This post analyzes current developments in CSR and it predicts four ways the author expects CSR to develop in 2011. Briefly these are: CSR evolves into a company-wide policy, CSR will become more transparent and also more gain greater visibility with customers and service users, the entire supply chains will be expected to perform to the same standards of CSR as the core companies themselves, and more reporting and contrasting will become publicly available and will enable the public to better evaluate company CSR performance.
Meet Nancy Shaw, Social Responsibility Manager for Blue Shield of California. She currently serves on the Advisory Council of Business Council on Climate Change and was recently a speaker at the Women in Green Forum. She also recently served on the Executive Committee of 2009 Hazon Sustainable Food Conference.
Prior to transitioning to a career is corporate social responsibility, Nancy had a successful career in marketing and the non-profit sector. In the roll of Grants & Program Manager for the Evelyn & Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, Nancy analyzed grant proposals that led to nearly $9 million in funding. As Nonprofit Director for Craigslist, she managed Strategic planning, board development and fundraising, as well as produced venture events connecting nonprofits with potential funders. Before going into the non-profit sector, she was a marketing strategy analyst for both HBO and RR Donnelley. She also directed Fortune 500 companies market research studies for Wetfeet. Read about how Nancy changed her career path to a green one with an MBA in sustainability.
Ashley Jablow is a recent MBA graduate with extensive experience in communications, social media, marketing, and strategy for corporate social responsibility and philanthropy programs. As an MBA at Boston University Graduate School of Management, Ashley consulted with corporate, agency and social enterprise clients on topics such as sustainability strategy and reporting, stakeholder engagement and communications, […]
The EFQM Excellence Model help us to: Ensure we have a clear and constant purpose, it helps us to focus on the delivery of results; focus on customers and how we can create value by better meeting their needs; focus by systematically applying processes and fact-based assessments to manage our business and to make us strategic decisions; identify what we need to do to develop our people and maximize their potential; derive value from meeting our responsibilities to the communities we serve; and archive sustainable excellence.
The idea sounds simple enough. Create a team of volunteers from existing employees. Have them focus on ways to green the business and culture. In turn, create cost savings, attract top talent due to an improvement in brand recognition, and increase market share from the newfound brand image, possibly even innovative product and services. The idea and the goal sound simple, while the execution and plan of attack seem a bit more complex. How can an individual or company go about implementing this team of sustainability focused volunteers? Resources and guides may be abundant and abound. The report, “Green Teams: Engaging Employees in Sustainability,” released by GreenBiz.com and Green Impact, provides a good starting point that captures the business case for these green teams, how to get started, four key areas behind best practices, and a breakdown of 10 best practices in developing green teams.
Sustainable Brands Boot Camp’s eighth webinar session served as an introduction to sustainability transformation in businesses. By providing concrete examples from a case study, Bob Domenz described the practical steps and strategies needed to build a culture of sustainability in an organization, and to effectively engage employees and customers in the process.
According to the white paper, “Developing a Sustainability Strategy”, published by Pike Research, successful corporate sustainability programs share a common foundation and are supported by three key pillars: executive buy-in from the start, creation of an effective sustainability committee, and the establishment of clear and measurable sustainability goals.
In this post, Elaine analyzes the GRI’s own sustainability report, asking what extent GRI Stakeholders should be content with a report about direct impacts and outputs (the things that the GRI is saying, doing, using) versus a report about the outcomes the GRI can reasonably claim to have influenced.
