In the 1950’s, American psychologist Gordon Allport posited that people with a prejudice against a certain group often overcame it when working with individuals from that group, a phenomenon he called “intergroup contact theory.” Since then, hundreds of studies have proven that contact theory is generally correct and have identified under which conditions it’s most effective. As a result, there’s now actionable guidance for managing teams in a manner that helps members overcome prejudice:

1. Diverse composition: A team will reduce prejudice that relates to the characteristics of its members. In fact, mere exposure to those one is prejudiced against often reduces those prejudices. So, you are likely promoting social justice by merely ensuring your team is diverse.
2. Institutional support: Formal employer support for diverse individuals working respectfully with each other legitimizes inclusive behavior and, thus, augments the prejudice-reducing power of diverse teams. This is one reason why having institutional values, goals, policies and expectations around inclusion matters.
3. Common goals: A team member working toward an individual goal, such as a personal sales target, might consider coworkers to be outside her “ingroup,” defined as the group of trusted individuals who look after her interest. This, in turn, has been shown to elicit prejudice toward them. Establishing team sales targets or other collective goals, on the other hand, nudges team members toward conferring ingroup status to all team members, thus promoting inclusivity. It’s, therefore, preferable to use team goals over individual goals.
4. Cooperation: A culture where team members routinely assist each other, as opposed to work entirely independently, drives more meaningful interactions that, in turn, drive more inclusive attitudes. Try to model helpfulness, assign team members to assist each other and rewarded them for being collaborative.
5. Equal status: When team members have non-hierarchical relationships, the prejudice-busting power team diversity is augmented. Therefore, if possible, give team members equal status.

If you can’t meet all five of the above conditions, don’t worry. While the first condition, diverse composition, is essential for teams to promote greater inclusivity, the other four are not. In fact, research finds that even teams that fail to meet all or most of the bottom four criteria (but are still diverse) often reduce member prejudice, although not optimally.

As a leader, you can help free team members from their biases by applying contact theory. Its application won’t increase inclusivity in every instance, but it typically will. In sum, anybody who manages teams has the power to promote social justice.

Looking for assistance in making your workplace more inclusive? CSR Solutions of Colorado can help. Contact us!

That’s it! You now have an estimate of the monetary value of your company’s community contributions.

Looking for more assistance with monetizing your community contributions? CSR Solutions of Colorado can help. Contact us!

Are you looking for a simple way to do corporate social responsibility (CSR)? What if you offered customers experiencing hardship more favorable prices? For example, the music composer Douglas Morton invites individuals who are under-employed, stricken by a personal crisis or otherwise experiencing financial difficulties to explain their circumstance and offer to pay what and when they can. His most rewarding customer interactions are these conversations.

Compassionate pricing doesn't need to be complicated. A case in point is what Morton does: He simply added wording to his e-commerce site giving customers the opportunity to explain their circumstances. His customer service involves reviewing submissions and providing discount codes. Compassionate pricing also doesn't need to be serious and boring. Morton's' messaging, for example, offers to accept avocados as payment! What Morton does, however, is just one option.

​Other ways of pricing in a way that supports societal causes includes:

• Allowing all customers to pay whatever amount they want for your products or services. It might sound like a recipe for getting fleeced into bankruptcy. Yet, data from companies that use such Pay What You Want (PWYW) pricing (e.g., Humble Bundle) suggests that, typically, people are not greedy jerks. Most of the time, most people will treat others fairly. Done well then, PWYW is a feasible method for allowing those who are financially stressed to benefit from your products or services. · Donating 1% of sales to charitable causes. Consider, for example, joining 1% for the Planet.
  
• Inviting a nonprofit working with small or marginalized businesses, unemployed individuals, homeless families or others facing hardship to share your discount codes with their clients.
  
• Inviting customers to round up for charity. Those who choose to round their payment to the next dollar (or other currency) will be donating to a charitable cause through your company.
  
• Giving nonprofit organizations a discount.
  

You get the idea. There are many ways to conduct CSR via pricing! Might there be one that is perfect for your business?

For assistance with your CSR, contact us.

You’ve probably heard the term ESG (environment social governance). You may have heard it be interchanged with CSR (corporate social responsibility). Are they the same thing?

The answer is no. CSR and ESG, although promoting the same general concept, are distinct. CSR is everything a company does to positively contribute to societal issues that it’s not required to do by law or regulation. ESG is CSR that has been formalized into measurable criteria that are disclosed to investors and the public. As Lexology puts it: “While CSR aims to make a business accountable, ESG criteria make such business’ efforts measurable.” ESG criteria focus on quantitative data used to help investors, employees and consumers make decisions regarding a company. In essence, a company's ESG reporting shows if it’s “walking the talk” in terms of their CSR goals across:

• Environment. Measures how a company shields the environment from damage, including by minimizing carbon emissions, plastic pollution and solid waste creation.
• Social. Measures the company's relationship with employees, suppliers, customers, and communities, including wages, provision of healthcare to employees and grants to community organizations.
• Governance. Measures how the company governs itself in the CSR space including company executive pay, board diversity and shareholder rights.

There are several frameworks to help companies structure their ESG work, the most common of which are listed below.

• The Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) was designed for the information needs of shareholders and is used by more than half of the companies in the S&P Global Index.
• The Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) is a principles-based framework for climate-related financial disclosures.
  
• The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) helps companies report on ESG in way that serves a broad range of stakeholders, not just shareholders. GRI reporting is the most widely used ESG reporting standard globally.

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Why should your company care about ESG? If your company executes ESG right, it’s likely to be more profitable. Also, investors increasingly expect companies to disclose ESG data. For example, the newly incorporated International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) is developing international ESG reporting standards and the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is incorporating ESG into its work. In summary, ESG is quickly becoming a standard part of managing a business.

       It has been over two years since COVID-19 first forced a massive shift to remote work. Since then, most companies have adapted to conduct business efficiently using more technology. For most workplaces, returning to pre-pandemic levels of in-person work is unlikely. How do we ensure that this permanent increase in remote work ends up reducing carbon emissions, as opposed to increasing them?

     At first blush, remote work appears to be a boon for the environment. Fewer employees making the commute to the office reduces carbon emissions. For example, India’s second largest IT service provider, Infosys, reduced its carbon emissions by 46% in the year following the start of the pandemic. This number sounds good but is misleading.
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     It turns out that having your employees work from home doesn’t necessarily reduce their total carbon emissions. Although they’re no longer commuting, they’re now using more lights, computers, internet, heat and air conditioning in their own homes. They are also purchasing lunch food and office supplies, both of which have supply chains and associated emissions. Additionally, if your employees followed global trends, many moved during the pandemic from
cities to suburbs, where houses are bigger, public transportation is scarcer and driving is more commonplace. If their home offices are less energy efficient and if their purchasing decisions are less environmentally sustainable than yours as an employer, your team members could be spewing more carbon into the atmosphere as remote workers than as office workers. Despite its elimination of the commute and office use, remote work does not necessarily reduce carbon emissions.       

Fortunately, your company can ensure that the modern remote-work era is climate friendly by:

1. Promoting clean and efficient home energy. Many companies have switched to purchasing renewable electricity for their operations. It’s time to consider doing the same for employee electricity use outside the office. Consider incentivizing or funding employee upgrades to clean power sources. Similarly, consider paying for employee home energy efficiency improvements.

2. Cutting down on business travel. Air travel is a bigger source of emissions than offices. Consider cutting back on nonessential business travel. Have employees to ask themselves “can this meeting or event be successful online?” before booking a ticket.

3. Encouraging public transportation. Consider company policies that reward or reimburse employees for use of public transit for work-related travel.

4. Measuring total impact. Calculate your company’s total emissions – including from commuting and use of home as office – to ensure you’re minimizing your company’s overall carbon footprint. This Watershed calculator can help.
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     In summary, if your company has many remote or hybrid workers, it’s time to include the carbon impact of employees working at home in your overall climate policies, measurement and goals.

Given Colorado laws, the US Supreme Court’s recent decision to overturn Roe v. Wade has little impact on state residents’ immediate access to legal abortions. It does, however, have an impact on Colorado employers. In today’s world, companies need to manage their relationship to this, and all, political developments involving societal issues. Employees and customers increasingly expect your corporate social responsibility (CSR) to address societal issues they consider important. As shown in a prior post, ignoring this expectation is costly and increasingly infeasible as CSR drives business performance and financial results.

The bottom line is that businesses need to consider their response to the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling. To help your company craft its response, following are the principal ways major brands have responded:

• Making public statements. Some major brands have issued statements decrying the ruling. For example, Lyft said the ruling will “hurt millions of women” and Buzzfeed that it’s “regressive and horrific.” Although a public statement in support of the Court’s decision is also a CSR response, it does not appear that any major brand has done this.
  
• Joining a collective position. Over 350 companies make up Don’t Ban Equality, a coalition of businesses that signed a letter opposing restrictions on abortion access. Signatories include Burton Snowboards, Eileen Fisher, Etsy, Levi Strauss, Nordstrom and Yelp.
• Addressing the healthcare implications. Since American companies operate in an employer-sponsored healthcare system, eliminating the option to get an abortion is an HR issue. Not surprisingly, dozens of companies, including Citi, Google, Grubhub, Nike and Patagonia, have updated their employee health benefits to safeguard access to safe and legal abortions. In fact, this is the most common company response to the high Court’s ruling. Company policy updates consist largely of reimbursement for travel and medical expenses for employees seeking abortions. While your Colorado employees might not personally need this benefit, research suggests that their company loyalty and intention to will falter if your company doesn’t offer it to any out-of-state employees who might need it.
• Leveraging the company’s business to promote change. Some companies are conducting business in a way that furthers an abortion-related cause, most commonly the on the pro-choice side. Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch, for example, implied that the company’s content creation would be used as a tool to restore reproductive rights and Google announced that it will protect the privacy of women seeking abortions by deleting location data when people visit abortion clinics.
• Supporting employee and customer activism. Some brands have instituted policies to encourage employee protests and other activism. Live Nation and Patagonia, for example, will post bail for employees arrested for peacefully demonstrating against the Court ruling. Lyft, on the other hand, will provide legal support for drivers choosing to drive passengers to abortion appointments despite the risk of a law suit. OkCupid sent an in-app notification to every US user in a state likely to ban abortion encouraging them to call their elected officials and demand that they protect women’s right to choose.
• Supporting nonprofits. Companies that donate to pro-choice organizations include Freshly, Levi’s and Lululemon. Because the number of women seeking abortions in Colorado is expected to skyrocket as out-of-state women who have lost this right flock here, giving pro-choice organizations cash, in-kind donation and volunteer time might be especially impactful here. Of course, a company’s CSR might also involve donating to pro-life nonprofits, but no major brand appears to have done this in response to the high Court’s ruling (although many brands have donated to political candidates with pro-life stands over the last few years).
• Doing nothing. Inaction is an option that some brands, including Marriott, PepsiCo and Walmart, have opted for (at least for now). But it’s not risk free. Whether or not your company chooses to discuss the ruling, odds are its break rooms, slack channels and online meetings are buzzing with discussion. If your employees hold views similar to those of Americans overall, the majority of them disapprove of the ruling. This means that your workforce is experiencing anger, fear, sadness and other negative emotions. The same can be said of customers, some of which have called for boycotts of companies that are staying mum. Disregarding how important this issue is to key stakeholders will undermine your relationship with them. In other words, for most companies not taking any action will be interpreted as a taking a position. Neutrality is not an option.

CSR involves managing positions on key societal issues, including those that are politicized. These include diversity equity and inclusion, climate change and now abortion. Long gone are the days when companies could be good corporate citizens by only supporting uncontroversial causes far from the political fray. Today, it’s impossible to conduct CSR without making political statements. The only question is how effectively companies manage their CSR and, thus, successfully navigate through the highly politicized civil society they operate in.

​For assistance in designing and executing your CSR strategy, contact us.

Eighty percent of the Colorado companies recognized for being exceptional corporate citizens, The Civic 50 Colorado, offer their employees volunteer time off (VTO). VTO allows workers to support charitable causes while on company time.

VTO communicates to employees their employer’s commitment to supporting service to societal causes, which employees increasingly value. It also makes it easier for fulltime employees with scarce free time to find the time to volunteer.

​VTO functions similarly to other paid time off (PTO) policies. It typically includes a requirement to obtain approval from a manager or supervisor, a definition of eligible volunteer activities and a maximum number of hours per year. According to CECP, the median number of hours offered by U.S. companies is 16 and it’s rarely less than 8 or more than 40, although a few companies offer over 80 or have no limit. Some companies limit VTO to signature causes, skills-based volunteering, board service or other types of volunteering that align with their corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy. Most, however, make all volunteering eligible.

If you’re looking to institute VTO at your company, Harvard Business Review has a superb article with guidance and our partner organization, Points of Light, has a fill-in-the-blanks template.

In 2018, we launched the Civic 50 Colorado in partnership with Points of Light, the world’s largest organization dedicated to volunteer service. The Civic 50 Colorado recognizes the 50 most community-minded companies in Colorado. Companies with 15 or more employees in state are eligible to apply. The application is free and closes on August 15th. Winners will be announced in the fall.

The Civic 50 Colorado is a unique opportunity to gain recognition for your community engagement program, take a leadership position in corporate community involvement and to share their best practices with the broader business community. Many companies have also said that the process of taking the survey and receiving their complimentary individual scorecards with information on their rankings helped them understand how they could improve their processes and strategies in the future.

To learn more, access support resources and apply, go to our website.

If corporate social responsibility (CSR) is one of your responsibilities, you might pine for guidance in this rapidly evolving business function. You might have questions like, “What foundational principles do I use to make decisions?” or “What policies or programs should I consider?” or “What’s a reasonable target for employee participation in volunteer activities?”

Good news! Our partner organization, Points of Light, asked an esteemed group of CSR experts these questions. Their responses led to The Civic 50 framework, which is reviewed annually and updated as needed. Both The Civic 50 Colorado award program and its national counterpart, The Civic 50 US, are based on the framework. Therefore, in addition to having access to conceptual guidance through the framework, you also have access to performance metrics of US and Colorado award-winning CSR programs on the framework.

So, what does the Civic 50 framework suggest? At a high level, it specifies that strong CSR program have four dimensions:

1. Investment. How extensively and strategically the company applies its resources to community engagement, including employee time and skills, cash, in-kind giving, and leadership.
   
2. Integration. How the company’s community engagement program supports business interests and integrates into business functions, or how it “does well by doing good.” This includes leveraging the CSR program to boost employee engagement and brand marketing, for example.
   
3. Institutionalization. How the company supports community engagement through its institutional policies, systems and incentives, including volunteer time off policies, matching gift grants and board service training.
   
4. Impact. How the company measures the social and business impact of its community engagement program. This includes tracking if the community and the business are better off because of the CSR program.

To dive deeper into these dimensions and the associated metrics from state and national Civic 50 honorees, download the full Civic 50 Colorado 2021 report. You might also wasn’t to sign up for The Civic 50 Colorado mailing list.

When companies donate to nonprofits, it’s usually one of three thing: the products/services they sell, volunteer hours or cash. Pharmaceutical companies donate medicine and law firms donate pro bono legal services – and almost all donate volunteering and money. Businesses, however, are also trove of other assets that can also be repurposed for good. Below are 20 examples.

Donating Items (beyond the company’s commercial products/services)

• Furniture or computers being retired
  
• Waste that can be converted into good (e.g., Caesars Entertainment donates partially used hotel soap to be sterilized and donated to families at high risk of infectious diseases due to poor hygiene)
  
• Marketing, sales or other department-specific competencies
  
• Unused office, warehouse, cargo or other space
  
• Surplus cafeteria food to hunger organizations

Offering Space as a Communications Tool (used for marketing, education, etc.)

• Parking lots (e.g., one automotive shop on a major road offers it to nonprofits to hold fundraising car washes)
  
• Elevator walls, floors, sides of buildings, backs of chairs, bathroom mirrors, cubicle dividers and other building surfaces
  
• Keycards
  
• Presentation cards
  
• Backside of presentation cards
  
• Sides of vehicles
  
• Placemats

Sharing Internal Programs and Processes

• Including nonprofits in bargaining with vendors to help (for example, Timberland includes its key nonprofit partners in its negotiations with telecommunication and health insurance firms to secure lower prices for them)
  
• Offering unfilled training spots to nonprofit staff or others (Aetna)
  
• Making internal management tools available to nonprofits, such as a job candidate interview template or a meeting facilitation guide (IBM)
  
• Extending internal mentoring programs to external individuals, such as nonprofit staff or first-generation college students (Timberland)

Shifting Operations

• Renting office, retail, manufacturing space in marginalized areas to support their economic growth
  
• Reducing carbon footprint, plastic production and solid waste
  
• Hosting beehives (that employee volunteers can manage) to help counter colony collapse disorder
  
• Giving better shelf space to minority-owned brands

You get the idea. There are an infinite number of novel contributions companies can make to charitable causes! What might your business contribute?