Engouraging HR to wake up to CSR

Today I had a wonderful opportunity to talk to a group of global and regional Chief Sustainability Officers representing nine globally-active companies, all are names that you would all recognize, most of them report on sustainability and have well-developed sustainability programs and a string of achievements to date.

I presented on one of my favorite subjects - CSR for HR - but with a specific slant towards CSR and Employee Engagement and how Human Resources Management can contribute to a culture of sustainability, how CSR can drive employee engagement and how CSR can be leveraged for competency and leadership development. Interesting questions which are crucial for companies interested in making CSR and Sustainability a true part of the business rather than just a set of afterthought projects. I will elaborate on the perspectives and solutions I presented in a future post.

After my presentation, we had some discussion which centered around, primarily, how to get HR people engaged in the objective of creating a sustainable organizational culture. Before the discussion drew to a close, the group host invited me to ask them some questions.

I responded something like this: You are all leading, highly-reputable companies in your respective fields, you all have sustainability programs and achievements, you all communicate on sustainability in some way and many of you have sustainability targets which are quite ambitious. It would seem that employee engagement in sustainability should already be on your radar. Therefore, I was wondering what prompted the discussion about employee engagement and why this is an important area for discussion at this time.

The collective reply went something like this: We are all frustrated with the lack of response from the HR function. They are not getting on board. Instead of embracing a sustainability approach, they don't see it as their job, they are too busy, they are not interested and they are impenetrable. We want to work out how we get HR to the table and have HR become a partner and even leader in sustainability and employee engagement.

So there you have it. Even in the best of companies with the best of programs, the HR function is holding the organization back, instead of realizing that CSR is the key to making a much fuller and more sustainable contribution. Guess what I replied? It is time for HR to wake up to CSR!

But I also said that it takes two to tango. I advised this group of accomplished Sustainability Leaders to treat HR as customers, as valued stakeholders, as a group without whom they will not be able to deliver optimal results. This means that if CSR wants HR to wake up, it has to do the waking. As CSO, one of the first partnerships you should be working to develop is with your HR counterpart. If you wait for HR to come to you, you will wait a long time. If you wait for HR to see the light, it may not happen. As CSO, you can both help HR to understand the context and the need, while driving HR to step up to the mark by offering them an opportunity to be involved in developing solutions to sustainable business problems. This is as much a part of the CSO job as pursuing a low-carbon strategy. If, as CSO, you believe your HR function is not on the sustainability track, then make it your job to bring them around. It's a win-win. If you treat them as (equal) partners, maybe they will become (equal) partners. 

Enter Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe who said:  “Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being.”

elaine cohen, CSR consultant, Sustainability Reporter, HR Professional, Author of CSR for HR: A necessary partnership for advancing responsible business practices. Contact me via www.twitter.com/elainecohen  on Twitter or via my website www.b-yond.biz/en

Employee Engagement in Sustainability at Microsoft

This is not the blog in which I usually talk about corporate CSR transparency and sustainability communications. I have another blog for that - the CSR Reporting Blog. But in this case I will make an exception for the recently published Environmental Report White Paper from Microsoft entitled "Becoming Carbon Neutral: How Microsoft is becoming Lean, Green and Accountable" 

This is a fascinating document, and one of the most interesting corporate communications on sustainability  I have seen in a while. It's short: only 16 pages, but it gets the message through impressively. Microsoft has pledged to become a carbon neutral company starting in FY 13 for data centers, software development labs, offices, and employee air travel. There are three core strategies:

Quote:

Be lean. We are setting targets to drive more efficiency with the energy that we consume in our data centers, labs, and offices as well as to reduce our use of air travel. Technology will play an important role in both how we achieve those targets and how we measure our progress along the way.

Be green. We are purchasing more renewable energy and establishing goals to reduce our waste and water use.

Be accountable. We are quantifying the carbon impact of our operations and driving responsible business decisions around energy use and air travel by setting an internal price on carbon, measuring our emissions, and charging a carbon fee to the teams responsible for those emissions. We are also working to reduce the carbon impact of our supply chain.

Unquote.

Now why is this relevant for the CSR for HR blog?

I suspect that there should not be many HR Managers at Microsoft who do not know what carbon neutral means and its relevance to the sustainability of Microsoft's business and the planet. Here's why.

Another quote from the white paper:

Quote

Engaging employees through environmental sustainability programs

To successfully establish a culture of environmentally sustainable operations and achieve our commitment to carbon neutrality, it is critical that we have the support and participation of our employees. Today at Microsoft, we have a number of programs designed to increase our employees’ awareness of environmental issues and engage them directly in sustainability work. A few examples include:

Environmental Sustainability Leads. We have a global community of environmental leaders who help to manage Microsoft’s sustainability work in their country or region. Environmental Sustainability Leads focus primarily on reducing employee travel, driving energy efficiency improvements in their local offices, engaging with customers and partners on the role of technology in environmental sustainability, and connecting with local policymakers to help advance the use of IT in enabling a low-carbon economy.

Sustainability Champions. Employees who volunteer as Sustainability Champions play an active role in reducing our energy consumption, conserving water, and diverting waste from landfills. They encourage their colleagues to make environmentally conscious choices and educate them on sustainable practices (such as turning off lights and computers and recycling waste). The goal of the program is to reduce controllable energy consumption by 3–10 percent per building at the plug level.

MS Green. As part of a grassroots community group, members of MS Green focus on increasing the environmental awareness of employees and educating them about programs such as mass transit, energy conservation, organic farming, and other local resources.

Environmental Action Award. Each quarter, we recognize a team or individual employee who has made a significant contribution to reducing the environmental impact of Microsoft or our products. Winners of the quarterly award receive a $1,000 donation to the environmental charity of their choice.

Unquote

Read about these initiatives in  more detail in a post on the Microsoft blog.

As is often the case when I read about how companies are engaging employes in sustainability programs, I often wonder: what role has Human Resources played in supporting this? Are HR on the map?

To check this out, I had a chat with Josh Henretig, Director of Environmental Sustainability at Microsoft, who is responsible for global environmental sustainability strategy, with focus on communications and outreach and internal employee engagement and programs and more. Josh is a prolific writer on the Microsoft environmental citizenship blog, Software Enabled Earth. I quizzed Josh about the involvement of the Human Resources function in advancing employee environmental initiatives at Microsoft.

Josh was quick to point out that Microsoft that citizenship is "not one person's responsibility - it is a shared responsibility". Processes are driven at the different points of responsibility within the organization. Not everything that requires the involvement of employees is channeled through HR.

Makes sense. Healthy Approach. But what, then, is the role of HR?

Josh confirmed that Human Resources is a key stakeholder in the development of environmental employee engagement programs and partners with the Sustainability Office and other groups in the phases of idea, program and policy development. It's an "inclusive framework of good governance" of organizational management. HR is  in there as things get developed. The implementation and embedding of the programs ultimately rests with the teams that are responsible for delivering results in the different parts of the organization.

This approach clearly works for Microsoft and ensures that all relevant contributions to engaging employees in environmental sustainability are captured and combined for the best possible outcome. This also may be the approach which enables Microsoft to make bold commitments to becoming carbon neutral.

HR leaders take note. Waking up to CSR dos not mean being on the frontline all the time. It means being at the table. At the right time.

elaine cohen, CSR Consultant, Sustainability Reporter, HR Professional, Author of CSR for HR: A necessary partnership for advancing responsible business practices. Contact me via www.twitter.com/elainecohen  on Twitter or via my website www.b-yond.biz/en

Employee engagement in CSR- it's gone viral!

Wherever you look these days and whatever you read, getting employees on board with sustainability efforts is one of the key areas that everyone seems to be (yawn! at long last) acknowledging is the key to making it all come right. No list of top sustainability trends for 2012 was complete without employee engagement taking a star role. In a world of work where only 31% of employees are actively engaged in their jobs, we can only hope that we are in the range of rock-bottom and that things will get better. Sustainability is not only an outcome of employee engagement, it is a driver. HR Managers around the world, this is your time to wake up to CSR!

James Epstein Reeves' recent post on Forbes.com - Six Reasons Companies Should Embrace CSR - features employee engagement (albeit in sixth place - ahem - but who's counting), saying: "..... if your own employees don’t know what’s going on within your organization, you’re missing an opportunity. Companies like Sara Lee created a cross-functional, global Sustainability Working Team to help create a strategy for sustainability. At a more grass roots level, the Solo Cup Company created the Sustainability Action Network to activate employees in community service focused on the company’s CSR priorities."

Mother Nature Network  reports that "Employees are a top corporate social responsibility trend for 2012".

Addison's Six Sustainability Trends to Watch in 2012 includes employee engagement in sustainability, saying that "an increasing number of companies are realizing that introducing innovative employee volunteer programs as part of an integrated environmental, social and governance (ESG) platform can enhance their “employment brand.”

Tim Mohin of AMD included employee engagement in his top ten CSR trends of 2012, explaining "The connection between CSR and engaged employees continues to grow. A Hewitt & Associates study looked at 230 workplaces with more than 100,000 employees and found that the more a company actively pursues worthy environmental and social efforts, the more engaged its employees are. The Society for Human Resources Management compared companies that have strong sustainability programs with companies that have poor ones and found that in the former morale was 55% better, business process were 43% more efficient, public image was 43% stronger, and employee loyalty was 38% better."

Susan McPherson, the CSR Dynamo at Fenton, also ranked employee engagement highly in her list of 12 predictions for CSR in 2012. And there are more. How can all these expert professionals be wrong? Of course they can't.

And here is some proof.

Trend 3 in a new report hot-off-the-press-just-published by Ernst and Young in cooperation with Greenbiz Group, creatively entitled "Six Growing trends in Corporate Sustainability" is guess what, employee engagement. Employees are seen as a key audience for Sustainability Reports. The story E&Y tells about this trend goes like this:  "While the tools and techniques for employee engagement vary widely, the benefits are consistently described by these companies. Most importantly, they enhance employee attraction and retention, improve operational efficiencies, strengthen customer relations, increase innovation and strengthen community ties. Moreover, companies that distribute their sustainability reports broadly among employees find that they often share this information with their families, friends and neighbors, as well as with customers and suppliers. Employees can become a powerful voice in support of company sustainability messages."

Powerful stuff, right? Employee engagement in CSR has gone viral!

Who is going to tell HR?

elaine cohen, CSR consultant, Sustainability Reporter, HR Professional, Author of CSR for HR: A necessary partnership for advancing responsible business practices.  Contact me via www.twitter.com/elainecohen  on Twitter or via my website www.b-yond.biz/en

Five new-ish things about CSR for HR

Here are some interesting things that have caught my eye (don't worry, I caught it back) in recent times regarding CSR for HR.

First, an article which I wrote (haha, THAT was bound to catch my eye) which was published in the German HR Professional Magazine Personalfuehrung, and which I referred to in my last post.  You can download the full artcicle (PDF) here.

Second, something FREE!!! A special issue of Green HRM published in the Zeitschrift fur Personalforschung (German Journal of Research in Human Resource Management)(see how my German is improving these days?!). The Special Issue includes 6 articles which are very interesting for those who want to get some great insights into CSHR with a focus on environment:

1. State-of-the-Art and Future Directions for Green Human Resource Management: Introduction to the Special Issue
2. The Dynamics of Green HRM Behaviors: A Cognitive Social Information Processing Approach
3. Green Work-Life Balance: A New Perspective for Green HRM
4. Environmental Management Activities and Sustainable HRM in German Manufacturing Firms – Incidence, Determinants, and Outcomes
5. Management Learning and the Greening of SMEs: Moving beyond Problem-solving

This is all pretty fascinating stuff and is free on line until end September. So, click quick!

A big thanks for the heads-up to my distinguished colleague Professor Michael Muller Camen (with whom I am co-writing a best-practice paper on CSR for HR to be published next year).

Third, an excellent article by Derek Wong appearing in the Sustainable Business Forum which starts like this:  "Talents are key to success in today’s business. How much would a company pay to lower staff turnover rate by 12%? Best Employers in Canada winner LoyaltyOne achieved this through going green.?" The article includes an interview with the Chief Sustainability Officer of LoyaltyOne (note: Not the HR Director!) who describes several programs in place to support a CSHR-enabled culture. None of these are particularly mindblowing (leadership commitment, internal communications, environmental education, engagement surveys etc) but when you put them all together in a continuous stream of culture consistent interventions, you can see how it delivers a cumulative effect which I am sure supports the Company's sustainability objectives. I think the key is to get everything aligned and do it consistently.

Fourth, an article posted by my friend Chris Jarvis of Realized Worth, entitled "Social Media Policies for Your Employees and Your Employee Volunteer Program"  from the Volunteermatch.org blog, which quotes a report from Manpower that only one in five companies have a social media policy in place for their employees. If you're one of the four, you had better start thinking about becoming one of the one. EIther that, or your employees will be out there doing it anyway in a way which might not always be to your best advantage.

Fifth, an interesting paper by the Doughty Center for Corporate Responsibility  called "Engaging Engaging Employees in Corporate Responsibility". This is an interesting approach covering various "tactics" and their relative merits in engaging employees in CR. The issue I have is that the role of HR is somewhat bypassed and not presented as critical to success. The only real mention that the HR function earns is in these paragraphs relating to Barriers to Cooperation:

"Some organisations work in silos, whether because of geographical locations or because the business function of one branch is different to the function of another. This can make working across internal borders and building commitment difficult, as cooperation is not the expected norm. However, central services such as HR, IT and Legal tend to work across the business and have experience in building crossdepartment cooperation for their initiatives in ways that CR professionals can learn from.

Cooperation cannot occur if trust does not exist – the CR department specifically needs to have a reputation built around delivering, understanding the business, and being integral to business success. You need access to the knowledge of, for example, HR and Internal Communications for presenting an integrated approach to employee engagement and communications. Often, the placement (if positioned on the periphery) or influence of the CR team itself can themselves be barriers to building cooperation for CR initiatives when motivation or commitment is not present. In these instances, work is needed to build the legitimacy of the CR team and strategy."

This grossly underplays the important role of HR in CR strategy development and core organizational processes. Another mention of HR is in a case study of an (unnamed) company in which is stated: "The HR team is distrusted, being seen as supporting leaders and not employees".

If this sorry state is a reflection of reality, then the situation is even more urgent than my mantra. You know what that is.

It is time for HR to wake up to CSR!

elaine cohen, CSR consultant, Sustainability Reporter, HR Professional, Author of CSR for HR: A necessary partnership for advancing responsible business practices. Contact me via www.twitter.com/elainecohen  on Twitter or via my website www.b-yond.biz/en

CSRI reviews CSR for HR

For those of you who don't know, CSRinternational.org (CSRI)  (Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility) hub founded by Wayne Visser, whose new book, the Age of Responsibility is just hitting the shelves,  publishes monthly reviews of a wide range of CSR books. Occasionally, I also contribute reviews from my CSR books blog. I was delighted and flattered to have my book, CSR for HR: A necessary partnership for advancing responsible business practices included in the CSRI February Book Review digest. Registered (it's free) users can download  the monthly digests, and the February on in which the CSR for HR review is featured can be downloaded here.

The review was written by Matthew Maguire and goes like this:

"In CSR for HR: A Necessary Partnership for Advancing Responsible Business Practices, Elaine Cohen takes a ground-up approach to CSR that focuses on corporate engagement with individual employees. As Cohen says, “This book is both a wake-up call for the human resources (HR) profession and a tool-kit written to help members of that profession to act.” Cohen develops a concept she calls corporate social human resources (CSHR) that redirects traditional HR responsibilities such as organisational development, recruitment, training and compensation toward CSR goals and practices.

To build her case, Cohen tells the story of Sharon, a fictitious HR manager from a medium-sized firm, who, over the course of the book, transforms herself from a CSR novice to a powerful CSR advocate within her company. The narrative approach may be distracting for some readers, but it makes the material accessible for those new to CSR. The book is about more than what HR can (and must) do for CSR, however. It is also about how managers and employees learn about CSR and begin to change their behaviour, as well as the contribution that each employee makes toward a company's overall social and environmental impact. Unlike many CSR books out there, CSR for HR is not preaching to the choir. It is intended primarily for HR managers who may have heard of CSR but don't really know what it means in practice, or how it relates to the job they currently have. Elaine Cohen, currently co-founder and managing consultant of Beyond Business Ltd., has more than 25 years of experience in executive positions at various global companies, including 8 years as an HR executive at Unilever. As a result, she offers a unique insider-perspective that breaks CSR down into real terms.

Through her narrative, Cohen shows HR managers how to engage employees, develop corporate culture, and communicate progress through CSR reporting. The story is informative as well as inspiring. As Cohen tells us, “Sharon realizes she doesn't need to sit around and wait for her CEO or executive team to develop a comprehensive CSR strategy for the HR function.” HR managers interact with employees (a key stakeholder group) in innumerable ways. CSR strategy can come from the top down, but for it to really stick, the employees need to be ready for it. Cohen's book gives HR managers the information and confidence needed to open their companies up to the opportunities that can come from CSR. "

Thank you to CSRI and to Matthew Maguire for a great review !! It is time for HR to wake up to CSR!

elaine cohen, CSR consultant, Sustainabilty Reporter, HR Professional, Author of CSR for HR: A necessary partnership for advancing responsible business practices. Contact me via www.twitter.com/elainecohen  on Twitter or via my website www.b-yond.biz/en