Monday, October 24, 2005

The 12 rules for creating successful business-charity partnerships

Creating partnerships can be a precarious business. Many fall at the first hurdle because of a lack of mutual trust, respect and loyalty, or because of a poorly defined cause focus and incompatible objectives. Partnerships can fail because a charity feels that they own a cause, or a business is unprepared for the changes within the company that a charity partnership can lead to. Harmonious management styles between the partners are vital, as is due diligence, transparency and the setting up of robust success measures. Follow these 12 tips to get the most from a business-charity partnership.

1. Accountability - The charity must be able to maintain clear accountability to its own key trustees and other stakeholders, and retain independence from the business partner. At the same time, the business should not try to become the charity.

2. Authenticity - A company must be serious about driving change in its own business, within the sector or across the business community as a whole.

3. Alignment to core purpose or product - There must be an obvious link between the company and the cause.

4. Authority - Individual participants must have sufficient authority to make critical decisions on a day-to-day basis.

5. Benefits - There must be measurable social benefit; that is, the partnership must make a real difference to people's lives. Organizational benefits for each partner must also be understood.

6. Communication - There must be the potential for visibility and story telling.

7. Engagement of employees and customers - There must be opportunities for employee involvement and benefit for customers.

8. Equality - Both partners need to step up to the table as equal partners and be recognized as such throughout the relationship.

9. Issues management - There must be agreement to work together to resolve disputes or conflicts in a constructive and respectful way. Decide up front what would render the partnership untenable and agree a process for formal notice of termination of the contract.

10. Measurement - Both partners must see a tangible return on their investment and understand each other's definitions of success. Appropriate mechanisms to monitor progress must be agreed up front.

11. Rules of engagement - These need to be clearly agreed at the outset.

12. Trust - Both partners must trust each other implicitly and understand each other's needs and motivations for working together.

Adapted from "The new world of company giving" in the current issue of Corporate Responsibility Management.



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Sunday, October 23, 2005

Seven steps to stress prevention

1. Organizational effectiveness begins with personal effectiveness. Give people tools that help raise awareness of sources and sinks of their time so they can see how to manage it better.

2. Helping people take control of their time, especially when working outside traditional business hours, will help them to prevent stressful situations from arising.

3. The psychological contract may need to be re-assessed as virtual workingbecomes more the norm. Access to critical knowledge should not imposeunacceptable demands on people’s availability.

4. It’s better to prevent stress than to manage it. Thinking ahead andanticipating what time and knowledge will be needed by whom will make itmore likely that people will be able to cope with pressures when they arise.

5. Organizations must be dynamic and responsive – don’t rely on anend-of-year survey to tell you that things have gone wrong.

6. Different personality types may be stressed or engaged by differentbehaviors or requests. Coaching people to share and acquire knowledge moreeffectively will be a vital complement to any formal corporate rules andprocesses.

7. Build teams around knowledge competencies, not just formal qualificationsand previous roles held. Many people can benefit from having ready access tocolleagues who can find, synthesize, reframe and translate elements ofknowledge into a useful and usable language and format.

Source: "HR and the parameters of knowledge, stress and time," by KatrinaDelargy and Heather Chatten, Strategic HR Review Vol. 4, Issue 5, July/August 2005


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Recruitment Data Capture Still Mostly Offline

According to research conducted by Aurora, Ont.-based Web portal HR.com, 75 percent of organizations capture information about the recruitment process the old-fashioned way. Based on a survey of more than 500 senior managers and executives, the recently published "Talent Management Metrics: A Survey of Current Practices" reports that even among larger companies – companies with 20,000 employees or more – the proportion using an online system to access recruitment data is less than 60 percent. The payoff for those that go the online route, though, is substantial, according to the paper's author, HR.com Director of Research Claude Balthazard, Ph.D. Balthazard says that online systems offer enhanced use of recruitment metrics, easier processes, and employees who are more than twice as likely to be satisfied with their recruitment metrics interface.


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Saturday, October 22, 2005

CR reports fail to convince financial sector

The quality of corporate reports on social responsibilities may have risen, but they consistently fail to meet the expectations of a major target group: the financial services sector, with its associated analysts, investors and shareholders. This is one of the key findings of Accounting for Good: The Global Stakeholder Report 2005, a survey of 500 global readers of CR reports from 58 countries, a new report by Pleon. The study found that, although the importance of CR within the financial services sector has increased considerably in the past few years, it is this group that gets the least from sustainability reports. According to the survey, the prime reason for this disparity is that the economic arguments for corporate sustainability and social commitments are not convincingly explained.

Generally however, readers of CR reports are more satisfied with the quality of reports than they were two years ago. For instance, reporting on social issues was described by 55.2 percent of respondents as being “fully” or “to some extent” in line with their expectations (an increase of 6.5 percent from 2003). The survey also revealed that the most important issues of a CR report, from a stakeholder perspective, are the management of human rights, ecological and energy efficiency in business operations, and health and safety of employees.

The full report, as well as a background paper, is available for download from Pleon's website.

http://www.pleon.com/



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Meaning of Corporate social responsibility (CSR)

CSR is an expression used to describe what some see as a company’s obligation to be sensitive to the needs of all of its stakeholders in its business operations. The principle is closely linked with the imperative of ensuring that these operations are "sustainable" i.e. that it is recognised that it is necessary to take account not only of the financial/economic dimension in decision making also the social and environmental consequences "Sustainable Development".

A company’s stakeholders are all those who are influenced by and/or can influence a company’s decisions and actions, both locally and globally. These include (but are not limited to): employees, customers, suppliers, community organizations, subsidiaries and affiliates, joint venture partners, local neighbourhoods, investors, and shareholders (or a sole owner).

In other word: CSR is about how companies manage the business processes to produce an overall positive impact on society.



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Considering the business opportunities within CR programs

Although more companies are talking about CR, many still see it as something they must do to satisfy stakeholders, who we know often don't have profit-making in mind. Too often, CR and sustainability are still treated as a “bolt-on” to business operations rather than being built in to business purpose and strategy.

David Grayson, author of “Corporate Social Opportunities” says the terminology of corporate social responsibility suggests burden, outlay and obligation, but more emphasis should be given to the opportunity that can come from a genuine commitment to sustainability and CR - the opportunity to find new products and services, new markets, and new business models.

Here are three methods and examples of organizations gaining from CR and sustainability programs.

1. New products: Think creatively - investment in CR and sustainability programs will likely lead to new product lines developed with these attributes. For example, Mexico-based Cemex is the third largest cement company in the world. Creative thinking has led the company to invent a concrete mix with an added anti-bacterial agent that, when used for flooring in low-cost housing projects provides built in health protection. When used in hospitals and clinics, the treated concrete not only helps kill germs but also means less expensive (and potentially less polluting) cleaning agents can be used.

2. Get ahead of competitors: Aligning your company with sustainable programs can improve its global standing and put it ahead of competitors. Vodafone, the largest mobile communications company in the world, has recently established a whole new product and marketing department to explore products that have both commercial and social benefit. Vodafone's use of a sustainability program saw the organization reach third place in the 2005 Accountability Rating®, a corporate accountability rating of FORTUNE Global 100® companies, which was recently announced by international think-tank AccountAbility and consultancy CSR Network. The rating scores companies on how seriously their future decisions will consider social and environmental issues. Vodafone were only behind oil companies BP and Royal Dutch Shell.

3. Gain insight beyond the usual corporate domains: Working with non-profit organizations and other NGOs can prove a valuable source of insight and capacity that can produce commercially viable products and services which also meet social and environmental goals. Scope, the charity that helps sufferers of cerebral palsy, has just launched its latest charity-business program called “Diversity Works” which involves partnering with a number of businesses including BT, KPMG and Lehman Bros. Diversity Works aims to develop and deploy learning amongst the partners involved on how to find, recruit, train and support the development of young disabled Britons with leadership potential. Business partners benefit by getting help to attract and retain a wider pool of talent.

Adapted from “From responsibility to opportunity” by David Grayson in the current issue of Corporate Responsibility Management.



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Tuesday, October 18, 2005

RESOURCES: Myths and facts of communicating sustainability

A roving “Environment Train” exhibition in Algeria, a radio series on pesticide pollution in Vietnam and a novel ozone layer awareness campaign in Costa Rica are among 16 innovative public campaigns featured in a new guidebook from the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). The guide, Communicating Sustainability - How to Produce Effective Public Campaigns - provides national and local governments with professional advice on how to implement communications campaigns on environment and development issues.

It covers the myths and facts of communications and proposes useful resources, as well as offering hints on how to get the best out of communications agencies.

“The impacts of our consumption patterns are no longer vague and invisible,” writes UNEP executive director Klaus Toepfer in his foreword to the guide. “Public communication has a key role to play to make sustainable development approachable and understandable. Informed, motivated and committed people can help us to achieve our sustainability goals,” he says. “However, communicating effectively about sustainable lifestyles is a challenge,” Mr. Toepfer continues. “One needs to consider not only what to communicate, but how to communicate it. The lesson to be learned is that communication styles have to be positive and tailored to different circumstances and cultural contexts.

Communicating sustainability can be downloaded from UNEP's website at http://www.unep.fr/sustain or from Futerra's website at http://www.futerra.org/publications.



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Considering the business opportunities within CR programs

Although more companies are talking about CR, many still see it as something they must do to satisfy stakeholders, who we know often don't have profit-making in mind. Too often, CR and sustainability are still treated as a “bolt-on” to business operations rather than being built in to business purpose and strategy.

David Grayson, author of “Corporate Social Opportunities” says the terminology of corporate social responsibility suggests burden, outlay and obligation, but more emphasis should be given to the opportunity that can come from a genuine commitment to sustainability and CR - the opportunity to find new products and services, new markets, and new business models.

Here are three methods and examples of organizations gaining from CR and sustainability programs.

1. New products: Think creatively - investment in CR and sustainability programs will likely lead to new product lines developed with these attributes. For example, Mexico-based Cemex is the third largest cement company in the world. Creative thinking has led the company to invent a concrete mix with an added anti-bacterial agent that, when used for flooring in low-cost housing projects provides built in health protection. When used in hospitals and clinics, the treated concrete not only helps kill germs but also means less expensive (and potentially less polluting) cleaning agents can be used.

2. Get ahead of competitors: Aligning your company with sustainable programs can improve its global standing and put it ahead of competitors. Vodafone, the largest mobile communications company in the world, has recently established a whole new product and marketing department to explore products that have both commercial and social benefit. Vodafone's use of a sustainability program saw the organization reach third place in the 2005 Accountability Rating®, a corporate accountability rating of FORTUNE Global 100® companies, which was recently announced by international think-tank AccountAbility and consultancy CSR Network. The rating scores companies on how seriously their future decisions will consider social and environmental issues. Vodafone were only behind oil companies BP and Royal Dutch Shell.

3. Gain insight beyond the usual corporate domains: Working with non-profit organizations and other NGOs can prove a valuable source of insight and capacity that can produce commercially viable products and services which also meet social and environmental goals. Scope, the charity that helps sufferers of cerebral palsy, has just launched its latest charity-business program called “Diversity Works” which involves partnering with a number of businesses including BT, KPMG and Lehman Bros. Diversity Works aims to develop and deploy learning amongst the partners involved on how to find, recruit, train and support the development of young disabled Britons with leadership potential. Business partners benefit by getting help to attract and retain a wider pool of talent.

Adapted from “From responsibility to opportunity” by David Grayson in the current issue of Corporate Responsibility Management. T



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Sunday, October 16, 2005

A.G. Edwards uses Production-Improvement Programs to Boost Training Results

When St. Louis, Mo.-based investment services provider A.G. Edwards & Sons noticed that the production of its financial consultants was stagnating, it began offering production-improvement programs. Graduates of the programs now often grow their commissions 20 to 30 percent over firm averages.


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Saturday, October 01, 2005

Interpersonal Failure


According to a new study by Leadership IQ, a leadership training and research company in Washington,D.C., 46 percent of newly hired employees will fail within 18 months, and only 19 percent will achieve unequivocal success. But it isn't technical skills that these new hires lack
– it's interpersonal skills.

The study, conducted over three years, surveyed 5,247 hiring managers from 312 public, private, business and health-care organizations about their failed hires, defined as anyone who was terminated, departed under pressure, or received disciplinary action or significantly negative performance reviews. Collectively these managers hired more than 20,000 employees during the study period.

The results showed that the top reason given for 26 percent of new hires who failed was that they couldn't accept feedback. For another 23 percent, the main problem was that they were unable to understand and manage their own emotions, or assess those of others. A lack of necessary technical skills was the primary reason for failure for just 11 percent of failed hires.

The survey data revealed another troubling finding: Eighty-two percent of respondents reported that in hindsight, their interview process with these employees elicited subtle clues that the hire could be a bad one. But during the interviews, managers were too focused on other issues, too pressed for time, or lacked confidence in their interviewing abilities to heed warning signs.

"The typical interview process fixates on ensuring that new hires are technically competent," explains Mark Murphy, CEO of Leadership IQ. "Technical competence remains the most popular subject of interviews because it's easy to assess. But while technical competence is easy to assess, it's a lousy predictor of whether a newly hired employee will succeed or fail."



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