I doubt you missed last month’s release of Pope Francis’ powerful “encyclical” on the environment. It’s sure to be considered a very important document in the history of sustainability – perhaps a turning point in the debate on climate change.
To assist corporate responsibility practitioners as they help international employees give back to their communities, Silicon Valley Community Foundation (SVCF) has produced a report offering practical advice for establishing successful programs in five countries — Brazil, China, India, South Africa, United Kingdom — but the lessons also can be applied to other countries around the world.To create the Global Employee Engagement Report, SVCF conducted in-depth interviews with 65 corporate practitioners and nonprofit organizations dedicated to promoting employee engagement, as well as completed a review of existing literature on the topic.
Today, think tank SustainAbility released its view of the key sustainability developments during 2015 in a webinar, “Mid-Year ‘State of Play’ Sustainability Trends.” Its latest research identifies 10 global trends and five region-specific trends in Latin America.“These are not this week’s headlines,” clarified Mark Lee, Executive Director of SustainAbility. Instead, the trends highlighted in the webinar reflect long-term movements within the international sustainability community that his team expects will continue throughout the year and beyond.
The “green gap” is alive and well, yet many companies and marketers still don’t seem to notice. On the one hand, we continue to see a massive influx of passionate consumers telling us they are willing to pay a premium for products from socially and environmentally responsible companies.
Years before the surprising examples of bold sustainable business actions discussed in Part 1, we had the writings of Jem Bendell, Wayne Visser, John Elkington and Jeffrey Hollender, who have long seen the limitations of c
Can a mainstream company have a conscience? As ridiculous as that might sound, more common-than-realized examples of bold sustainable business actions over the past few years may come to soften reasoning against the possibility of this possibility. We will look at some of the evidence for a conscience and the implied fundamental shift in the role of business, as it may eventually be difficult to continue to explain the motivation for certain actions in any other way. Then, having explored and given evidence for the idea here and in part 2, in a third and final part we’ll clarify what we’re not talking about, as less radical versions of this framing question are no longer so controversial, although potentially instructive.
On the final day of SB ’15 San Diego, SustainAbility’s Mark Lee moderated a panel with two rather controversial brands — McDonald’s and Shell. Lee opened, “transparency is a pre-condition for trust, and trust is a pre-condition for collaboration.”We need increasing amounts of collaboration now, as we face a changing global climate, where businesses must act as social and environmental stewards while in pursuing financial objectives.
For me, this was hands-down the most entertaining session of SB ‘15 San Diego. If you ever get the opportunity to attend a panel moderated by Edelman's Henk Campher, I highly recommend it.He set the mood for 60-minute breakout by welcoming everyone to “the panel on sustainable fracking.” Then we quickly dove into conversation on turning consumers into activists.Or as Campher put it, “Why should anyone give a shit?”
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During lunch in the Activation Hub on Tuesday afternoon, 3M Sustainability Platform Manager Cassandra Garber led a lively discussion on how her company, a science-based institution with over 55,000 products in myriad sectors and regions, can deliver on its mission to “Improve Lives Everywhere.”
Following an energy-filled morning at SB ‘15 San Diego, David Hawksworth of Given London kicked off an afternoon workshop by asking, “How do we combine the skills of marketing and sustainability professionals?”
“Are you a part of the problem, or are you a part of the solution?” Simon Mainwaring asked attendees of the opening morning workshop at SB ’15 San Diego on Monday, before introducing the seven panelists who shared complementary global market observations and interpretations.
Global consumers feel a personal accountability to address social and environmental issues and look to companies as partners in progress, according to findings from the 2015 Cone Communications/Ebiquity Global CSR Study, released today.
From toxics to human rights, advocates are increasingly focusing on consumer-facing brands to drive change on environmental and social issues. Corporate campaigns have been going strong for decades, but with the rise of social media, higher demand for supply chain transparency and increasingly savvy coordination between activist networks, companies are scrambling to address stakeholder concerns before they bubble into conflict.
The roadmap series details the Hagen-Wilhelm change matrix, a tool to accelerate adoption and maximize the benefits of sustainable business thinking. This model builds on the work of many thinkers, leaders and researchers who have identified five stages that companies pass through on the way from today’s conventional thinking (Phase I) to a more sustainable future where business thrives by solving some of the world’s biggest problems.
A recent Gallup survey found that most companies are failing to make good on their agreements. Only half of the almost 18 million customers Gallup surveyed strongly believe that the companies they do business with always deliver on what they promise.A brand promise is an agreement between a company and its customers and the unique statement of what a company offers, what separates it from its rivals and what makes it worthy of customers' consideration.
Your company is doing all the right things: You’re making a product with sustainable attributes, your manufacturing process is diverting waste from landfill, and your products contain recycled content. But are these efforts translating into higher brand value at the shelf? If you’re not communicating your sustainability efforts in the right way, you might be missing the boat. Here are three key reasons you can’t afford to miscommunicate your sustainability initiatives:
Four years after the launch of its Sustainable Living Plan, Unilever is reporting today that the plan is making an increasingly positive impact on its business in terms of growth, cost efficiency and resilience for the future.
This series has been taking a dive into the five phases of sustainable business described in the Hagen-Wilhelm change matrix published in Making Sustainability Stick. We want to offer a roadmap for those working to change business from inside large organizations. By capturing and sharing over a decade of experience implementing these ideas, hopefully we can help accelerate success.
It’s tough being one of the largest consumer-facing companies as the troika of transparency, sustainability and ethical behavior increasingly challenges a brand’s reputation and social media assures there is no place to hide.