How organizations are addressing the 'G' in ESG – striking the balance of maximizing long-term growth and value while safeguarding the interests of all stakeholders
In an engaging session on Thursday morning, the final day of SB ’15 San Diego, a group of expert panelists discussed the obstacles and opportunities to growing the Certified B corporation movement, and faced some tough questions from the audience on its future.
I attended a half-dozen panels during the first three days at SB ‘15 San Diego, each addressing a specific business function. I listened closely as experts shared case studies on incorporating sustainability into marketing, supply chain, employee engagement, etc. But it wasn’t until this Thursday morning breakout session, on the final day of the conference, that we finally seemed to tie it all together.
On Wednesday, over an intimate, invite-only lunch at SB ’15 San Diego, Timberland and the Smallholder Farmers Alliance (SFA) screened the trailer for their documentary, KOMBIT: The Cooperative, scheduled for release in October 2015.KOMBIT means “pulling together” in Haitian Creole. Timberland says this is the perfect description of the partnership among local Haitians, as well as its work with them and SFA to rebuild the island nation’s environmental and economic landscape through small-scale farming.
In the effort to reach new milestones in employee engagement, we must recognize that the process is a journey. Successful corporate responsibility efforts must be embedded throughout the organization, as exemplified by the fine examples from this panel at SB ‘15 San Diego.Susan Hunt Stevens, founder of WeSpire, welcomed everyone to this Wednesday afternoon breakout session on gamification, educational services and culture shifts in employee engagement. According to an oft-cited statistics this week, more than half of employees are disengaged at work.
Tuesday afternoon’s session led by Anne Kelly, Senior Director of Policy at Business for Innovative Climate and Energy Policy (BICEP), shed light on how corporations influence public policy and government regulation in support of a sustainable economy.
It's an incredible, mostly missed opportunity: 70 percent of U.S. workers are not engaged at work, and yet organizations with high employee engagement have 147 percent higher earnings per share. Not surprisingly, employee engagement was one of the major topics this week at SB '15 San Diego.
Tuesday, day two of SB ‘15 San Diego, marked a transition from workshops to breakout sessions and this morning’s session on practical tips and case studies for employee engagement featured a star-studded lineup of experts from Kiva, Google, HP and HIP Investor.We kicked things off with a welcome from WeSpire, host sponsor of the “Workplace of the Future” track, who asked the question: How do we give employees the opportunity to bring their best selves to work?
“What happens when you cut a hologram in half?” Maria Moraes Robinson and Simon Robinson asked as a prelude to sharing what holonomic thinking means. When you cut a photograph in half, you get two separate images, but when you cut a hologram in half, the whole image can still be seen in each piece. Holonomic thinking represents a shift in consciousness from understanding an organization as a collection of individual parts, departments or programs, seen separately, to seeing the organization as a whole that expresses itself and comes into presence in the various individual parts. It means “standing in front of a customer or partner and being able to express the organization as a whole, being different and at the same time being the same.”
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently voted 3-2 on a proposed rule to link CEO compensation to company financial performance. The rule came from the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, and while the information required in the rule is already publicly available, the rule would make it more transparent and simpler for stakeholders to find and understand.
Globescan and SustainAbility released their 2015 Sustainability Leaders survey today, asking experts to assess the progress that various institutions have made in advancing sustainable development since the historic Earth Summit in 1992.Results drawn from 816 sustainability experts across 82 countries indicate a positive perception of non-state actors and lack of confidence in the leadership of national governments. NGOs’ sustainability contribution is ranked highest among those polled, followed by social entrepreneurs, independent academic organizations, social change movements, and multi-sector collaborations.
“We pan in to a generously proportioned boardroom on the 33rd floor of an iconic skyscraper, soaring above London and the River Thames. … This is an Extraordinary Board Meeting.”So begins the opening scene in The Stretch Agenda, a ‘playper’ released by advisory firm Volans last week. Over three acts, the report enlivens the call for businesses to look beyond incremental change and focus strategy on the system dynamics that impact their longevity.
After my book, Hacking Happiness, was released last year, a lot of people got in touch wondering how they could help their employees get happier at work. My book focuses on how people should take a measure of their lives, utilizing emerging technology and positive psychology to increase their long-term wellbeing versus just their mood.
These days, the only constant is constant change. People are on the move from rural regions to densely populated cities, straining urban infrastructures and vital resources. Economies are in flux — once-discounted markets in developing countries will soon dominate trends and needs. Migration is an everyday reality for millions of people — the workforce must be retooled to accommodate greater diversity. Climate change and population growth have led to increased demand for energy, water and food. Technological breakthroughs are opening up investment opportunities and governing relationships with partners and consumers — everyone is expected to connect in real-time.
San Diego, Calif., Aurora, Colo., Torrance, Calif., Poway Calif. and Hermosa Beach, Calif. are the cities with the highest percentage of residents that made pledges during a monthlong campaign in April to promote water efficiency.The 2015 Wyland National Mayor’s Challenge for Water Conservation, organized by the Wyland Foundation and Toyota, involved residents from more than 3,900 cities making 391,325 pledges online to reduce their water use at home, around the yard and in their lives. The challenge addressed the growing importance of educating consumers about the many ways they use water, the organizers say.
Water is essential to business of all kinds — from resource extraction to retail. Its scarcity poses collective risks; not just to a company’s facilities, but also to the municipalities in which it operates and the communities comprising its consumer base.
Fritjof Capra is the author of many best-selling books, including The Tao of Physics, The Turning Point, The Hidden Connections and The Web of Life. His most recent book is The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision, co-written with his friend Pier Luigi Luisi. I recently had the opportunity to meet Capra in São Paulo, where we discussed this new systemic concept of life, and particularly what it means for leadership in organisations.
Unilever, Coca-Cola, General Mills and Nestlé rank highest among food and beverage businesses in managing scarce water resources, but most major companies need to adopt far stronger practices, according to a new report released Thursday by nonprofit sustainability advocacy group Ceres.
CVS Health today released its eighth annual Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Report, outlining the company's progress against its CSR strategy, Prescription for a Better World. President and CEO Larry Menlo stated that changing its name to CVS Health and no longer selling tobacco products reflect how the company is working to change the way health care is delivered. Menlo added that the company’s ultimate goal is to lower the cost, improve the quality of, and increase access to health care for patients and customers so they can live healthier lives.
UK retailer Marks & Spencer has launched a new employee engagement campaign to help the company cut energy use by 50 percent across its UK operations by 2020.
We’re up to our ‘proverbials’ in Brand Advocates, Influencers & Champions. The social shock troops have to no little degree saved a lot of the big consumer multinationals from themselves. They have proved themselves both central in driving relevance and a vastly improved and far more respectful model of customer service. They are to that end critical in securing the survival of relevance in many multinational brands who until quite recently had acted with old school impunity and arrogance when called to account.But the blunt grassroots tool for creating better is just one of two required to secure an improved human existence in the face of our stratospheric levels of consumption and the brands who feed it.