Bhavani PrakashFounder, Green Collar Asia

The Sustainability ToolkitA framework for engaging employees in CSRUsing best practices from Singapore based organisations

Supported by

National Environment Agency

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The concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is about an organisation’s commitment to deliver its products and services, while integrating in an ethical manner, various social and environmental concerns in its operations and interactions with stakeholders.

The intention of this toolkit is to enable organisations to make their workplaces and operations more environmentally and socially responsible, by engaging their employees in this process. The focus is more on the ‘heart-ware’ of sustainability than the ‘hardware’ – emphasising how behaviour change can be brought about in people towards sustainability, highlighting the context and conditions that enable such behaviour change. The framework given here is based on the latest research on the topic, alongside interviews with 11 Singapore based organisations, who have demonstrated best practices in CSR. Ideas are offered to inspire and motivate employees to inculcate a culture of sustainability within organisations, as well as the challenges that may be encountered. When employees are aware of CSR and its relation to their work and lives, they find their jobs make a meaningful difference to the world. It provides a sense of purpose and job satisfaction. It also brings benefits to companies, both in the short and long terms. Various studies have shown that engaging employees in CSR helps to attract quality talent, improve retention, lower absenteeism and increase performance through involvement and commitment.

The toolkit is meant to be of relevance to all organisations, whatever may be their stage in the CSR journey. It is intended to be of value to managers, leaders, academicians, researchers, CSR practitioners as well as the general public.

ABSTRACT

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Bhavani Prakash is a speaker, trainer and coach in the areas of sustainability, mindfulness and leadership. She is Founder of Green Collar Asia, an industry oriented sustainability portal as well as the non-profit website Eco Walk the Talk which was a finalist in the Singapore Environment Council’s Asia Journalism Awards in 2012. Bhavani is also Senior Trainer & Consultant with The Potential Project, a leading global organisation in the area of ‘Corporate Based Mindfulness Training (CBMT).

She combines her experience in sustainability with various methodologies that she is certified in, such as Emotional Intelligence (Six Seconds), Mindfulness at Work, Art of Hosting (Group Facilitation), Positive Psychology, Gallup’s Accelerated Strengths Coaching and Marshall Goldsmith Stakeholder Centered Coaching

Bhavani has delivered talks and trainings to organisations like Asia Foundation@LKYSPP, Unilever Asia, BNY Mellon, Denso Asia, Ricoh Asia Pacific, Caliberlink, NUS, SMU, SIM, SICCI to name a few, and at regional forums like the ASEAN Corporate Sustainability Summit and the Commonwealth Asia Alliance of Young Entrepreneurs. She also presented to the Prime Minister of Singapore at IIMPACT Forum 2014 on ‘Transformation’ She holds a Masters in Financial Economics from University of London and a Post Graduate Diploma in Management from Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, India. Bhavani is a TEDx speaker, and appears regularly on media including Radio 938Live, Business Times, Straits Times, New Paper and was nominated as SONY TV IWA Woman of the Year 2014 Her personal sustainability practices include a near-vegan diet, growing an organic veggie and herb rooftop garden, composting and using public transport. She also runs a Facebook page called ‘Grow Your Own Food in Singapore’

She may be contacted for speaking and training engagements viaEmail: bhavani.prakash<at>greencollarasia.com and on LinkedIn: https://sg.linkedin.com/in/bhavaniprakash

AUTHOR

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National Environment Agency www.nea.gov.sg/

This toolkit has been sponsored mainly by the National Environment Agency ‘Call for Ideas’ Fund. The National Environment Agency, founded in 2002, is the leading public organization responsible for improving and sustaining a clean and green environment in Singapore. The NEA develops and spearheads environmental initiatives and programmes through its partnership with the People, Public and Private sectors. It is committed to motivating every individual to take up environmental ownership and to care for the environment as a way of life.

Other project sponsors include: Singapore Compact www.csrsingapore.org

Singapore Compact for Corporate Social Responsible is the national society promoting sustainable development for businesses and stakeholders. Founded in 2005 by the National Tripartite Initiative for CSR with the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) and the Singapore National Employers Federation (SNEF) as founder members, Singapore Compact is also the focal point and network body for the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC)

Singapore Environment Council http://www.sec.org.sg/ Established in 1995, the Singapore Environment Council (SEC) is an independently managed, non-profit and non-government organisation (NGO). They are responsible for a range of green certifications including Project Eco-Office and Singapore Green Labelling Scheme

SPONSORS

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The author would like to acknowledge and thank the following interviewees for the interesting conversations, information and support despite their hectic schedules.

In alphabetic order of first names:

Amy Ho, DirectorOffice of Environmental Sustainability, National University of Singapore

Carl Baptista, CEOOrigin Exterminators Pte Ltd

Damon Yong, (formerly) Director (Operations)Singapore Environment Council

Esther An, Chief Sustainability OfficerCity Development Limited

Hui Mien Lee, Regional Sustainability ManagerIKANO Retail Asia

Iolanda Meehan, Director Strategic ServicesAsia Pacific, Middle East, Africa and Latin America, Haworth

Karen Lee, Sustainability Communications ManagerInterface

Kevin Lee, Senior Manager (Sustainability & HSE)YTL PowerSeraya

Masayo Hada, Manager of Regional Environment GroupRICOH Asia Pacific Pte Ltd

Michael Kwee, Co-ordinating DirectorBanyan Tree Global Foundation

Nisha Menezes, Sustainability ManagerGroup Technology & Operations, Standard Chartered Bank, Singapore

Sylvain Richer de Forges, Sustainability DirectorSiloso Beach Resort

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In addition, the author is grateful for the overall guidance and support by;

Koh Ean Suat, Senior Assistant DirectorCorporate, NGO & marketing, 3P Network Division, National Environment Agency (NEA)

Jasmine Chen, Senior Executive 3P Strategy Division, 3P Network Division, National Environment Agency (NEA)

Other colleagues from 3P Network Division (NEA)

Bhavana Murjani, Manager Outreach and Youth Singapore Compact

Constant Van Aerschot, Executive Director Business Council for Sustainable Development, Singapore

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Table of

CONTENTSABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................................ 2

AUTHOR ............................................................................................................................................... 3

SPONSORS ........................................................................................................................................... 4

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................................ 5

PART I: INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................... 7

PART II: ENGAGING EMPLOYEES IN CSR ............................................................................................... 9

1. TOP MANAGEMENT SUPPORT .................................................................................................................... 9This is the big container within which we need to engage employees in CSR. Why is top management support so critical, as is the synergy between top management and CSR advisors? How can top management be role models to engage employees?

2. CREATING A SHARED UNDERSTANDING OF CSR ..................................................................................... 12CSR concepts may be interpreted in different ways by different people. How can we bring about a unified understanding of CSR between an organisation and its employees? Where can companies look for guidance and what action can be taken to create this shared understanding?

3. ALIGNING HR AND CSR .......................................................................................................................... 16HR can support the process of employee engagement in sustainability and could even take a leadership role in this. How can HR be convinced of the business case for this? What are the different areas in which HR can align with the organisation’s sustainability goals, and tailor its process to accomplish these?

4. COMMUNICATION AND EDUCATION ...................................................................................................... 20Communication is the key to creating and maintaining the momentum for an organisation’s sustainability efforts. What are the various platforms for communication and education? What are the different ways of bringing about sustainability related behaviour change in employees based on practical examples tried out by Singapore based organisations?

5. GREEN OFFICE......................................................................................................................................... 24Three facets of a green office are discussed: resource conservation (which may be supported through a third party certification such as Project Eco-Office, supporting personal sustainability habits in employees and ensuring the physical and emotional well-being in employees. How are these being implemented by Singapore based companies?

6. VOLUNTEERING & OUTREACH ACTIVITIES ............................................................................................... 32CSR is much more than volunteering or donating to causes. However volunteering, when done strategically in line with the organisation’s core strengths and mission, can be useful in creating employee awareness and involvement in the CSR journey. What are some examples on how this is being achieved?

7. EMPLOYEE EDUCATION FOR CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT .......................................................................... 34Employees need training to communicate the concept, the importance and the methods to achieve sustainability, to other stakeholders such as customers. How are organisations doing this and how does it help them?

8. COMMUNICATING AROUND SUSTAINABILITY REPORT ............................................................................ 36As of now, sustainability reporting is voluntary and only a handful of companies in Singapore undertake it. However, this is set to change. What are some of the experiences of Singapore based companies in communicating around a Sustainability Report?

9. CHALLENGES IN ENGAGING EMPLOYEES FOR CSR ................................................................................. 37Despite several suggestions from the organisations interviewed and the research shared before, there is no definitive formula for human behaviour change. It needs constant work. What are some of the key challenges faced in engaging employees in CSR and how are they being overcome, if possible?

CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................................... 39

REFERENCES ....................................................................................................................................... 40

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PART I

INTRODUCTION

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The concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) may be understood differently by different people and organisations. The most common interpretation of CSR is that it is about volunteering or philanthropy. Its deeper meaning is more holistic. CSR is about an organisation’s commitment to deliver products and services and to monitor all processes and operations in a manner that is sustainable from the point of view of environment and society while being ethically correct. This idea, unfortunately, is still confined to a minority number of organizations.

The following toolkit provides ideas to enable organisations to make their workplaces and operations more environmentally and socially responsible, while engaging employees in the process. The guidelines are based on the latest research on the topic, alongside interviews with 11 Singapore based organizations, which have demonstrated CSR practices.

Who is this toolkit for?This toolkit is primarily focused on Singapore based organisations but could be of equal relevance to any organisation regardless of location or stage in sustainability efforts. Academicians, researchers, CSR practitioners, executives, managers and leaders as well as the general public will find it of value.

What does this toolkit contain?The focus of this toolkit is on the ‘heart-ware’ instead of the hardware of sustainability.

For instance - • The conditions or policies that lead to behavior and

attitude changes in employees towards CSR• How a culture change towards sustainability can be

achieved• How to integrate people into the sustainability journey of

the organisation, to enable the success of infrastructural and operational changes

At a deeper level, the toolkit also poses questions essential for a systemic paradigm shift on organisational development and meaningful employee engagement and motivation towards sustainability. Which companies have been interviewed?The organisations interviewed for this toolkit have registered headquarters or offices in Singapore and range from local to regional to multi-national organisations. In alphabetical order (with acronyms in brackets), the following are the organisations featured:

• Banyan Tree Global Foundations Ltd (Banyan Tree)• City Developments Limited Pte Ltd (CDL)• Haworth• IKANO Retail Asia Pte Ltd (IKEA)• Interface• National University of Singapore (NUS)• Origin Exterminators Pte Ltd• RICOH Asia Pacific Pte Limited (RICOH)• Siloso Beach Resort (SBR)• Standard Chartered Bank (SCB)• YTL PowerSeraya Pte Limited (PowerSeraya)

The toolkit hopes to show CSR as a way of doing business, and to share the visible benefits of engaging employees in CSR, so as to encourage companies to embark, forward or consolidate their journey towards a more environmentally and socially sustainable organisation. It particularly emphasizes inspiring and motivating employees along the way.

When employees become aware of what CSR really means, how it relates to their work and lives, and how their jobs can make a meaningful difference to the world, there is motivation and job satisfaction. Moreover, it also ensures tremendous business benefits to companies, both in the short and long terms; a sustainability-business link that is too often missed.

The presence, profile, and prominence of CSR in Singapore are ambivalent at best. Many local companies still regard CSR with much wariness or indifference. Unsurprisingly, the limited CSR efforts in Singapore are generic and lack the contextualisation to local needs and conditions. Singapore-based businesses tend to view CSR as a compliance issue, rather than as a way of doing business.”

– Eugene Tan in State of CSR Play in Singapore’ (1)

Introduction

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Efforts were made to represent companies of varying sizes from different industries, with a mix of local and international ones. The purpose of the interviews was to capture best practices as well as the challenges faced while engaging employees in the CSR process. The interviews were conducted between October 2014 and January 2015.

Why engage employees in CSR? There is increasing pressure on companies from various stakeholders to operate in a manner that is environmentally sustainable and socially just. The 21st century is plagued with issues such as climate change, resource scarcity, loss of biodiversity, pollution and gaping income inequality across nations, and within societies. In addition, increasing transparency enabled by the internet and social media enlighten stakeholders such as NGOs and customers, creating the context for the pressure. Companies are no longer able to get away with externalizing social and environmental costs in the wealth creation process.

Employee-Sustainability RelationshipYet responding to these pressures is not detrimental to the business objectives of an organisation. In fact, the importance of CSR brings positive business benefits such as cost savings, improved brand image and reduced reputational risk. This is dawning on companies in Asia and in Singapore. However, for any organisation to achieve sustainable development and growth, it has to rope in the participation of the most important stakeholder of all – the employee.

Employees bring their physical, emotional and intellectual energy, their skills and competencies, their ideas and inspirations to the workplace. A bulk of their lives and working years is spent in organizations; probably even more than the time they spend with their families and communities. Employees are increasingly looking for meaning in work to help them achieve job satisfaction and motivation. CSR and conscious action towards green practices give employees this meaning and sense of purpose, especially if done with genuine intent and not as a greenwashing exercise.

Various studies have shown this:

• CSR attracts quality talent, and can act as a differentiator. According to the Millennial Impact Report, 2014 by CASE Foundation and Achieve, a company’s involvement with causes is the third most important factor in applying for jobs. Increasingly, Gen Y is attracted to companies practicing CSR. (2)

• CSR provides sustained competitive advantage through motivated employees. They contribute their ideas and knowledge to bring about innovation. This differentiates a CSR practicing company’s human resources from those of its peers. (3)

• Involvement and organisational commitment helps to retain talent, lower absenteeism and increase performance. (Jones 2010) (4)

• Together, these factors change the employee’s attitude toward the company and his job to a positive and dynamic one. This impacts loyalty and improves customer service providing sustainable business gains. (5)

Sustainability and employee

engagement are mutually reinforcing.

Sustainability can increase employee

engagement. Engaged employees

can advance sustainability

Andrew Savitz, author of ‘Talent, Transformation and

the Triple Bottom Line’

“In the case of SBR the benefits of engaging the staff on sustainability are clear: because SBR’s core business surrounds the concept of sustainability, the staff play an important role in conveying and representing this image to the stakeholders. Engagement of the staff on sustainability is a key

component to the business strategy.”

- Sylvain Richer de Forges, Sustainability Manager at Siloso Beach Resort (SBR)

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Introduction

For any CSR effort to be successful, a critical step is top management support; otherwise it may be difficult to get the resources and the mandate to sustain CSR. It is also a prerequisite for engaging employees on a company wide scale, and influencing organisational culture towards sustainability.

Moral Management as a container for employee engagement

One of the earliest efforts to capture the spirit of CSR in relation to engaging employees is from Archie B. Carroll’s seminal work “The pyramid of corporate social responsibility: toward the moral management of organizational stakeholders (1991)” (6). How management views its employees, to a large extent determines the way employees can be engaged around sustainability, since engagement for sustainability cannot happen in a vacuum.

Based on this viewpoint there are three styles of management detailed below:

Type of Management Orientation Toward Employee Stakeholders

Immoral Management Employees are viewed as factors of production to be used, exploited, and manipulated for gain of individual manager or company. No concern is shown for employees’ needs/rights/expectations, short-term focus. Coercive, controlling, alienating.

Amoral Management Employees are treated as law requires. Attempts to motivate focus on increasing productivity rather than satisfying employees’ growing maturity needs. Employees still seen as factors of production but remunerative approach used. Organization sees self-interest in treating employees with minimal respect. Organization structure, pay incentives, rewards all geared toward short- and medium-term productivity.

Moral Management Employees are a human resource that must be treated with dignity and respect. Goal is to use a leadership style such as consultative/participative that will result in mutual confidence and trust. Commitment is a recurring theme. Employees’ rights to due process, privacy, freedom of speech, and safety are maximally considered in all decisions. Management seeks out fair dealings with employees.

PART II

ENGAGING EMPLOYEES IN CSR

CSR can only become a reality when leaders adopt the ‘moral management’ style and methods towards employee stakeholders.

A context of ‘moral management’ requires leaders of organisations to: • Treat employees as partners in ‘value

creation’ - in line with the changing norms of the 21st century; not just as ‘resources’ or ‘commodities’ as in earlier industrial eras

• Establish a fair, inclusive and harmonious work environment, allowing diverse ethnic backgrounds, ages, genders and abilities to interact

• Regard employees at all levels as agents of positive change; build trust and transparency, with a tolerance of risk-taking and failure in context

• Create an environment to encourage feedback and suggestions from employees; this can bring forth radically innovative solutions for a company’s processes and products – as employees are sometimes the first to sense the pulse of suppliers, customers or other stakeholders in the network

• While stretch goals may be important for organisations, ensure that employees are not burnt out with unrealistic goals and targets.

Role ModellingThe next important factor for successful engagement of employees is that top management becomes a role model by embracing CSR at a personal and organisational level. When the CEO and senior management support the sustainability initiatives of the organisation, employees are more likely to follow suit. The important thing is that employees appreciate the authenticity of senior management efforts, and that it does not come off as a PR exercise.

Top Management Support

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1

Top Management Support

Synergy between top management and sustainability advisors

It is important to put in place a formal structure for management-sustainability advisor relations, especially for larger organisations. This indicates to employees the board’s commitment to CSR. It also allows the permeation of efforts across departments and hierarchies.

Though not all organisations interviewed had a formal structure like the one given below, what is important is the synergy between top management and the advisory team. Each of the companies interviewed demonstrated clear ownership from the top, either formal or informal; it appears to be a necessary condition for employees to be engaged in sustainability.

An Origin Exterminator employee

Origin Exterminators and ‘Moral Management’

In the case of Origin Exterminators, an SME family-owned pest management company in Singapore, top management support for CSR is visible and drives its culture. Carl Baptista, the CEO believes that CSR is a key priority, “We can’t think of doing business in any other way than what is environmentally sustainable.” Pest control is hardly a glamorous profession, but Baptista’s employees derive a strong sense of self-esteem – they are called ‘JEDIs ‘(from the Star Wars movie) and ‘Originators’ rather than ‘Pest Control Technicians’. These titles are even used by Origin’s customers. Their P.R.I.D.E. (which is also the corporate motto for Professionalism, Respect, Integrity, Discipline and Efficiency) comes from knowing that they are solving problems around pest control using non-toxic and environmentally friendly methods.

10 Top Management Support

City Developments Limited’s CSR CommitteeTop management commitment was a critical factor in City Developments Limited (CDL) becoming a pioneer in CSR in Singapore. When Esther An, Chief Sustainability Officer, joined the company in 1995, she found that, “The construction industry in the 1990s did not have a good reputation. To the layperson, it was an industry deemed to be focusing on profit-making and to an extent, one that destroyed the environment before constructing.”

She was given a clear mandate from top management to overturn this perception, to one that ‘conserves as we construct.’ She continues, “In 1995, CSR was alien to business, at least in Singapore. We were searching in the dark, as we had no standards or examples to go by.”

CDL persevered in its CSR journey and became the first Singapore listed company to be on FTSE for Good since 2002, for its sustainability efforts. They brought environment, health & safety into construction; by managing energy and water use, reducing carbon emissions, innovating new building techniques that reduce resource consumption as well as enhancing workers’ health and safety.

Having a clear structure around the CSR committee, CDL’s Singapore headquarters engage 450 employees across various departments in its CSR activities. The CSR committee reports directly to the board, indicating that the company believes in CSR. CSR is deemed to be a business differentiator that is contributing to shareholder value.

CDL’s CSR CommitteeSource: CDL Sustainability Report 2014 (7)

11Top Management Support

2 Creating a Shared Understanding of CSR

CSR or sustainability may mean different things to different people. One key step is to embody it in the company’s vision and mission statements, in a way that makes it comprehensible to all employees. One can look to the ISO 26000 guidelines, for example, for capturing various dimensions of sustainability, but there is a need to simplify the message in a few meaningful and impactful words that capture its essence.

ISO 26000 unlike other ISO standards, is not a certifiable standard. It provides voluntary guidance on what social responsibility is, and helps businesses and organizations translate principles into effective actions and shares best practices relating to social responsibility.

It consists of the following core topics and sub topics that a business must incorporate into its operations to be considered environmentally and socially sustainable.

Core topics and subtopics on ISO 26000

Core Topics Subtopics

Organisational Governance Structure and processes for decision-making

Human Rights Due diligenceHuman rights risk situationsAvoidance of complicityResolving grievancesDiscrimination and vulnerable groupsCivil and political rightsEconomic, social and cultural rightsFundamental principles and rights at work

Labour Practices Employment and employment relationshipsConditions of work and social protectionSocial dialogueHealth and safety at workHuman development and training in the workplace

The Environment Prevention of pollutionSustainable resource useClimate change mitigation and adaptationProtection of the environment, biodiversity and restoration of natural habitats

Fair Operating Practices Anti-corruptionResponsible political involvementFair competitionPromoting social responsibility in the value chainRespect for property rights

Consumer Issues Fair marketing, factual and unbiased information and fair contractual practicesProtecting consumers’ health and safetySustainable consumptionConsumer service, support, and complaint and dispute resolutionConsumer data protection and privacyAccess to essential servicesEducation and awareness

Community Involvement and Development

Community involvementEducation and cultureEmployment creation and skills developmentTechnology development and accessWealth and incomeHealthSocial investment

Definition of Corporate Social Responsibility according to ISO 26000 (2010)

The ISO 26000 Guidance on Social Responsibility (8) (clause 2.18) defines “social responsibility” as the “responsibility of an organization for the impacts of its decisions and activities on society and the environment, through transparent and ethical behaviour that:

• Contributes to sustainable development, including health and the welfare of society;

• Takes into account the expectations of stakeholders;

• Is in compliance with the applicable law and consistent with international norms of behaviour; and is integrated throughout the organization and practiced in its relationships.”

These core topics of ISO 26000 are useful to set a context for engaging employees for sustainability. They need to be embodied implicitly in the company’s CSR vision and mission statements which should go beyond compliance to law.

12 Creating a Shared Understanding of CSR

To comply is not a vision

In the words of the late CEO of Interface, Ray Anderson, ‘To comply is not a vision’.

Merely complying with the law changes little in the ‘Take-Make-Waste’ economy, which is the root cause of the social and environment problems facing the world. Most CSR initiatives are about ‘doing less bad’ (comply) versus ‘doing good’ (vision). The latter needs a new paradigm such as creating a circular economy where the waste of one industry is fed as input to other industries; where products are fabricated to last longer, and are designed at the drawing board with end-of-life disassembly and recycling in mind. This is evidenced in the “7 fronts” by which Interface, a carpet manufacturing company, approaches sustainability. It helps employees understand the message of ‘Take nothing, do no harm.’

Eliminate all forms

of waste in every area of

business.

Eliminate toxic substances

from products, vehicles and

facilities

Operate facilities

with 100% renewable

energy

Redesign processes

and products to close the technical loop using

recovered and bio-based materials

Transport people and products efficiently to

eliminate waste and emissions

Create a culture that uses

sustainability principles to

improve the lives and livelihoods

of all of our stakeholders - employees,

partners, suppliers, customers,

investors and communities.

Create a new business model that

demonstrates and supports the value of

sustainability-based

commerce

7 Fronts by Interface with wordings from Natural Step Case Study (9)

13Creating a Shared Understanding of CSR

Net-works by Interface

• Establish mission and vision statements with embedded social and environmental responsibility intention as a constant reminder and inspiration to employees

• Incorporate ISO26000 principles and core topics into key elements of the organisational strategy

• Embed environmental and social responsibility into policies, procedures, systems and decision-making

• Link policies to measurable and verifiable objectives for each functional department

Steps to create shared understanding and action for sustainability

Understanding what CSR means at Interface

If you had asked Karen Lee about corporate sustainability two years ago, she probably wouldn’t have much to tell. She recalled being told by the recruiting company that she would be interviewed for a marketing role with a carpet manufacturer. She was not at all excited as it sounded like a mundane business. While preparing for the job interview, she went through the company’s website which outlined Interface’s bold vision of eliminating any negative impact to the environment by 2020. That changed her perception. She felt inspired watching videos of Ray Anderson, the charismatic late-founder of Interface who had a wake-up call about the state of the planet, and set the path for the company to become a ‘restorative’ one which gives back to the environment instead of destroying it.

After starting work with Interface, she soon realized that the business had spent nearly half of its lifetime pursuing sustainability - it was not just something they did, it was part of their ‘DNA’. Her understanding of sustainability deepened with the on-boarding programme, as well as her trip to the factory in Thailand (the first LEED certified building in Thailand), where she was exposed to the entire manufacturing process.

She saw how employees were provided a healthy and safe work environment; how they interacted with the R&D team to understand current research to find safer and recyclable alternatives for materials used in carpets; the efforts made to source sustainable raw materials, as well as the process of recycling them at their end-of-life. The Interface Thailand factory contextualised how Mission Zero and 7 Fronts (Diagram on previous page) were being translated into action.

For Karen, the sustainability mission and culture were inspiring enough, but what really touched her deeply was Net-Works, an unprecedented initiative by Interface to reinvent their supply chain by creating net positive social and environmental impacts. ‘Net-Works’ in the Philippines pays fishermen for collecting discarded nets from the oceans. These nets which trap and kill marine life and destroy the marine ecosystem are now being sold to Interface’s yarn supplier, Aquafil to be recycled into yarns for Interface’s carpets. The payment for every 3kg of nets is enough to feed a family of five, and the additional source of revenue also helps send the fishermen’s children to school. Karen recalled sitting at an event where her colleague presented Net-Works to an audience of top architects and developers and feeling immensely proud to be a part of a great company which believes in “Doing Well by Doing Good”.

Today, Karen is the Sustainability Communications Manager of Interface and a key part of her role is to communicate the understanding and importance of sustainability within and outside the business.

14 Creating a Shared Understanding of CSR

Simplifying the central message to employees Standard Chartered Bank’s (SCB) key pillar of growth is sustainability, and it shares this vision through its brand promise in three simple yet effective words, ‘Here for good.’ Nisha Menezes, Sustainability Manager, Group Technology & Operations shares how this message helps to create an understanding for sustainability. “If we are going to be here for the long run, then we have to support and grow with our local communities and clients, and with our own staff. ‘Here for good’ is the way we do business and each employee integrates this into his or her day to day tasks. For some it may mean environment, for others it may mean giving back to the community through volunteering. It’s personal to each of us”

Michael Kwee, Co-ordinating Director of Banyan Tree Global Foundations recalls that during their discussions with the sales team about their three pillars of sustainability (increasing operational efficiency, protecting biodiversity, and developing local capacity), they realized these did not resonate. He adds that the Marketing team helped create a new conceptual structure to simplify what the three pillars mean. This has been boiled it down to 3 elements.

Build for Good – while international best practices are sought to be included into the design and construction of the resorts, all the new resorts are 3rd party certified to internationally leading standards.

Stay for Good – where guests can feel reassured that they are staying in a hotel working to safeguard the environment and the wellbeing of the local community members. Guests also have the opportunity to engage in social and environmental activities, such as assisting in a school by helping to set up the classroom, cleaning up, or otherwise assisting teachings.

Meet for Good – where MICE clients can be assured they are at least indirectly contributing to support communities and the environment.

Michael Kwee notes that they see this as an awareness campaign that helps convey the organisation’s values and efforts by reducing the jargon accompanying sustainability discussions, especially to help these efforts resonate with people who may not have a sustainability background or may otherwise be in the early stages of being interested in sustainability.

In Banyan Tree’s case, the operationalization of the strategy happens in this manner. The CSR Champions collect the consumption data from various departments; it is uploaded for benchmarking and certification; then updated and shared for review by the Executive Committee of the concerned resort. At the daily briefings, the General Managers of the resorts can then pass along and prioritise topics to department heads; who then cascade the information down through their respective departments.

Banyan Tree Trainees

15Creating a Shared Understanding of CSR

The Human Resources (HR) function has the potential to play a supportive role in facilitating employee engagement for sustainability. In fact, some organisational development experts feel that HR should take a leadership role in CSR because employees play a critical role in the value creation process, which can no longer be defined in narrow financial terms.

Value creation involves considering environmental and social impact, and how stakeholders’ interests, i.e., of suppliers, customers as well as employees -the key stakeholders - are taken care of. HR’s capabilities can be leveraged in many areas to help create and maintain a culture of sustainability in the organisation.

3Making the business case for sustainability

HR may not always comprehend the benefits of embedding a CSR culture in the organisation. Often, a business case for sustainability has to be made to them. Managing trust and risk are critical HR objectives, and CSR can partner with HR is this process to help in adding long term value to the business.

The table below by Elaine Cohen in the book, ‘CSR in HR’ aptly summarises the business value in having HR with a CSR mindset. It provides a framework to define metrics to support HR, sustainability and business goals. The following are areas, where HR can help integrate a CSR culture in the organisation:

Source: ‘CSR in HR: A Necessary Partnership for Advancing Responsible Business Practices’ by Elaine Cohen, 2010 (11)

HR with a CSR mindset: ROI

HRM role HRM objective HRM metric Business value

Values and Ethics Employees understand and behave in line with corporate values.

% of employees trained in values and ethics. Mitigation of risk due to unethical behaviour by employees. Improved corporate reputation and trust.% of employees responses in survey showing

employee support company values.

Recruitment Recruitment is based on diversity principles.

% of employees recruited by gender and by minority groups.

Improved business results, innovation and customer satisfaction.

Compensation Compensation is driven by equal opportunity for men and women.

Ratio of base salary men to women. Lower HR costs due to turnover, improved motivation and trust.

Compensation is linked to sustainability performance.

Number of employees with sustainability targets in annual work-plants.

Improved execution of sustainable business strategy.

Well-being Employees are fit to contribute to their maximum capability.

% of employees who engage in a corporate wellbeing program.

Reduced business health costs, lower absenteeism, improved productivity.

% improvements achieved in employee wellbeing (health, stress, diet etc.)

Development Diverse employees are given opportunities to advance.

% of women in management positions. Improved business results, innovation and customer satisfaction.

% of minorities in management positions.

Engagement Employees understand and act in line with sustainability strategy and principles.

% of employees trained in sustainability. Improved execution of sustainable business strategy.

Employees enhance corporate community relations.

% of employees volunteers. Employee engagement, reputation benefits, enhanced community relationships.

Employees contribute to improving environmental impacts.

% of employees participating in “green” activities.

Energy and materials costs reductions.

Aligning HR and CSR

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‘

CSR - HR = PR

If employees are not engaged, corporate social

responsibility becomes an exercise in public

relations. The credibility of an organisation will

become damaged when it becomes evident the

company is not ‘walking the talk’

Adine Mees and Jamie Bonham (Canadian Business for Social Responsibility) (10)

Aligning HR and CSR

‘

(a) Establishing an Employee Code of Conduct

The ‘Employee Code of Conduct’ visibly demonstrates an organisation’s commitment to its values in the areas of environment and social responsibility as well as ethics and governance. HR needs to articulate clearly, what is expected of employees, and what guidance is available in ambiguous or difficult circumstances.

(b) Recruitment of talent

HR can recruit the right people in the right way, building an inclusive workplace allowing for gender balance, minorities, people in transition, and people with flexi-work requirements, special needs and older workers. HR can also brief line managers on CSR and sustainability oriented assessment questions to be asked at interviews. Candidates who are deeply interested in and committed to sustainability are themselves likely to ask questions regarding the values and actions taken by the company in CSR. Esther An at CDL Singapore agreed that ‘even before employees join us, many choose to apply for a job in CDL because of our CSR and green commitment.’

(c) Orientation, training and development of employees

When new employees join, it is a good opportunity to educate them on sustainability policies and practices of the organisation in general and the specific office they will be working in. Most organisations interviewed here, give importance to this CSR induction process. The CEO or Head of CSR usually provides the new employee a complete overview of the CSR strategy and achievements, as well as shares specific sustainability aspects like green building features, energy and water saving features and waste management activities. This is also a good starting point to inculcate behavior change practices to promote the CSR culture in the organisation and spot potential green champions.

There are ongoing opportunities for training and development of employees in sustainability as covered in Section 4: COMMUNICATION AND EDUCATION

Standard Chartered Bank’s Employee Code of Conduct

The Employee Code of Conduct has 24 items covering various areas such as ethics, respect for law, governance and treatment of stakeholders such as clients, customers and colleagues. It also has a clause on ‘Respect for our Communities and the environment’ which touches upon core operations as well as impact of client lending as follows:

“What does this mean for me?

You must understand and keep to our commitments to the environment and the wider Community. These commitments focus on: • programmes in tackling avoidable blindness (Seeing is Believing), HIV and

AIDS education and programmes supporting financial literacy;

• our responsibility to reduce the effect of our operations on the environment;

• the effect associated with clients’ activities using our financing;• providing a safe, secure and healthy working environment for our people

and customers.

As staff, we ask you to: • use your volunteering days to make a difference and encourage your

team members and colleagues to do the same;• reduce, reuse and recycle as much as possible;• ensure the provision of financial services in Wholesale and SME Banking is

done in alignment with the Group’s Position Statements which outline the environmental and social standards we expect clients and customers to observe; and

• follow our requirements for providing a safe, secure and healthy working environment.

Remember:We each have a responsibility to have a positive effect on our communities and the environment” Source https://www.sc.com/en/resources/global-en/pdf/sustainabilty/Code_of_Conduct.pdf

17

‘‘ The induction process

includes an overall briefing on our company, which also

shares our sustainability values and efforts- what

we’re trying to do and why. This helps to pass our values

to our employees. Many job seekers tend to be

aware of our sustainability reputation, thus they seek

us as an employer of choice and already have a

general understanding of our sustainability efforts and

some level of excitement about it. Our CSR champions

are then tasked to tap into that passion, inspire those

who are very interested, and help guide them along our

key strategic direction

Michael Kwee, Co-ordinating Director of Banyan Tree Global

Foundations

Aligning HR and CSR

(d) Incentives and Performance Management

If the singular focus of performance management is on financial or turnover performance metrics alone, then it is likely to skew towards profit maximizing behavior ignoring sustainability factors. Sustainability related KPIs , if linked to senior managers’ performance evaluations and incentives are more likely to make sustainability a core part of their job description, rather than becoming an add-on function. These KPIs need to be aligned with the overall sustainability agenda, preferably in the form of specific deliverables and responsibilities.

As found in the some of the organisations interviewed, the CSR managers’ or top management’s performance is linked partially or wholly to sustainability related KPIs.

The CEO of Interface Asia Pacific has his performance appraisal linked to key sustainability metrics which are aligned to the overall goals of the company towards Mission Zero. The targets for carbon emission reduction, reduction in energy and water use, and recycling rates, particularly at the manufacturing plant in Thailand are reported and measured every year. While it is not always a smooth upward curve, that does not deter Interface from improving and progressing towards their Mission Zero goal. Michael Kwee of Banyan Tree Global Foundations observed the benefits of making sustainability goals mandatory in the group resorts, “We’re also balancing the carrot approach with using the stick approach for operationalizing sustainability. Previously when we were rolling out benchmarking to our resorts, we relied on the carrots side by highlighting the various benefits. But the key shift came when we had enough of a critical mass to introduce the stick approach, where it was included in the Key Performance Indicators of the GM and property executive Committee members. It’s

something we can do specifically for operations as there is a much more direct tie in to profitability – the less water, energy wasted, the less the operational budget. So that’s been a fairly easy argument. Part of the progression includes empowering GMs with they understand of how much value this creates for the hotel owners, be those internal or external to Banyan Tree. By keeping money in their pockets via reducing operational costs, they are also able to bring more money in due to improved branding and awareness among guests to whom such efforts are interesting.” Choosing the relevant metrics is important, of course. Iolanda Meehan from Haworth says, “Not all employees may have influence in all areas of sustainability, but we do have sustainability targets that are performance related across multiple teams such as Product Marketing, R & D, Wellness & Sustainability and the Services Teams with metrics relevant to them.”

And where targets are not linked to KPIs directly, it is still important to monitor them closely. In SCB’s case, the Director, Group Chief Information Officer (CIO) is the executive sponsor for Eco efficiency and employee volunteering. His business function is also responsible for reduction of bank wide IT waste and energy use, office paper use along with facilitating reduction in travel with the support of technologies like video conferencing facilities. Those reporting to him are responsible for delivering on the reduction targets that the Bank has committed to externally. Where targets are not linked to KPIs, progress is tracked on a quarterly basis and form part of their annual performance appraisal as they are high on the Group CIO’s agenda.

(e) Feedback from employees

A very important way to engage employees is to make sure there is a two-way channel of communication in the organisation. Organisations must self-reflect and ask questions like:How open is top management to feedback from subordinates?How open are immediate bosses, colleagues and subordinates to feedback from each other?

Having an organisational culture that listens rather than instructs its employees can be really important to harness various ideas and talents within the company. Employees can be a source of innovation and improvement.

Carl Baptista of Origin Exterminators says it is during informal events when staff share their various on-the-job experiences, that some of the best ideas come through.

Recycling at Interface

18

‘If you want to understand an organisation’s culture, go to a meeting. Who speaks and who does not, who is listened to and who is not, which issues are addressed directly and which are ignored or addressed by innuendo are powerful clues to how an organisation really functions. We can always learn much more about organisational culture through reflective participation than from reading mission or value statements.

Edward Schein, an expert in organisational culture (12)

‘

Aligning HR and CSR

Some companies actively use the intranet and internal social media sites that enable employees to give immediate feedback to a particular posting. Emails are monitored to ensure matters raised are attended to.

The important thing is to make it easy for employees to give feedback, not feel judged, and where necessary, take action and appreciate an employee for raising an issue.

RICOH’s poster for feedback

Employees can be a great source of sustainable innovation in an organisation, as they interact with other stakeholders like suppliers, customers and communities. Haworth has ‘co-create’ teams in every office. Their role is to gather feedback from customers and members in order to come up with meaningful innovations and solutions.

Interface has an annual QUEST program which stands for ‘Quality Using Employee Suggestions and Teamwork.’ It empowers employees to identify and propose ways to reduce waste within their departments. Interface’s definition of waste is that it is “any measurable cost that goes into our product which does not come out as value to our customer” and could include anything from ineffective use of materials to non-productive costs and activities. The Finance team for example, identified that it was saddled with stacks of paper documents kept for years and no longer needed. They went on to find a supplier who could recycle them into new paper and implemented the process. In larger organisations, the most conventional way to get feedback is through annual employee surveys. Haworth has two

Staff engagement in Haworth

levels of surveys. Its Global Engagement Survey measures how connected employees are with the values of the organisation, which include sustainability (one of the core values), job satisfaction and pride at work. The four pillars of wellness that Haworth measures are Physical, Social, Career and Community. In-depth surveys are done usually as pre and post evaluation of specific organisational changes, to find out if employees are feeling inspired and supported by the four pillars. (More in Section 5: GREEN OFFICE)

Siloso Beach Resort (SBR) has various options for the staff to provide feedback. When it comes to sustainability measures the most efficient process is through the Sustainability Committee which meets a few times a year. Joining the meetings are managers of the different departments who would have gathered feedback from their departmental staff during a given period. Staff within a department will give feedback to their line managers on ways to improve the sustainability measures of their department.

The resort also conducts regular surveys. Some of them are focused on sustainability. Says Sylvain Richer de Forges of SBR, “One of our findings has been that it is more efficient to focus on one topic at a time rather than a generic survey on the overall sustainability measures of the resort which is already quite extensive. In this mind-set one of our latest initiatives is a trimestral thematic surrounding aspects such as water, energy, waste. During the given period we will conduct survey for the staff more specifically targeted at the thematic. In addition other passive measures such as an open box for staff to drop comments anonymously are in place.”

(f) Exit interviews

When employees leave an organisation, it is an opportunity to ask questions related to CSR and ethical issues, to assess the degree to which the employee perceives whether the organisation has lived up to its CSR commitments.

19

Policy on Whistle blowing Organisations like CDL comply with GRI reporting framework which has specific questions on human and labour rights. CDL has mechanisms to allow for any grievance resolution through

its various channels such as its Whistle Blowing policy.

Aligning HR and CSR

4 Communication and Education

Communication is the real key to keeping the organisation’s sustainability efforts at the forefront of employees’ awareness, and in establishing the CSR culture. Often sustainability can be a very ‘out there’ and a ‘big picture’ topic, far removed from the daily activities of employees. Also, a lot of staff are so caught up in the pressures and problems of work and life, it may difficult for them to comprehend this big picture; some may dismiss it as someone else’s or at best the management’s concern.

It makes sense to spend some time providing this big picture and one’s place and role in it. Simplify complex ideas and break them down into modular bits. Also any new concept takes time to find its regular place in people’s awareness; repeated and continuous messages using different channels and platforms can help do this. It must also appeal to varied interest levels.

Diagram: ‘Engaging Employees in Corporate Responsibility: How the World’s leading Organisations Embed CR in Employee Decision–making, Jason Summers (Melcrum Publishing 2006) (13)

I AM COMMITTED

TO ACT

I BELIEVEEmployees are familiar with the

CSR strategy and how ti helps the company meet its objectives

I UNDERSTAND THE MESSAGEEmployees learn the reasons behind the company’s CSR objectives and begin to understand their role

in making the company successful.

I’M AWARE OF THE MESSAGEEmployees are familiar with the CSR strategy and how it helps

the company meet its objectives

It’s likely that employees may be at different stages when it comes to understanding the CSR message. The diagram below shows the spectrum of an employee’s understanding and engagement in CSR.

Moving from one level of the diagram to the higher one will require time, perseverance and a continuous strategy of communication to various staff at various levels. This is where education of staff in CSR comes in.

20

With regards to this, SBR has a range of measures to ensure that all staff know at least the basics of the Resort’s policies and achievements in sustainability. Education starts with an exposure of the concept during the orientation process that every new hire needs to go through. SBR also has a range of operational procedures specific to each department which put a strong emphasis on sustainability.

Staff are expected to familiarize themselves with these practices and so learn the process. Over the years a culture of

sustainability has grown; it is part of SBR’s corporate image to which the staff play a significant part.

- Sylvain Richer de Forges, Siloso Beach Resort(SBR)

Communication and Education

Environmental reminders:

Amy Ho, Director, Office of Environmental Sustainability at NUS mentions that the University tries to communicate its message of a green identity through the logo ‘SustainABLE NUS’ which comprise of five sub themes around Energy, Water, Spaces, Mobility and Recycling.

The simple messages are used frequently on flyers and posters and as cut-out figures on campus lawns, helping the message to stick in the minds of students and staff alike.

Various platforms for communication and education

Some of the common platforms used by the companies interviewed are shared here:

ELECTRONIC: Emails, newsletters, e-zines, websites, blogs, webinars, podcasts, intranet, social media, wikis, and videos are a good way to catch most people PRINT: Newsletters, reports, magazines, brochures, postcards also reinforce the process FACE-TO-FACE: Lunch hour talks with guest speakers, workshops, movie screenings, quizzes, conferences, town halls, meetings, briefings, forums, focus groups, outreach programmes, exhibitions; persuasive speakers and trainers can have plenty of impact WORKSPACE: Environmental reminders like posters, calendars, diaries (without printing unnecessarily) and especially a comfortable work area

Policy Statement:

As a global citizen, Ricoh group is obligation-conscious of environmental conservation. In addition, we strive to honor our environmental responsibilities and concentrate group-wide efforts in environmental conservation activities, implementation of which we believe to be as significant as our business operations.

Guideline:

In line with the Ricoh Group Environmental Principles, Ricoh Asia Pacific Pte Ltd (RA) is committed to minimize the environmental impact of all our operations, to comply with legal and other requirements applicable to environmental, and to strive towards continual improvement in environmental performance by setting measurable objectives and targets.

In all our business activities, we strive to ensure that any individual performing tasks for the organisation is aware of environmental impact in day-to-day operations. Through appropriate education and training, thereby involving all Ricoh employees, the organization is competent in implementing continuous improvements to prevent pollution, and to use energy and natural resources more efficiently.

Working closely with customers and green partners, we strive to contribute to wider society, for whom we actively disclose information, participate, and assist in environmental conservation activities.

Nobuaki Majima Managing Director Ricoh Asia Pacific Pte Ltd

1st April 2009

RA ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY

RICOH’s environmental policy is clearly displayed on the office walls:

21Communication and Education

6. Use peer influence: Set up online dashboards or apps that enable departments to compare savings in energy or water or paper as a way of friendly competition. Making public commitments can help tap into peer influence.

7. Facilitate rather than instruct: The best ideas tend to come from employees themselves. In the US company Walmart’s My Sustainability Plan (MSP) program (16), employees voluntarily enrolled into the program. The buy-in was greater as they came up with their own ideas of everyday habits for a greener, healthier life.

8. Find and support champions: Several of the companies we interviewed were able to spot champions who are ready to come forward and take the lead on sustainability initiatives. Tap into the grassroots energy, give them training and support to help them lead green initiatives and nurture cross-departmental support.

Eco Action Day (15) is an annual nationwide campaign in Singapore encouraging awareness and action for the environment, culminating in the celebration of World Environment Day on June 5th. Over the years, it has grown to be an established platform for organisations and individuals to pledge environmental actions. Eco Action Day was initiated by RICOH Asia Pacific. The platform also awards companies and educational institutions who are championing CSR.

Tips for effective communication on sustainability

1. Explain the what and the why of the communication so that employees can connect to the larger environmental cause and the organisational goals

2. Make it personal to the employees’ personal values, interests and passions, rather than sharing abstract ideas

3. Make the message simple and easy to understand as people have short attention spans and competing priorities

4. Use fun and humour where appropriate, as it enhances learning

5. Increase frequency of messaging, though change its form and shape to keep the message fresh

6. Use two-way communication that’s interactive

7. Use multiple platforms, including multi-media ones

8. Tell good stories: Ray Anderson’s story in Interface inspired Karen Lee when she joined the company and understood the importance of action for sustainability (Inset Box on Pg 13 Section 2: CREATING A SHARED UNDERSTANDING OF CSR). Make the message stick. Dan and Chip Heath’s book ‘Made to Stick’ shares that stories should be short, emotional, surprising, concrete and believable

Effecting Behaviour Changes

Effective behaviour change towards sustainability, whether at an organisational or personal level is not always a straightforward task. Research and practical experiences of organisations, however, shed some light on what may work.

These are summarized here as some tips for effecting behavior change:

1. Create enabling environments: Recognise that people can’t be changed, only enabling environments can be created for people to change themselves e.g., allowing staggered work hours so people can take public transport, or creating a recycling room within the office to make it easy to recycle.

2. Tap into intrinsic values: If one really wants long term behavior change, Dr Tom Crompton from WWF UK (14) suggests from research, that messaging has to evoke ‘intrinsic values’ of people that appeal to their innate conscience for social and environmental issues, rather than ‘extrinsic values’ like monetary rewards or status. So if people are asked to switch off lights because it saves money (extrinsic value), it is likely to be less enduring as a behavior change, than if people’s sense of care for the environment (intrinsic value) were evoked.

3. Be a role model: Role models, especially in senior management play an important role in influencing people into action. Employees see that leaders are walking the talk, and are not just paying lip service to sustainability.

4. Remove structural barriers: Remove obstacles that would prevent employees from taking action with ease, e.g., asking employees to recycle without providing the infrastructure would make it difficult for them to do it. Allow for easy segregation of waste, providing clear instructions on what to do and what not to do.

5. Measure and make commitments: While this is not possible in all areas, enable employees to define metrics to help manage their sustainability goals, e.g. for reducing personal carbon footprint by taking public transport or through carpooling

22

“We believe in the “snow ball effect” by which a single person who can change his/her mind-set can influence others, which in turn will result in significant changes.”

- Sylvain Richer de Forges, Siloso Beach Resort

Communication and Education

12 Use the A.P.E.A.S.E. formula to design and evaluate behaviour change interventions A : Is it affordable and within budget? P : Is it practical, can it be designed to reach the target

audience?E : Is it effective – does it achieve intended objectives in a

cost-efficient manner?A : Is it deemed acceptable by relevant stakeholders? S : Does it have any unwarranted or unintended side-effects

or consequences?E : Is it equitable and fair, does it reduce disparities in

wellbeing, health or standard of living of people?

13 Check in regularly: Each employee in RICOH does a yearly environment competency check of 20 questions, automated with true or false questions, for the company to assess the level of environmental awareness and competence, so that their outreach can be improved accordingly.

14. Celebrate wins: This was a common theme among many of the companies interviewed here. Small and big wins are celebrated, and the particular employee or team’s efforts are acknowledged, showcased and highlighted to the organisation through various channels, to encourage them as well as to inspire others into action.

What if people don’t want to change? Is every employee open to change? Most unlikely. Ms. Nancy Lee, Founder of Social Marketing Inc, came up with a simple model of change management that works in the context of engaging people around CSR (18) (Lee, 2008):

Employees can be broadly categorised in to 3 groups based on their readiness for change: a) The Greens are people who possess green values as well as the behaviour. Encourage this group to continue their behaviour, otherwise there is a risk of alienating this group. b) The Sprouts are people who possess green values but not the behaviour. Reward and nudge this group to change their behaviour by providing them with tools. Make the benefits of behaviour change appealing for them, and removing barriers to change. Tailor messages that resonate with them. c) The Browns are people who possess neither the green values nor the behaviour. Generally ignore this group. Instead of tailoring the message to them, wait for them to change eventually with peer influence from Group B, as they would not want to be the minority. If the remaining Cs do not change, they are probably not a fit for the organisation.

In summary, enroll the Greens, nudge the Sprouts and let the Browns be.

9. Use Fun Theory: CSR doesn’t have to be boring or serious for employees. Allow some fun and humour to be incorporated in educating and inspiring them. Fun Theory (17) was an initiative by Volkswagen to change people’s behavior for the better by making it fun to do so. The design ideas came up by answering questions like these:

“Can we get more people to choose the stairs by making it fun to do?”“Can we get more people to throw their rubbish in the bin by making it fun to do?” “Can we get more people to use the bottle bank by making it fun to do?”

10. Show the carrots: Providing incentives may induce people into action, but as we mentioned in Point 2 above (Intrinsic vs Extrinsic values) it may sustain action only for the short term. However, it may still have a role to play depending on the objectives of the campaign. IKEA Singapore, for example, has a More Sustainable Life@Home (MSL@H) programme, where they like to engage and inspire employees to lead a sustainable life at home. Around this is an MSL@H contest where employees choose a more sustainable product sold by IKEA that they like, and win as prizes for their feedback. 

11. What about the stick? Threats or punishment rarely work, which only tend to create more resistance. However, mandating action on sustainability may sometimes be more effective than carrots, as Banyan Tree Global Foundation has done, to make sustainability metrics as part of the KPI of General Managers of their resorts. (See Section 3(d) ALIGNING HR & CSR)

23Communication and Education

A green office may mean different things to different people. Here are three facets to a green office.

5.1 Green Office for resource conservation: Resources such as energy, paper, water usage are monitored and reduced over a period of time. In terms of impact, air travel in general has the biggest impact in terms of scope for carbon emissions reductions

5.2 Green Office supporting personal sustainability habits: These are encouraged and supported by the organisation. In terms carbon emissions and ecological impact, personal air travel, and diet composition are important to target

5.3 Green Office for the mental and emotional wellbeing of employees: Well- designed ergonomic spaces, mindfulness at work and work-life harmony create this environment

5.1. Green Office for resource conservation

Having a third party certification is a useful step to set up systems and processes to establish a Green Office. In Singapore, such a scheme is Project Eco-Office.

5 Green Office

RICOH Asia Pacific Vision Crest office

5.1.a Staff Air Travel

From a carbon emissions reduction as well as a cost savings perspective, this has the maximum impact among green office actions, so it makes sense to cut down on unnecessary air travel. It is an issue that has not been easy to address for most organisations interviewed, especially the ones with regional operations. Certain divisions have to be in direct contact with customers; in many cases video conference calling (an environmentally friendly and cost effective alternative to travel) is not seen as a preferred solution. Under the GHG Protocol, organisations are advised to pay attention to the environmental impact and carbon emissions of electricity and carbon fuel usage (Scope 1-2). It is noteworthy, that companies in the Asia region with operations in Australia and New Zealand have to get their products certified as carbon neutral (which also includes offsets for staff air travel) as this is the customer preference in those countries. Carbon neutral certification of products is not a priority amongst Singaporean and Asian businesses yet. At Interface’s Singapore office, however, air travel miles of all employees are monitored quarterly and carbon offsets are purchased to the tune of 110%, again demonstrating to employees that the organization is keen to account for its footprint. Standard Chartered Bank, (as mentioned in greater detail in Section 6: VOLUNTEERING & OUTREACH ACTIVITIES) came up with its own carbon offset programme through tree planting projects that involved employees.

5.1. b Electricity

Reducing electricity usage is a low hanging fruit that leads to cost savings. Energy saving light bulbs, efficient air-conditioners and strategically positioned work areas and appliances can help to reduce energy use and costs, but technology can only do so much – a change in habits and behavior patterns of employees makes the essential difference to a Green Office.

What is Project Eco-Office? (19) Project Eco-Office was launched on 5th June 2002 to mark World Environment Day. It is a joint initiative between Singapore Environment Council (SEC) and City Developments Limited (CDL). There is an Eco-Office Rating System on its website, which enables offices to do a self-audit. This audit is based on simple metrics, like corporate environmental policy and commitment, purchasing practices, waste minimisation measures, levels of recycling, etc.

One of its objectives is to inspire and educate management and non-management staff to do their part to preserve the environment, and to promote the principles and practices of office environmental responsibility, through sharing of knowledge and experience. Companies like RICOH Asia Pacific are strong advocates for Eco-Office. RICOH opens its office doors for visits by other organisations who wish to learn more about Eco-Office.

24 Green Office

Here are some ways to bring about behavior change, some of which we observed in the organisations interviewed:

Visual reminders, using posters and stickers in strategic locations nudging people to switch off lights, air-conditioning and laptops after usage.

Sustainability related education for new staff during induction; supported by green teams’ continuing education as ambassadors of sustainability

Creating deterrents, for example, in RICOH Asia Pacific’s VisionCrest office, the air conditioning switch is locked, so no one can change (i.e. reduce) the temperature to below 25 degree C to which it is set. However portable fans are provided to individual employees, as some may feel the need for them.

Sticker at CDL’s office

RICOH’s pantry wall with environmental communication

Mapletree poster

RICOH’s locked air conditioning switch

Getting support from the landlord can help spread habits across offices. Kevin Lee from YTL PowerSeraya recalls advocating a few years ago to Mapletree, the landlord, to nudge all tenants to keep the airconditioning up by 1 degree on World Environment Day, a practice that Mapletree has taken up and follows now.

Monitoring usage by making public comparative data on energy usage by various departments, on a regular basis, to allow staff to compare how they have been using appliances.

RICOH, makes this available monthly on Lotus Notes Database and on the environment display board in the pantry. Abnormal deviations need to be justified. A system of collection of utility data from finance departments, as well as collation and monitoring by the Environment Committee members keeps the process functioning smoothly.

Top down and bottom up efforts for solutions

In the case of Banyan Tree’s resorts, the directives are top down but the solutions to meet those directives and to put them into place are bottom up. Essentially, if a GM gives a directive such as “we have to reduce energy consumption by 5% in 6 months” - it can’t be magically reduced – it falls on each department to see how they can contribute to overall energy efficiency. It’s the responsibility of the engineering team, the housekeeping team, the F&B team, and the entire resort team. In the hotels industry, the house keeping team has some of the greatest control over energy and water consumption by going into rooms every day for cleaning the room. Housekeepers can leave the doors wide open and allow the heat or cold out of the room and make the HVACs work harder, or they can set it to a moderate temperature and be very conscientious about doors and windows being open. They can look at different ways of maintaining cleanliness in resource efficient manners. Another key area is F & B. An example for an idea for fuel conservation that spread from one resort is how to utilize LPG fuel canisters when they are nearly exhausted. This affects our overall fuel consumption. As cooking requires a higher LPG pressure, F & B teams used to change the fuel canister when the pressure dropped below a point, even though there was still some fuel in the canister. As laundry does not need such high pressures from the canister, they were able to take canisters used by F & B and suck the remaining LPG out of the canister. Our management style is to set targets and boundaries so that when we put the challenge out there we can also inspire our team members to use their own creativity and talent to meet those targets. They are more the experts; for example, housekeeping is more the expert on housekeeping than any others who don’t know the intimate details of the housekeeping processes. Michael Kwee, Co-ordinating Director, Banyan Tree Global Foundations

Banyan Tree F & B staff

25Green Office

5.1.c Paper

Advancements in printer technologies have enabled a range of features that can show consumption of paper by person/groups/departments including the time of use. These help to monitor usage of paper by employees. Most organisations interviewed here, use these features to set and achieve paper usage targets; abnormal usage need to be justified. RICOH makes it necessary for employees to walk up to the printer to activate the print command with a card. A lot of unnecessary/mistaken printing is avoided. Printing on both sides, and recycling paper is encouraged.

Some organisations buy sustainably sourced paper (e.g. certified by Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) as made from sustainable plantations) or recycled paper. This is an opportunity to make employees and customers aware of its raw materials and stationery sourcing policies. Singapore Environment Council (SEC) also uses Green Label certified paper that allows employees to print 4 to 8 times on erasable paper, which is good for temporary printing uses.

Ricoh Asia Pacific’s Environment Committee

Ricoh has a cross functional Environment Committee consisting of about 20 people, divided into three teams - Assessment, Operations and Promotion. Each team consists of volunteer members from the Environmental Management Group. This group takes a second seat, allowing department members (from HR, administration, legal, IT, service, strategic marketing and product & solutions marketing) to take the lead.

Assessment team is responsible for ISO 14001, Internal Audit training and BSI (external auditors), and eco-office certification audit. Members of the Assessment team do not change every year, as there is investment made in training them on mandatory certifications Operations team Utility bills, stationery orders and staffs’ air travelling records are monitored by the Operations team (for Project Eco-Office purposes) - to analyse usage and carbon footprints monthly to prepare a usage report. Energy and paper consumption reports are shared via Lotus Notes with staff. Operations team ensures that empty toners and used paper get sent for recycling. Machines or electronic waste are co-ordinated for collection by TESS-EMM, an e-waste recycling company. Promotion team raises employee awareness on environmental issues. They prepare posters, email blasts, even organise movie screenings during lunch hour and eco quizzes. During movie screenings, lunch boxes are arranged and movie vouchers given as incentives. RICOH rewards the committee members through vouchers. Performance within the Environmental Committee is evaluated by the committee leader as High, Medium or Low. A ghost member who doesn’t contribute to the team gets vouchers with lesser amount. Team leaders usually get the highest recognition.

Poster at CDL

26 Green Office

Sticker at CDL

5.1.d Water

Apart from technological solutions such as water flow regulators, automatic sensors to switch off taps and water-efficient cisterns, employees must be made aware of the need to prevent water wastage. In most organisations interviewed, environmental reminders are commonly used to serve as nudges. Like energy usage and paper, water consumption can also be monitored with targets per month.

Often indirect water usage is not accounted for. In countries like Singapore where drinking water is safe to consume, bottled water is largely unnecessary, and is also wasteful in terms of energy and water use for production and transport. Bottled water at events organised by the company should be minimized, or better eliminated by requesting conference organisers to provide jugs and glasses instead. Likewise, encouraging employees to bring their own bottles to fill up at work can be a worthwhile habit.

Separate bins at RICOH for recycling

5.1.e Waste

Waste segregation and recyclingWaste segregation can be implemented by providing space for separate bins. RICOH’s premises have a small room set aside for this. It is now part of the organisation culture to separate waste into paper, plastic, metal and other recyclables. Food contaminated waste goes into the pantry bin. Siloso Beach Resort’s F&B generates food waste which is converted into compost using a composting machine. These steps show employees to take waste segregation seriously. Waste minimizationA big opportunity to engage employees in conservation of resources is in reducing the use of disposables such as plastic bags, styrofoam, bottled water (as discussed above in the section on WATER) among others. For organizations with pantries and canteens, the daily use of disposables could be replaced with reusable bags, washable and reusable utensils and cutlery. Providing long-use, refillable pens with refills is also more sustainable. Where unavoidable, cornware is a better option for food ordered at events. Even though not ideal as it is a disposable item, it has a neutral carbon footprint with no harmful chemicals leaching into the food as is the case with styrofoam. One often repeated excuse is that food at events is outsourced, so there is no control over how caterers serve food. However, it is possible to make that a requirement, and reduce the quantity of food ordered at events (which also helps to reduce food wastage) to make up for the small increase in cost for cornware. Making employees aware of such responsible choices makes them engaged in the process of becoming sustainable.

Some employees may grumble initially at the efforts to reduce disposables because a use and throw culture may have become entrenched. However, once green habits catch on, people will embrace it as the new norm, and even take these habits to their families.

Instructions at RICOH to not recycle food contaminated waste

Instructions at RICOH’s pantry

27Green Office

5.2.b Commuting to Work Organisations can encourage staff to take public transport or do car pooling instead of using individual cars to drive to work. Singapore Environment Council (SEC), responsible for Project Eco-Office, and RICOH for example, have staggered timings for office workers to start and end their day. In SEC’s case it is 8:30am to 10am, with 9am to 5:30pm being the official timings. RICOH’s flexi start times are from 7:30am to 9:30am. It’s important for senior managers to actively encourage and support the policy for it to be accepted. Creating an infrastructure, where possible, also supports this, e.g., proving parking space for bicycles, and shower rooms and lockers in the building to encourage people to cycle or walk or jog to work.

Providing a shuttle bus is another option that many organisations provide. NUS has shuttle buses on campus as part of their ‘Sustainable Mobility’ vision. Standard Chartered Bank’s office at Changi Business Park which is on the outskirts of the city, provides multiple shuttle routes to MRT stations and to various parts of the city for its employees and visitors. These reduce the need for private transport.

5.2.c Others

Other actions by employees can be encouraged through in-house dashboards, supporting voluntary action by employees in their personal lives. Public commitments made by employees can inspire others to follow suit. By way of impact on carbon emissions, personal air travel would account for the most, and employees can be made aware of this, and opportunities to offset these emissions for necessary travel.

Burn Calories not Gas placard at NUS

5.2. Green Office to support Personal Sustainability habits

Personal sustainability habits are the green habits that employees embrace outside the workplace. They may be supported by the organisation in some way or the other. There are several hundreds of tiny actions that employees can adopt as part of a green lifestyle, but we look at a few key ones where the organisation can play a part.

5.2.a Diet

The type of food made available at the pantry or canteen can be a point for awareness raising from both the environment and health points of view.

• Meat and dairy have a higher carbon, energy and water footprint; employees can be educated on the advantages of having less meat and dairy. More vegetarian/vegan food options will help make this shift. These options also need to be tasty and attractive. A Meatless Day could be encouraged too.

• Seafood has become an ecological issue with over-fishing and pollution. Avoid serving exotic or endangered items in the menu. Use ‘Save the Fish’ Singapore Seafood Guide by WWF Singapore (20) as a source of information, to lay an organizational policy on this.

It’s very important to communicate to employees the organisation’s policies and actions on food. Employees also feel cared for when there are healthier snack options at the pantry such as fruits or nuts instead of highly processed foods.

28 Green Office

5.3. Green Office for the mental and emotional wellbeing of employees

There isn’t much point having an eco-efficient office – which no doubt is important from an environmental impact point of view – if the people working in it are highly stressed and unhealthy. A green office must also embrace the health and wellbeing of its employees. This may be addressed in the following ways.

5.3.a ‘Organic’ Office Spaces

Haworth designs workspaces focusing on employees’ emotional and physical wellbeing. It recognises that employees do so much of office-related work during personal time - given that we live in an era of digital devices where one is connected 24/7. It is only fair to be flexible when it comes to balancing personal commitments within work time. Iolanda Meehan says, ‘Nowadays most knowledge workers are connected to their work all the time, companies need to consider to allow the rest of life to enter the space only traditionally meant for work.’ The work culture is based on trust, and as long as work gets done, there is little monitoring of whether someone is at their desk, or at what time they enter or leave the office. An integral part of the design is the ‘Organic Spaces’ concept. Environments should be created, designed and built such that it can adapt to changing business and employees needs, rather than follow a fixed seating system regardless of requirements.

Healthy office spaces also take care of indoor air quality for its employees who work there for a major part of the day. According to the US Environment Protection Agency (EPA) “studies of human exposure to air pollutants indicate that indoor levels of pollutants may be 2 to 5 times – and occasionally more than 100 times – higher than outdoor

Organic Office Space at Haworth

Here are Haworth’s four aspects of wellness:

1. Physical Wellness – ensures that desks and furniture are ergonomically designed to allow for standing or sitting. Work desks are designed around activities – so employees can move between meeting rooms, spaces for discussions, as well as private areas to concentrate on work undisturbed.

2. Social Wellness – ensures every office is peppered with settings that allow people to interact/communicate directly with each other meaningfully - for a chat or coffee. Lounges with a residential design touch, create a relaxing and comfortable environment.

3. Career/Financial Wellness – is created by positive experiences for employees (as ‘experiences’ are increasingly the new currency as most people appreciate and remember positive experiences for much longer and more vividly than they remember or appreciate goods, even expensive goods)

4. Community Wellness – by creating spaces within (or outside) the office where like-minded people can meet, connect, exchange knowledge and insight, collaborate and co-create.

Haworth’s wellness aspects

pollutant levels. Indoor air pollutants have been ranked among the top five environmental risks to public health.” (21) The indoor air pollutants come from volatile organic compounds in furnitures, paints and carpets, as well as mold and dust from airconditioning ducts. Cleaning chemicals with allergy causing synthetic ingredients may also contribute to the problem.

29Green Office

5.3.b Biophilic spaces

Biophilia is a term coined by biologist, E. O.Wilson (22) and means ‘Love of living systems.’ Human beings from an evolutionary perspective are hardwired to feel a sense of wellbeing in nature’s presence. Confined indoor spaces that prevent natural sunshine, and views of natural scenery can affect people’s moods. Offices need to be designed to allow for natural light, scenery and ventilation. They can also incorporate more sensorial experiences that one tends to have outdoors, invoking natural sounds, smells and textures for example. Bring the outdoor indoors by having an herb garden or indoor plants where people can enjoy nature. Research shows that the presence of visual greenery helps to calm the mind. Urban food gardening is catching up in Singapore with many in civil society adopting it at home or in community gardens. Some companies are beginning to promote gardening in corridors or rooftops, as a way to engage employees around green activities, promote bonding, and also bring nature into the office space. The herbs grown can be shared in the pantry. Siloso Beach Resort has a big rooftop garden that caters herbs and veggies to its F & B.

5.3.c Mindful spaces

Container herb basket at Siloso Beach Resort (SBR)

Organisations all over the world are encouraging their managers and leaders to train in mindfulness techniques, given the modern context of rushed lives and stressful jobs.

Jacqueline Carter, Senior Trainer and Partner of The Potential Project (TPP) which provides mindfulness training in Singapore and 20 other countries says in the Huffington Post (23), “One key reason for bringing mindfulness into daily work is to help address the realities of our highly distraction-filled work environments. Mindfulness will not address all the challenges you are facing, but increasing focus and awareness and reducing emotional exhaustion is bound to have notable results in terms of performance and retention.” Mindfulness increases one’s sense of wellbeing, and also helps employees to become less reactive and more understanding of others, which in turn helps to create a more conscious and caring culture in any organisation or society. It is intimately linked to sustainability.

Tips to create mindful spaces based on research on mindfulness and positive psychology:

• Create spaces where employees can work for a part of their day, with no interruption from colleagues, phones and emails. Open office spaces can potentially be highly distracting, and reduce the productivity of people. Combine ‘focus spaces’ with communal spaces where people can interact and chat with each other, as that is also important.

• Allow for spaces for people to pause or sit in silence – this is to allow for short rest periods that encourage rejuvenation and creativity

• Have a central bell every hour or so, reminding people to get up from their desk and stretch or take a few breaths. There’s research to show that sitting is the new smoking, and it is hazardous for health.

• Allow for games, exercises and play. LinkedIn’s Singapore office which the author visited has created space for several indoor games – for exercise, relaxation and social interaction

• Put up gratitude boards. Again the LinkedIn office in Singapore has boards all over the office for employees to express gratitude to anyone in the office on a post-it pad. This helps to promote a sense of wellbeing.

30 Green Office

5.3.d Work-life Harmony Throughout the world millions of employees suffer from exhaustion, depression, anxiety and stress from overwork. In China alone, 600,000 die of work exhaustion, a term called ‘guolaosi’. (24) A similar phenomenon in Japan is called ‘karoshi’.(25)

Asia’s unprecedented economic growth in the last few decades has made this a systemic issue. High levels of stress is unsustainable from a human resource viewpoint. The survey by Morgan McKinley (26) concluded that long working hours has led to poor work- life balance for Singapore professionals. According to the survey: “The majority of Singapore’s professionals are working longer than their contractual hours, which are having a negative impact on their work-life balance. Over 80 percent (82%) of the professionals who responded to the Morgan McKinley Working Hours Survey 2014 say they are working in excess of the hours stipulated in their contracts which is slightly lower than Japan and Hong Kong (both 84%) but higher compared to China (65%). The overwhelming majority (85%) of respondents feel that excessive working hours are having an impact, upon their work-life balance. Despite this, Singapore’s professionals are continuing to work even when not at the office, with 72% of respondents saying they continue to work from home or on mobile devices.” Must the growth of an organisation come by pushing employees beyond their ability to meet their genuine needs for rest and good health? Burning out people in the mission of the growth of the organisation is definitely not sustainable. Such a work culture must shift to a more work-life harmonised one.

Tips for work life harmony Here are some suggestions that may be embraced depending on the context: • Bosses and subordinates may agree on stretch

targets, but not unreasonable ones. The growth targets set by top management need to be fair and reasonable and not hamper employees’ wellbeing A ‘lights out’ policy after a certain time in the evening in the office, allowing only for exceptions

• Allowing flexi work times, part time work and job sharing

• Allowing for employees to work from home depending on the nature of the job Providing special working arrangements for those with young children or relatives who need care

• Establishing a no-email expected policy over the weekend or late nights

• Allowing for real rest during vacation time, without employees being on call

• Providing career development leave e.g., for further studies

• Providing a sabbatical from work for valid reasons

31Green Office

CSR goes way beyond philanthropy or volunteering. As Sylvain Richer de Forges from Siloso Beach Resort (SBR) rightly points out, “A lot of companies just throw donations for social and environment projects without addressing their own impacts, which does not make much sense and neither gives a good image of the company.” Organisational leaders need to understand this, before they can go about engaging employees on sustainability in a holistic and meaningful way.

Making staff volunteer instead of donate

Standard Chartered Bank (SCB) set up a volunteering program, funded by the carbon tax charged on flights taken by staff, in an effort to reduce their carbon footprint. An easier alternative would have been to buy carbon credits as offsets. Instead SCB wanted its employees to participate in tree planting programs in various countries, using local NGO partners to ensure that the trees planted are maintained and have high survival rates. This program is now being expanded to invite suggestions from its employees to go beyond tree planting. Volunteering is done with a clear purpose aligned to environmental goals to educate their staff on climate challenges whilst ensuring that employees are actively engaged in the process.

Being strategic about volunteering

Volunteering requires the company’s resources and efforts of employees. It must be well thought out, so that it brings value to the organisation and its employees, in the context of its overall CSR and sustainability goals. These are some of the questions one can ask before taking the decision to volunteer:

• What does your business really stand for?

• What impact will volunteering have on employees (beyond a ‘feel good’ factor)?

• Does volunteering help to change or improve organisational culture towards sustainability?

• How does volunteering affect the recipients; can this impact be sustained over time?

6 Volunteering & Outreach Activities

Tree Planting by SCB employees

My Tree House

CDL’s community projects through volunteering are strategic, in that they reflect the company’s expertise in green buildings. CSR at CDL uses volunteering as a means to enhance the understanding of the community and staff of green spaces. In 2014, CDL partnered with the National Library Board in transforming the children’s section of the Central library at Victoria Street in Singapore into a ‘green space’ for children. Called “My Tree House” – a name chosen after considering views from children of library staff, it is an awareness space.A tree house, made of recycled materials forms the centrepiece of the library. My Tree House has a lot of educational information about the environment. It creates a fun, welcoming, educational space for children and their families. Designed and executed by the CDL Project Managers with 11 like-minded partners and consultants, My Tree House also provides opportunities for employees to volunteer e.g., they hosted a sleepover party for disadvantaged children who had a safe, fun and educational experience. Esther An says, “Both My Tree House and the CDL Green Gallery@Singapore Botanic Gardens help educate the public on green buildings and innovations. Most people don’t understand what ‘BCA Green Mark’ (building certification for environmental standards) mean, but (at) these public platforms, visitors can experience what a green space and zero energy building is like; it also provides good volunteering opportunities.”

My Tree House at the National Library Children’s Section by CDL

Volunteering & Outreach Activities32

Benefits of Volunteering

There are certainly benefits to volunteering if done in a strategic way. Standard Chartered Bank (SCB) conducts an employee survey regularly with key questions on employee volunteering. The survey results indicate that those employees who are active volunteers are more engaged at work and intend to continue working in SCB for the next five years in comparison to those who have never volunteered. Hence the Bank recognises that volunteering helps them in the long run whilst benefitting the communities served.

Volunteering time: Paid or unpaid?

There are differing approaches to allowing for volunteering time. Most of the organisations that we interviewed encourage volunteering in employees’ own time and create opportunities for them to do so. SCB on the other hand provides for three paid volunteer days a year, especially because they clearly see the benefits and linkages between volunteering and staff engagement and retention rates. If SCB employees volunteer during the weekend, they are allowed to take a compensatory day off. Volunteering for 3-5 hours is considered as half a day, and 5-8 hours is considered as one full day. Donating money is not considered as volunteering. It is defined by SCB as time to help out local communities.

Outreach activities Outreach activities for employees are effective in getting people to contribute to environmental action – and experience is the best teacher. They can bring back this experience to the company. Here are just a few of the common outreach activities the companies we interviewed are undertaking for their employees:

• Outdoor Games• Retreats

Community outreach by Banyan Tree

Dumped gloves at the International Coastal Cleanup site

• Trips to recycling centres• Farm trips• Eco fairs• Nature walks (e.g. with Nature Society Singapore)• Support of local NGO efforts such as International

Coastal Cleanup, Food Bank, Water Watch Society, School programmes, etc

Caveat: It’s important that a proper briefing and debriefing is done before and after events to ensure that relevant messages are driven home. In the author’s own experience at a particular International Coastal Cleanup site, a large global company’s employees threw away about a hundred pairs of newly opened, good quality gloves (right) which had been used for the Cleanup, along with the plastic wrappings. The company probably claimed a lot of glory in their CSR newsletters and Sustainability Report, but have they really inculcated in their employees, the spirit of conservation of resources?

Volunteering & Outreach Activities 33

Another key area, in which companies can orient their employees towards sustainability, is through customer engagement. By empowering employees to communicate the concept, importance and methods to achieve sustainability to customers, they help spread the ripple effect to other organisations and to the public.

Here are some of the ways:

1. Creating a structure which encourages employees to be receptive to customer feedback can actually lead to innovation in products. In RICOH, it was the customer feedback, which led to the innovation of battery run printers for emergency rescue teams, where shortage of energy is expected.

2. Educating the sales team helps, in turn, to educate the customer, bringing tangible benefits to both the organisation and the client. e.g., RICOH’s sales employees help their clients to reduce the number of machines in the office. The sales force is trained to understand the workflow of clients’ offices; so they can analyse and help clients to reduce paper usage and electricity consumption by minimising the number of devices. The salesforce are also trained not to push the selling of machines, but rather to create an environmentally sustainable solution for the client. In this way, the client begins to trust, understand and appreciate the supplier organisation’s core values.

City Development Limited (CDL)’s homebuyers receive a “Green Living Kit” which contains information on how to lead a green lifestyle and an illustrated user manual of all the eco-friendly features in their new home. CDL sales teams are trained to discuss these green features and educate prospective home buyers.

3. Educating customer service staff can be done by training them to interact directly with clients. In Standard Chartered Bank (SCB), relevant information like community sustainability activities, is shared with customer service staff, who in turn share this with clients. SCB finds that they are increasingly being asked by clients, especially institutional ones, about their sustainability efforts.

7 Employee Education for Customer Engagement

Posters with educational information at Siloso Beach Resort

Employee Education for Customer Engagement

Green Living Kit by CDL

IKEA Singapore was one of the retailers to start charging for plastic bags in 2007. In 2013 they took it further to, ‘Say No to Plastic Bags’ initiative. Sales counter staff were educated on the whys. In order to respond to customers’ enquiries, they used pre-prepared FAQs for anticipated questions. The staff are trained not to give out plastic bags unless asked; they are also made aware of the deeper negative impact plastic bags have on the environment.

The savings on plastic bags for IKEA Singapore in the last three years amounted to $200,000. This was donated to WWF Singapore’s Eco-Schools programme to encourage children into environmental action. WWF comes to IKEA to share its progress of the programme and plan to rope in some of IKEA’s customer service staff, to be mentors for Eco-Schools. So there’s a lot more to saying ‘No to plastic bags’ than meets the eye, as it involves employees in a more meaningful way.

IKEA’s checkout counter with a No Plastic Bags policy

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4. Educating service and maintenance staff is equally important. Often service staff are semi-skilled, without a formal college education; this, combined with pressure of travel to maintenance sites and difficult customers lead to a sceptical mindset. Some may not be inclined to read or learn matters outside their job scope.

Environmental issues like climate change and conservation, and its relation to their jobs (e.g. reducing energy consumption, prolonging product life, etc) must be put into practical, modular formats. Learning materials for them need to be simple in both content and language, including visual aids.

In RICOH, service staffs are given MCQ tests on key sustainability issues including GHG emissions and climate change. This helps them assimilate sustainability information easily and handle questions from clients. Most importantly, it helps them value their work.

5. Educating the business ecosystem towards sustainability needs to be done through pro-active initiatives to educate stakeholders and to move the entire industry in a sustainable direction. Haworth educates suppliers in China and India to replace potentially toxic chemicals and processes to more eco-friendly ones. Once this is done, the sales team starts to inform customers about the new eco-friendly features of the product.

An example is the shiny coating of chromium (a carcinogen and harmful for aquatic life) on the legs of task chairs. Brushed aluminium is safer. As it looks quite similar, customers cannot see the difference; yet their understanding is crucial to the process of public awareness. Haworth’s employees, being committed to sustainability, invest this time and effort to spreading awareness in the industry and to the public at large.

Staff at Haworth office

Employee Education for Customer Engagement 35

8 Communicating around Sustainability Report

Communicating around Sustainability Report

Nisha Menezes from SCB observed, “As staff may not be able to read a 100 page report due to work pressures, so the report is summarised with key highlights to make it easy to understand. It is also shared with senior management including the board of directors. SCB made a video this year to present a small extract of the sustainability report and progress made in a digestible form.”

Michael Kwee of Banyan Tree Global Foundations echoes this, “We’ve taken feedback over the years to make it much more easy to read. Over the years it has come down from 60 pages to 40 pages and now to 28 pages. We felt a bit strange about this because our greatest projects would get only a 1 or 2 line mention. So it has been a continual evolution to get clear and concise information across. We’re able to set the tone with fewer words and communicate the rest of the message in pictures and numbers.”

Leveraging the Sustainability Report for more feedback

Though the primary audience for a Sustainability Report are investors and

CDL’s Sustainability Report

CDL is a pioneer in Sustainability Reporting in Singapore. In 2008, CDL’s Sustainability Report was launched by Merrill Lynch at the Asia Investors Conference - the first in the country. It also came up with the first GRI checked report by a Singapore listed company.

Since 2009 its report has been verified and assured by a third party. Esther An comments on involving employees in the sustainability reporting process, “Given the comprehensive nature of our sustainability reporting, most staff are involved in providing or validating data. Every department contributes to it, whether it’s data related to environmental performance, energy usage, number of accidents, number of customer complaints or information related to corporate governance and risk management. Each department has to track and verify the data, as well as answer to both internal and external auditors, which takes a lot of commitment. Everyone has a role to play in the process because what gets measured gets managed.”

She was honest about staff involvement, “Some support it, some don’t. Reporting does require extensive commitment of time and resources. It’s not a glossy PR report.”

clients, it could be used as a tool to further employee involvement. It emerged from our interviews, that although employees are involved in data collection and preparation, there is scope for further participation. Though organisations share the sustainability report online or through newsletters, it is not clear whether the report is actually read by employees. A discussion around the sustainability report would help employees get a more holistic view of the organisation’s sustainability practices outside their departmental silo, and even give them opportunities to suggest solutions that cut across departments or across stakeholder groups.

Standard Chartered Bank (SCB) is one of the few organisations we interviewed that posts its sustainability report on the intranet, welcoming real-time feedback through the in-house interactive site. Its transparency policy ensures all comments, which are mostly positive are visible. All suggestions for improvement are forwarded to the relevant leaders or departments.

The Sustainability Report is more than just a PR document. A sustainability report is a recap of the sustainability practices of a company during the year. It reflects the extent to which and the manner in which an organisation thinks strategically and deeply about the impact of its products and services on environment and society; and the interactions with its various stakeholders – employees, suppliers, subcontractors, communities and others in the entire ecosystem. As of now, sustainability reporting is voluntary and only a handful of companies in Singapore practise it. However, this is set to change. Magnus Bocker, CEO of the Singapore Exchange (SGX) announced in 2014 that sustainability reporting will become mandatory in due course and all listed companies on SGX will be expected to comply by 2017/18. (27)

For companies that are new to sustainability reporting, using the ISO 2600 standards as a guide, and the GRI Framework (28) for the reporting structure is useful.

An effort towards making an organisation sustainable involves the engagement of each department within the organisation, and cannot be done by the CSR department alone. Its role is largely to co-ordinate and guide the implementation of a sustainability strategy and the collation of variously-sourced data for the Sustainability Report.

How big should the report be?

Most of the companies we interviewed agreed that quality mattered more than quantity, and that in fact, too big a report could become cumbersome for stakeholders to read.

YTL PowerSeraya first produced a Sustainability Report in 2009

adopting the GRI framework. To start doing Sustainability Reporting

is good because it’s not just for external purposes, we can also

looking at what we’re doing internally. We have a baseline of

what we have done, where we are, so we can map what to do in the

future

Kevin Lee, Senior Manager(Sustainability & HSE), YTL PowerSeraya

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‘‘

The journey of educating and engaging employees in CSR/sustainability definitely has challenges Despite several suggestions from the organisations interviewed and the research shared before, there is no definitive formula for human behaviour change. It needs constant work. As Lee Hui Mien of IKEA points out, “Environmental consciousness is still at an emerging stage in Singapore.  While some may buy-in to it, not everyone is convinced, so it takes effort to integrate into everyday business.”

Here are some of the challenges that were highlighted:

Lack of top management support

Getting top management buy-in is not always a straightforward process, and there are bound to be some with skepticism. When YTL PowerSeraya wanted to do sustainability reporting for the first time in 2009, some didn’t see the value of CSR, and some even perceived it as a constraint to business. There were others in management who were concerned about divulging information. Kevin Lee recalls allaying those fears, by sharing with them the idea that there is a balance between transparency and sensitive commercial information, and that harnessing low hanging fruits of resource conservation could help reduce costs.

Sylvain Richer de Forges of Siloso Beach Resort (SBR) noted that the synergy between top management and sustainability advisors or managers synergy does not happen often because:

1. CEOs are rarely trained to understand sustainability challenges and the necessary processes to streamline CSR and business;

2. Sustainability professionals are rarely given the authority within the organization to execute CSR related decisions to the extent that will bear fruit;

3. Sustainability measures have crucial consequences on the entire business and needs must directly involve senior management, including CEO. Sustainability should be incorporated within the core business model of companies and not be run as simple programs.

Silo mentality To break through silo mentalities in departments is one of the challenges, because there could be higher investment on one end, with savings realised later for the organisation as a whole. Michael Kwee from Banyan Tree Global Foundations shares, “Sometimes we need a cross- departmental approach in order to take a holistic look at meeting sustainability goals. For example, the laundry solution that allows laundry to be rinsed without too much water may require soap that is of higher cost. If it is kept in own silo, then the budget would be higher, but the higher chemical cost can be outweighed by lower water cost.”

Varying levels of interest

How does one deal with varying and quite often fluctuating levels of interest from employees? Esther An, CDL comments, “Changing human behaviour is probably the greatest challenge. Simple habits such as printing documents on two sides can be a pain to some, though peer influence is helpful.”

9 Challenges in Engaging Employees for CSR

Challenges in Engaging Employees for CSR

Masayo Hada from RICOH suggests, “It’s very natural that we have different levels of enthusiasm in the team. So it’s up to the team leader to motivate people and observe their strengths and what they are good at. Some staff may not want to talk and are better off with tasks, which they may enjoy. “ Karen Lee from Interface finds sustainability to be a long journey. She adds that the challenge Interface faces is in retaining employees’ engagement and enthusiasm. The work force needs to be constantly galvanized and inspired. Interface, like other organisations maintains the momentum through training, programmes, internal promotions, incentives and motivating the sustainability champions to drive working groups.

Perceived lack of budget

A budget for CSR is no different from that of any other department like HR or IT. It is also expected to provide a business case or ROI for its budget. Lee Hui Mien of IKEA however feels that, “ If the company management has the vision for CSR/sustainability, it will see beyond the immediate cost and consider the long term benefits of attracting quality talent, talent retention, and building goodwill.”

Perceived as add on work

Sometimes the work around sustainability is seen as additional work. For example, Kevin Lee of YTL PowerSeraya found that plant supervisors saw targets on CO2 emissions as additional work, over and above normal responsibilities. With sustainability education, they now see it as an opportunity to reduce costs.

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Competing priorities

Employees have completing priorities on their time. Sylvain Richer de Forges of SBR noted, that training has to be without affecting regular operations, “This is especially true in certain departments like housekeeping or F & B. There is always a percentage of the staff that is less receptive to the idea of learning sometime not necessarily related to their main duties. We have significantly improved this percentage through changes in the recruitment process and communications.”

Lee Hui Mien mentions that often, sustainability “is perceived as clashing with productivity. The time spent on segregating waste or the training and outreach programmes on recycling could have been spent on business related training programs.  This is where it becomes important to communicate the larger and longer term business benefits for these.”  

Sustainability reporting is data driven

A huge investment of people’s time and resources is required for data collection and analysis at different levels. Esther An of CDL agreed with this saying, “Not only do we need to collect data, we need to also spend time checking it, because garbage in is garbage out. Managers check the data, and then this is followed by HQ. It was difficult at first, but now we are quicker to spot if something is out of sync.”

Tailoring the communication to the audience

Sylvain Richer de Forges finds that it is a challenge to develop materials appropriate to various staff – all of whom do not have the same educational or social abilities. Often language is a problem. Preparing these materials within a busy business schedule can be a challenge. In SBR’s case it was even more challenging as the resort employs a significant number of people with special needs, requiring a different and often customized educational approach.

Sometimes pre-existing materials or outsourcing this task can be helpful, with sufficient company inputs to tailor it to its own needs.

Need for firmness as well as flexibility in enforcement

This firm but flexible approach is crucial to executing CSR programmes, and this may take a bit of experience. As Esther An of CDL rightly points out, “Policy is just policy. It’s like a white elephant collecting dust. So we believe in enforcement. But we do it with reasonable consideration, and not like secret police. We also accept reasonable explanations.”

Customise for staff with special needs

Companies hiring employees with special needs need to invest time and effort into educating them towards their sustainability goals. Sylvain Richer de Forges says, “The F&B outlet is particularly challenging for education considering the fact that the resort employs a significant number of people with disabilities. (Here) the educational approach needs to be customized. At the end of the day the dedication of the supervisory staff is crucial to the success. Trainings take place through classroom type orientation, but most importantly on the spot. Employees are shown what to do and not to do and remain under constant supervision. “

Volunteering challenges:

Not everyone is equally enthusiastic about volunteering, and the momentum needs to be maintained, by creating a variety of options that caters to different tastes. Amy Ho from NUS Office of Environmental Sustainability calls it ‘Different strokes for different people.’ Kevin Lee of YTL PowerSeraya warns of ‘burnout’ especially when volunteering is just continuous fundraising. He feels it is important to focus on the enjoyable and fun aspects of volunteering as well, so as to sustain the interest of employees.

Despite these various challenges, it was clear that the CSR managers and leaders spoke to persisted to overcome the odds to continue their mission of spreading the sustainability culture in their respective organisations.

Challenges in Engaging Employees for CSR38

CONCLUSIONIt makes both business and moral sense for organisations to be responsible for the 3Ps: People, Planet and Profit. They are not mutually exclusive. In this toolkit, we’ve seen how ‘People’ can play a pivotal role in ensuring the achievement of the other two Ps.

For this to happen, it is critical to get top management buy-in. It is also necessary to create a shared understanding of what sustainability really means. It is about achieving social, environment and economic imperatives, while addressing the expectations of various stakeholders. It is about making money the right way, and not about making money and then giving it to charity.

Operationalisation of CSR into policies, systems and processes can help to permeate it across all levels of the organisation by providing a context for engaging employees. Creating a CSR oriented culture within organisations is not always a straightforward task, but as the 11 organisations interviewed show us, it can be done.

Finally, engaging employees in CSR is a continuous journey, where there is room for constant improvement. As Michael Kwee of Banyan Tree Global Foundations aptly remarked, “The Sustainability journey could be equated to a loose thread on your sweater, once you start pulling it, you can’t stop and it may take you to new places. We ask, what’s next? How can we do an even better job?”

Conclusion 39

1. ‘State of CSR Play in Singapore’ by Eugene Tan, Lien Centre for Social Innovation, Social Insight Research Series, 2011

2. Millennial Impact Report 2014 http://casefoundation.org/resource/millennial-impact-report/ http://cdn.trustedpartner.com/docs/library/AchieveMCON2013/MIR_2014_ExecSummary.pdf

3. Corporate Responsibility and Financial Performance: The Role of Intangible Resources by Surroca, Tribo and Waddock, 2010 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2487570

4. Does serving the community also serve the company? Using organizational identification and social exchange theories to understand employee responses to a volunteerism programme Jones (2010) http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1348/096317909X477495/abstract

5. Getting Engaged: The New Workplace Loyalty, by Tim Rutledge http://www.iveybusinessjournal.com/topics/the-workplace/what-engages-employees-the-most-or-the-ten-cs-of-employee-engagement#.VLplfkeUeSp

6. The pyramid of corporate social responsibility: Toward the moral management of organizational stakeholders, Archie B. Carroll (1991) http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/000768139190005G

7. City Developments Limited Sustainability Report 2014 http://www.cdl.com.sg/app/cdl/csr_and_sustainability/csr_approach.xml

8. ISO 26000 Guidelines on Social Responsibility (2010) http://www.iso.org/iso/sr_7_core_subjects.pdf

9. The Natural Step: Interface – Journey of a Lifetime http://www.naturalstep.ca/sites/default/files/case_study_interface.pdf

10. CSR and HR Management Issue Brief and Roadmap by Adine Mees and Jamie Bonham (Canadian Business for Social Responsibility) https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/csr-rse.nsf/vwapj/CSR_and_HR_Management1.pdf/$file/CSR_and_HR_Management1.pdf

11. CSR in HR: A Necessary Partnership for Advancing Responsible Business Practices by Elaine Cohen, 2010 http://www.greenleaf-publishing.com/productdetail.kmod?productid=3282

12. Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future by Peter Senge et al, 2008

13. ‘Engaging Employees in Corporate Responsibility: How the World’s leading Organisations Embed CR in Employee Decision–making by Jason Summers (Melcrum Publishing 2006) http://www.amazon.com/Engaging-Employees-Corporate-Responsibility-Companies/dp/0955470145

REFERENCES14. Dr Tom Crompton: Intrinsic vs Extrinsic Values in Environmental

Communication http://www.ecowalkthetalk.com/blog/2012/05/28/dr-tom-crompton-intrinsic-vs-extrinsic-values-in-environmental-communication/

15. Eco- Action Day http://www.ecoaction.sg/

16. How Walmart associates put the ‘U’ and ‘I’ into sustainability http://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2013/01/09/walmart-associates-u-i-sustainability

17. Fun Theory http://www.thefuntheory.com/

18. Switched on to energy: A guide to sparking behavioural change, Nancy Lee, 2008 http://wwe12.bchydro.com/businessevents/forum/wp-content/uploads/presentations/Switched%20on%20to%20Energy.pdf

19. Project Eco-Office by Singapore Environment Council http://www.ecooffice.com.sg/web/index.php

20. Save the Fish : Singapore Seafood Guide by WWF Singapore http://www.wwf.sg/take_action/sustainable_seafood/seafood_guide/

21. Questions About Your Community: Indoor Air http://www.epa.gov/region1/communities/indoorair.html

22. E.O. Wilson Biophilia Center http://www.eowilsoncenter.org/

23. Mindfulness as a Foundation for Organisational Effectiveness, by Jacqueline Carter, Huffington Post, 2014 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jacqueline-carte/corporate-based-mindfulness_b_4597952.html

24. Dying at their desks: The countries where people die of overwork http://www.news.com.au/technology/dying-at-their-desks-the-countries-where-people-die-of-overwork/story-e6frfrnr-1226972701500

25. Japan’s Killer Work Ethic, 2008 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/12/AR2008071201630.html

26. Working Hours Survey 2014 - Long working hours leads to a poor work-life balance for Singapore’s professionals http://www.morganmckinley.com.sg/article/working-hours-survey-2014-long-working-hours-leads-poor-work-life-balance-singapore%E2%80%99s

27. SGX to make sustainability reporting mandatory http://www.eco-business.com/news/sgx-make-sustainability-reporting-mandatory/

28. Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) https://www.globalreporting.org/Pages/default.aspx

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The Sustainability ToolkitA framework for engaging employees in CSR

Using best practices from Singapore based organisations