Volunteer engagements enable your employees to go out in the community, represent your brand, build relationships, and strengthen communities by sharing their skills and passions. Particularly in these difficult times, where the news is dominated by troubling stories, there is perhaps no better way to enhance your image and stand out from the pack than by sharing uplifting stories that demonstrate your company’s social responsibility.

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What is your company’s most important asset? Most of you will say “people.” Many CEOs say this as well. However, where are people on the financial statements?

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Johnson Controls, a $40 billion company with 162,000 employees across the globe, builds on its CSR track record with the release of its 2011 Business and Sustainability Report.

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The Environmental Defense Fund has been working with GE on Treasure Hunts, an approach to employee engagement that’s been proven to provide a significant return while also creating opportunities for employees to gain a stake in sustainability efforts.

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By Dr. Lawrence S. Levin One of the most essential yet difficult variables that distinguishes top teams from most executive teams is their ability to engage in honest, candid, and authentic dialogue. Dialogue (from the Greek dia-logos) literally means an exchange of ideas. In our work with teams, and in our observation of top teams, [...]

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Employee engagement is one of the most effective tools for achieving long-term success and shared value. Intel, Hyatt, Walmart, Google and Clif Bar all have great programs for employee engagement and retention.

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By Hunter Lovins Claudia Capitini, the aptly named Sustainability Maven at Eco-Products, had a problem. She knew, as smart companies do, that sustainability is the path to greater prosperity and profitability. Twenty six separate studies from such consultancies as those wild eyed-environmentalists at Goldman Sachs show that the companies that are the leaders in environment [...]

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Achieving zero waste seems to be the biggest goal with many food companies. Coca-Cola has done it. Kit Kat has done it, and now Kraft is following their footsteps. The company recently announced that it sends no waste to landfills in 36 of its manufacturing plants in 13 countries. Kraft has been steadily working towards building [...]

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Accor, a leading hotel chain that owns a bevy of chains including Motel 6, is ramping up their corporate social responsibility efforts. Employee engagement and water stewardship are among the initiatives.

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PwC has found that there is a positive correlation between worker satisfaction and client satisfaction or “brand health.” That is to say that the communities where they have rolled out service programs have happier workers, and those workers do a better job, leading to clients who report good things about having worked with PwC.

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Two years ago, when the concept had just started to really gain traction, we reported the results of a survey conducted by Brighter Planet on engaging employees on sustainability issues. The company just released an update to that study which includes responses from employees at some of the companies leading corporate sustainability efforts including Walmart, UPS, and [...]

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The average US hospital loses $4,000,000 a year specifically as a result of communication inefficiencies, some of which contribute to 200,000 patient deaths annually. Briana Coonan suggests some business school standards for improving internal communication—and patient outcomes—in today’s complex healthcare environments.

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Medtronic issued its 2011 Corporate Citizenship update, which focuses on supply chain management, communicating with its global workforce, and balancing environmental responsibility with its goals to boost growth.

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Water stewardship has become an important CSR focus for many companies. Good water stewardship is especially important to beverage companies like Pepsico,and Coca-Cola where water makes up large quantities of the actual product they produce. The same also goes for alcoholic beverages. Brewing packs a walloping carbon as well as water footprint. It takes 58 gallons [...]

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Dell has stopped purchasing Renewable Energy Credits, central to its promise of becoming a “carbon-neutral” company, according to its 2011 corporate responsibility report.

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Is there a business case for corporate philanthropy? The Conference Board’s Matteo Tonello, in an academic article also posted on Harvard Law School’s Corporate Governance blog, believes the case is solid.

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By Jacob Shirmer There’s nothing quite like summer in New York City. But I must admit the mugginess of a 95-degree day makes me thankful SunGard’s office in midtown Manhattan doesn’t skimp on air conditioning. As SunGard’s third EDF Climate Corps fellow, I am conscious of the energy this cooling action demands . Fortunately, I’m [...]

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Reports of the imminent bankruptcy of the U.S. Postal Service are here once again – the latest news being a loss of $3.1 billion in the third quarter of this fiscal year – but if rain, snow and gloom of night can’t stop the carriers from their appointed rounds, then what’s a little financial uncertainty? [...]

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FedEx’s global citizen efforts are an example of how performance and sustainability do not have to compete, but in fact, together are integral if companies are to succeed at a time of scorching global competition, rising prices, with the added demands for an improved quality of life facing diminishing resources.

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Not all the employees in the banking sector are like Cosmo Kramer. Many of them work in banks for various reasons other than a burning desire to become bankers, which might present a challenge when it comes to employee engagement.

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This post is part of a series on Stakeholder Engagement sponsored by Jurat Software. Keeping your stakeholders “engaged” is not the only function of stakeholder engagement within the boundaries of CSR. Indeed, engaging your stakeholder is the basis for  good corporate governance and this is often something that companies either ignore or underestimate. In my [...]

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This post is part of a series on Stakeholder Engagement sponsored by Jurat Software. Employee engagement is a term that’s thrown around a lot as a reason companies should be more sustainable. Because it is perhaps considered a “soft” management science, it risks being viewed as a fad in the fickle business community (TQM, anyone?). [...]

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Last week Intel, the world’s largest semiconductor maker by revenue, released its annual CSR report, a task it has completed faithfully since 2001.

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What’s your road map for advancing CSR? If it doesn’t include employee engagement, chances are you won’t get far. BNY Mellon‘s corporate social responsibility agenda calls for fostering an engaged workforce, community investment and environmentinal sustainability. But employee engagement definitely drives the other two goals, according to R. Jeep Byrant, Executive Vice President, Corporate Affairs [...]

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This week Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev) released its 2010 Global Citizenship Report. The report is timely, considering the greater attention businesses devote to water, a resource that is most critical for AB InBev’s long-term success.

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This post is part of a blogging series by marketing students at the Presidio Graduate School’s MBA program. You can follow along here. By Eric Raymond People play games for three billion hours a week.  Do you know what they are doing for the other few billion hours?  Working. These two activities, it turns out, [...]

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As companies race to catch-up to greenhouse gas emissions reporting and reductions, technologies to ease the process are flourishing. CloudApps has developed a desktop engagement tool that connects corporate goals and policies with everyday employee actions. Sustainable Momentum or SuMo, is a sustainability dashboard the measures employee sustainability actions, and compares that information by department, [...]

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By Matt Courtland In the spring of 2009 it happened. The Green Committee I founded and currently chair decided to utilize Walmart in our ongoing educational campaign about the benefits of sustainability. At the time I was horrified by Walmart’s business tricks that ran competitors out of town; the unjust wages, benefits, and lack of [...]

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The following is part of a series by our friends at CSRHub (a 3p sponsor) – offering free sustainability and corporate social responsibility ratings on over 5,000 of the world’s largest publicly traded companies. 3p readers get 40% off CSRHub’s professional subscriptions with promo code “TP40“. By Cynthia Figge Fast Company recently named Apple #1 [...]

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Longtime consumer rights advocate Consumerist.com runs an annual competition to determine the Worst Company in America . The “winner” of the competition receives a golden poo trophy and all the benefits that come with such a prestigious title. Having felt the pain of winning the award in 2010, Comcast was very reluctant to be singled [...]

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