of unique programming focused on the diverse needs of the senior population. As the baby boomer population starts retiring, the FiOS Spotlight Program offers great potential for Verizon to position itself to meet their needs.
The case competition was part of Management Practice 1, a foundation course that all first-year MBA students are required to take. It allows students to explore the concept of corporate responsibility and its role in the business sector.
The other teams that made it to the final round of the case competition presented concepts titled Kid$ense and Connected Care. Kid$ense would educate children about financial matters using applications and games on smart phones. Connected Care proposes a Verizon partnership with a health care company to provide improved health care management solutions in assisted living environments.
Today’s media often characterize our networked information age as the age of transparency. Transparency can be a euphemism for lack of control over information and the public narrative about our business or ourselves. More ideally, it can be a mindful business strategy for approaching decisions and actions with the intention of communicating proactively and honestly about what is being done and why.
This requires us to address directly issues that may present conflicting interests and values. That’s not easy, especially in an environment made ever more complex by increased scrutiny of ever greater numbers of people – people who may either stay at the surface of an issue or suddenly and in vast numbers dive deep into one of its dimensions. Read the rest of this entry »
Turn a few pages on that new 2011 calendar and you’ll see the next International Corporate Citizenship Conference is three short months away. But the opportunity to attend at considerable savings will be gone in just two weeks.
Register by Friday Jan. 15 and save $200 to attend the 2011 conference in Minneapolis, April 10-12, with hundreds of professionals from around the world. Our annual conference draws top executives from the largest domestic and international corporations, including managers of corporate citizenship and community involvement, public relations, public affairs, foundations, communications, sustainability, work/life issues, and other professionals responsible for community and business strategies.
This year Minnesota-based Best Buy is convening sponsor for the conference and CEO Brian J. Dunn is urging corporate citizenship professionals not to miss this opportunity to connect and collaborate. “The International Corporate Citizenship Conference is a key forum that connects each of us, convenes leadership in sustainability, showcases best practices, and helps us discover the unique ways our own corporations and organizations can make a difference in this world,” he said.
Dunn remarked that people’s desire to be connected through many of the products sold by Best Buy is driven by basic human needs for comfort, connection, variety and individuality. “So for Best Buy, we put our own sustainability priorities on the people, technology and power required to help this world continue to connect and grow. And the connections we’ve made over the years through the Center for Corporate Citizenship have been influential in helping us sharpen our focus.”
Best Buy is among the many Minneapolis area businesses with a long-standing tradition of corporate citizenship. Attendees at this year’s conference will learn how the Twin Cities business tradition has prevailed against the test of time – including economic ups and downs, mergers and acquisitions, and the competitive nature of business. Dunn and other corporate leaders are eager to share their stories of collaboration.
“On behalf of the 180,000 employees worldwide of Best Buy, we invite you to join us in the Twin Cities for the 2011 International Corporate Citizenship Conference, and make connections of your own,” Dunn said.
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In 2007 Booz Allen Hamilton set out to help small nonprofits in the Washington, D.C. area gain access to expert advice and guidance on management and fundraising that was otherwise unattainable for them due to cost. In the four years since, the Booz Allen Hamilton Nonprofit Development Conference Series has grown exponentially and now successfully serves more than 400 unique nonprofit organizations with top tier guest speakers from around the metropolitan area who provide the sorely needed advice and guidance.
