Aligned Incentives and Engaged Employees Improve Triple Bottom Line Performance

August, 16 – BY TAM SANDEMAN – We thought people might be interested in this recent article (August 2011) on CSR Wire which clearly outlines why organisations need to look at engaging their employees around their sustainability efforts.  Something our OgilvyEarth team has known since our first environmental behaviour change program back in 2004.

It shows that having an engaged workforce can positive influence the key components of ‘Triple Bottom Line’ performance: people, planet and profit.   An engaged workforce not only contributes to a company’s bottom line, but also improves the organisation’s social and environmental sustainability impacts too.

http://csrwire.visibli.com/share/bXnYAY

Over the years our OgilvyEarth team has combined its sustainability expertise with Ogilvy Impact’s rich understanding of employee behaviour change to run internal sustainability programs for some of the largest companies in Australia.

Our message is simple. It’s one thing to enhance corporate reputation and attract talent with great sustainability commitments. It’s quite another to ensure you’ve galvanised all your internal troops behind these goals. Achieving engagement around your sustainability initiatives does not happen through osmosis. Like all good internal communication, you’ve got to work at it. Invest the time to make it happen. Make it engaging and really drive true ownership and behaviour change at all levels of the business.

The author cites many of the key components of great internal communication, but most importantly, companies should take heed.  Business communication does not need to be bland. Making it creative and engaging will give you a better chance of making it work and getting the sustainability results you’re looking for.

OgilvyEarth supports Earth Hour

March, 24 – Earth  Hour is just around the corner and whilst Facilities Managers will be on top of the big ticket items for office buildings, we as communicators can help encourage and engage  work colleagues to do their bit and contribute personally. So why not take ten minutes to communicate Earth Hour in your employee news channels today. Even though the environment is a serious subject, doing something positive doesn’t have to be.  Make your internal communication fun and engaging; perhaps set an employee challenge, a reminder screensaver or a light hearted call to action from a leader.

To be part of Earth Hour, when you’re leaving the office this Friday – hopefully you are not working in the office on Saturday night… but if you are then it must be really important, so you are excused – shut down and pull the plug on your computer, mobile phone chargers and any other items not in use. Where there is a switch, at least turning equipment off at the wall. And while you’re at it, why not engage your employees to get involved in Earth Hour at home too.

Whilst Earth Hour is a once a year campaign and ideally you exercise these behaviours all the time, getting involved in it helps you to think about what you can do to reduce energy use. The campaign has been very successful in raising awareness globally, so great to support the cause.

When I first had a go at switching appliances off at the wall at home and turning off unnecessary lights etc for Earth Hour a few years ago, I continued it as standard practice (I forgot occasionally to start with, but persistence paid off) and managed to save $30 a quarter on my electricity bill. Better than a kick in the pants and made a couple of very nice bottles of wine taste even better.

So spread the word!

Also check out this fun YouTube clip to share with colleagues, friends and family in the lead up to Earth Hour:

For more information on how you can support Earth Hour go to http://www.earthhour.org

Robbie Brown, Sustainability Strategist, OgilvyEarth

Dealing with Objections – The Attack of the Naysayers!

February, 9 – BY STEPHEN HALE –

Given the exposure that we at OgilvyEarth have, many different types of businesses, locations, stakeholders, and challenges, I am still surprised at the consistent objections put up by organisations in committing to a course of action.  Internally these are generally driven by an outspoken and dreaded group we call ‘naysayers’ who for some reason seeks to sink these programs. Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying that there can’t be different opinions as individuals, but once an organisation has committed to course of action why do a minority of individuals seek to rock a popular boat?

Here are few classic types of naysayers that you may encounter and ways to deal with them.

Change Deniers – we don’t deal with change here. Classic objection to making positive change in the business where it seems that in the history of the organisation nothing has ever changed. We all know that can’t be true so what can you do? The best way to deal with these types is to ensure that you have well defined reasoning for the change. Quality messaging, proof points and leadership support are vital here. Don’t avoid the practical reasoning such as cost reductions or improved customer image messages to minimise the impact here. Make them business savvy reasons and you’ll curb the impact.

Logic Robots – the science doesn’t add up. Surprisingly still a common beast to tackle but not as troublesome as one might think. They will say that there are questionable levels of proof or that it’s a government conspiracy. Key approaches here are to make it not just about the science or the risk to the business but also be positive about the opportunity for the business to enhance its image with the community and consumers and thus good business sense. Make it a decision about competitive advantage and you’ll have less to worry about here.

King of the Corner – it’s not relevant to what we do in this section. This is a bit of bug bear for me. A business unit manager who decides not to support the agreed whole of corporate approach is holding up an entire business from acting. Prevention is better than cure here. Ensure that the action plan is takes into account the individual needs of the business. Call centres are different to distribution and offices to manufacturing the ability to define different approaches makes it work at a local level. Get the employee groups involved and contributing to keep engagement levels up and override the issue. If that fails call in a big leadership hammer to break a few stubborn barriers.

Rudderless Ships –  my manager doesn’t support the program. After many years of research with companies around engagement blocks this is still the greatest barrier to advancement. So the key learning is that you must get them engaged prior to the launch, they need to see leadership support and must be given permission to act on initiatives aligned to the plan. Don’t let a lack of KPI’s stand in the way of getting line mangers involved. Provide these vital team members with the tools and the help them realise their role as change agents not sustainability experts and you’ll see results.

I’m sure that you many of you have experienced individual barriers. Naysayers will pop up with any initiative and hopefully sharing some of these responses will make your sustainability strategy leap into the boundaries of those with real reductions.

More awards for Impact

Dec, 21 – Impact has had a month of success, winning award after award at the recent Asia-Pacific PR Awards and the Ogilvy PR Professional Achievement Awards.

The Asia-Pacific PR Awards recognise the best work in the communications industry. Now in their 10^th year of competition, the awards are dedicated to celebrating outstanding work and across the region. We’re thrilled to announce our win:

Employee Communications Campaign of the Year, Impact & OgilvyEarth – Bayer Australia

The Ogilvy PR Professional Achievement Awards, internal to Ogilvy, were broadcast live to approximately 70 Ogilvy PR offices around the world to celebrate the year’s best client work. A very excited group held down the fort from 1.30 to 3.15am to represent the Australia team.  Australia has a strong track record in these highly sought after internal awards and 2010 was no exception. Impact cleaned up, winning awards in two categories:

• Crisis Management – Ford Australia: Driving a great result for Australia – Ogilvy PR Australia
• Internal Communications – Bayer Australia and New Zealand: “Small Changes = Big Change” – Impact Employee Communications

At these awards global CEO, Chris Graves, announced a new award category in honour of David Ogilvy. The Giant Award is for people of any level worldwide who made a giant contribution to our company this year, exhibits and lives the giant characteristics David Ogilvy looked for, and someone who is decent to their colleagues and gives back to the Ogilvy community and society. There are only four of these awards and one of them went to our very own Tam Sandeman, Managing Director of Impact Employee Communcations.

Congratulations to Tam and all the teams involved in the winning campaigns.

OgilvyEarth & The Climate Institute

OgilvyEarth has been a proud Major Climate Partner of The Climate Institute (TCI) since March 2010, supporting TCI’s vision for Australia to lead the world in clean technology use and innovation. Part of our contribution to this partnership is supporting the TCI team with strategic communications planning and media outreach.

This year, OgilvyEarth has had the pleasure of being involved in the promotion of a number of world first initiatives led by TCI, including the launch of the Climate Advocacy Fund – a joint initiative with Australian Ethical Investment. The Fund works on the ‘power in numbers’ principle to influence Australia’s biggest companies to better manage climate change risk through constructive engagement and the provision of Australia’s first climate change shareholder resolutions. The Fund gives shareholders the opportunity to positively shape corporate behaviour in relation to sustainability. Media interest in the Fund has been positive, with stories reported by The AFR, The Age, SMH, Business Spectator and ABC News.

More recently, TCI in conjunction with Vivid Economics launched a pioneering research report that compares Australia’s efforts in driving carbon pricing within the electricity sector against its major trading partners China, US, UK, Japan and South Korea.

The report, titled “Putting a Price Tag on Pollution: Driving Competitiveness in the Clean Energy Economy”, revealed for the first time that Australia is lagging significantly behind its major trading partners in putting a price on carbon, therefore dispelling the myth Australia is at risk of leading the world and ‘acting too soon’ in making businesses responsible for pollution.

To maximise media coverage of the report, an interactive media release (IMR) was used in place of a traditional media release. The IMR featured the announcement of the report, links to an executive summary and the full report, an infographic, video interviews with two key spokespersons, and links to TCI social media platforms.

Media coverage of the report has been phenomenal with over 170 pieces of coverage appearing on the day of launch, including local stories in the AFR, SMH, ABC News and The Economist. The report has also attracted international coverage in the UK, US and China. The IMR drove a great response online, both from the media and international government staff and policy makers.  Numerous bloggers posted links to the IMR and infographic, there were over 1260 views of the infographic on Flickr and over 345 views of the YouTube videos.

The report has been recognised by industry experts as an important piece of work which uncovers where Australia really stands on the issue of carbon pricing:

Dr Martin Parkinson, Secretary of the Department of Climate Change: “Vivid and the Climate Institute are to be congratulated for attempting to quantify the implicit carbon price imposed by policies to reduce emissions”

Heather Ridout, CEO Australian Industry Group: “I think it really does attack that idea that Australia was going to go it alone, that was a straw man and it’s been shown to be one.”

Professor Ross Garnaut: “The Climate Institute analysis was a very good first step that probably underplayed how far Australia was behind China and the US.”

Our team at OgilvyEarth continues to support the great work TCI is doing to make clean and low carbon a part of our everyday life.

More sustainable success

Sept, 24 – We’re delighted to announce that more environmentally friendly news came our way last night as the winners at the Public Relations Institute of Australia (PRIA)’s NSW Golden Target awards were announced.  Impact and Bayer Australia and New Zealand’s B-Green project, which drove and achieved measurable behaviour change across its Australian and New Zealand workforce around sustainability, was announced the overall winner of the Internal Communication category.

The project, created and executed by Impact’s specialist sustainability and CSR Ogilvy Earth team led to a raft of energy, recycling and other initiatives in the company.  The program has already won an international gold quill of excellence and was also recently awarded the best internal communications program for all Bayer companies worldwide.

Better news is that it now goes forward to a national stage where it will compete against other state awards for the overall national prize.

Two other Ogilvy PR agencies were recognised with Pulse Communications scooping two of the consumer marketing prizes and Howorth winning a high commendation for its work on the Telstra Productivity Index.

Inside Waste Magazine

Aug, 12 – One of our OgilvyEarth colleagues, Josh Levin, has had a byline published in the latest issue of Inside Waste magazine. Check out his article below!

Published in Inside Waste - Issue 37 July/August 2010

I have had the pleasure of working intimately with Australia’s waste management industry over the last two years as a public affairs adviser to some of Australia’s leading environmental management corporations, industry roof bodies, property developers and advocacy organisations.
 
These experiences have led me to appreciate that for the most part the waste management industry has a profoundly positive sustainability story to tell but it generally approaches the telling of these stories in a reactive manner.

I, though, am a firm believer the positive narrative ought to be told proactively and by operating in this manner your business will thrive commercially.
 
Now, I’m not going to use this space to tell you about  the intricacies of your own businesses , but rather to talk about what I know best: communications and public affairs.
 
One way to quantify the value of communicating sustainability is to ask: is it worth doing for broader reputational reasons – in other words – is it important to your stakeholders? Or, is there a risk to my organisation if we don’t communicate what we are doing in sustainability sense to our stakeholders?
 
A national poll recently commissioned by Parker & Partners found that 82 per cent of Australians want action on climate change now, with the majority of them wanting strong action.
 
It may not be the # 1, or even # 2 issue for the bulk of Australia’s suffrage in this election, but there is no doubt that whichever party can best demonstrate its commitment to taking action now on climate change will benefit from a real boost in electoral support.
 
This is particularly relevant for organisations whose operations have a clear physical impact upon their communities a la the waste sector.
 
As most readers would be aware, the visibility of an organisation’s activities is usually what drives community concern and/or media interest – with each stakeholder group utilising the other to apply pressure.
The very nature of government for example, is that it watches these groups particularly closely. Media and community pressure are important drivers of political influence. And in an industry as regulated as the waste sector, government perception is critical.
 
Government also has a more elevated role in ensuring the best possible legislative and regulatory frameworks are in place to deliver good public policy outcomes.  
 
The reality is that in pursuing sound public policy in the sustainability space, there is always a stronger likelihood of government focusing on those organisations which have the largest impacts on the community – in doing so it allows them to make the most amount of difference whilst applying the least amount of burden on the community.
 
There are of course other stakeholder groups in addition to the aforementioned, however we’ve found that these are the core set of protagonists which organisations grapple with when identifying the opportunities and risks for communicating their sustainability track record.
 
Which brings us to the issue of how organisations should approach the way they communicate their sustainability activities.
 
There are three broad principles which I believe are vital in telling your sustainability story: :
 
·        It must be real, meaningful and authentic
·        It must be demonstrable – and be able to be measured and evaluated
·        It must be positioned in the context of a commitment to ongoing improvements

Obviously, organisations which don’t take their sustainability credentials seriously enough – or worse, try to pretend they are more sustainable than they actually are (the dreaded ‘greenwash’) – run the risk of attracting high levels of scrutiny from government and media, and thus damaging their brand in the eyes of their customers and the broader community.
 
One play for the sector would be to communicate the renewable energy potential of landfill, or the decline of greenhouse emissions from the waste sector as a whole, to stakeholders and the community at large. I’ll leave the nuances to you.

Jillian Broadbent

OgilvyEarth Advisory Board

Jillian Broadbent is a Member of the Board of the Reserve Bank of Australia and a Director of Coca-Cola Amatil Limited and Special Broadcasting Service (SBS). After being on the Board of Woodside Petroleum Ltd for 10 years, she resigned from that Board in 2008. She maintains an active interest in public policy and regional economic developments.

After a 30 years career in banking in Australia and overseas, Jillian left her executive position to become a non-executive director of a number of companies. Prior to her resignation from Bankers Trust Australia, she was a senior executive at that Bank with responsibility for the bank’s risk management business and its banking services to the resources sector.

Jillian maintains an active interest in the arts, having been on the Board of the Sydney Theatre Company, a founding director of the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra and a Trustee, Vice President and Treasurer of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Jillian was President of Chief Executive Women for 2005/2006. She was Chairman of the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) from 2005 to 2007.

She graduated from the University of Sydney with a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in economics and maths.

Jillian was made an Officer in the Order of Australia in 2003. She has an Honorary Doctorate Degree from the University of Western Sydney and was awarded the Qantas/Bulletin Business Woman of the Year in 1987. She was a recipient of the Australian Centenary Medal in 2001 in recognition for her contribution to the community.

Robbie Brown

Sustainability Strategist

Robbie specialises in sustainability communications for our OgilvyEarth practice.

Robbie has worked with a diverse range of businesses on developing employee communication strategies and action plans; employee research, key messages, and the creation of engaging programs to motivate, educate, empower and enable employees in their role to assist companies achieve their sustainability objectives.

Objectives have covered the full gambit of environmental, social and economic sustainability. Anything from reducing greenhouse gas emissions, improving energy efficiency, water conservation and waste minimisation, to growing volunteering, fund raising and workplace giving for community support programs, to improving safety and employee well being; and driving innovative to improve business processes, products and practices and in turn profitability.

Her clients have included Woolworths, Qantas, Bayer (2010 IABC Gold Quill Award winning program), a number of manufacturing and industrial organisations, financial institutions, state and federal government departments.

Robbie has led employee communication programs designed to reach anything from 100 employees in a single location to 30,000+ employees located around the globe.

Prior to joining Impact, in 2008 Robbie spent three years in strategic marketing and business development with a strong focus on environmental sustainability for a market leading manufacturer in the building and construction sector. Robbie was instrumental in establishing an industry benchmark with Good Environmental Choice Australia and became an energetic advocate of corporate responsibility. During this time Robbie also held positions on the Marketing Committee with the Green Building Council of Australia and the Planning Committee for the Property Industry Foundation’s fund raising activities.

Prior to this Robbie worked with Starwood Hotels for eight years where her sales and marketing talent took her around the world, moving from hotel specific to divisional and global responsibilities.

Robbie holds a Diploma in Marketing and is a Green Star Accredited Professional under the Green Building Council of Australia’s Green Star Rating System for the built environment.

Outside her interests in sustainability and corporate responsibility, Robbie enjoys horse riding, skiing, kayaking, the odd bash of golf, exploring the world and savouring its great food and wine.

Stephen Hale

Managing Director

Stephen brings very strong and diverse experience gained from working across a number of industries in a range of different senior roles.

Stephen works with project teams to develop and drive communication campaigns for a range of clients, however, his true passion at Impact has been to develop and drive its now rapidly-growing sustainability and environmental communication practice, OgilvyEarth, which he heads. Stephen has been instrumental in forging a close and successful partnership between Impact and the NSW Department of Environment and Climate Change (DECC), partnering with them to encourage major energy users to implement government-funded projects aimed at achieving energy saving through employee behaviour change. The OgilvyEarth practice has expanded its services to offer solutions in communicating with a wide range of stakeholders on sustainability performance and climate change response. Their client base includes airlines, Government departments, manufacturing and industrial, banks, energy companies, major retail chains, facilities management and agencies.

In addition to his sustainability work, Stephen’s work for major companies across Australia has included realigning and embedding vision and values across large complex workforces, and developing campaigns to engage sales teams and safety programs to reduce injuries in heavily-industrial environments. To date, his growing client portfolio has included Qantas, Woolworths, Visy, Thales, Kellogg, Railcorp, Department of Defence, Inghams, Origin Energy and Telstra.

His extensive knowledge of HR practices gained during his time at Accor Services provides further weight to his strong knowledge round change and his work now also includes managing teams involved in change management projects in a wide variety of industry segments including FMCG, manufacturing, technology, retail, airline, industrial and government sectors. More recently, he has also assisted in developing new methodologies to help clients get a good result when facing Enterprise Bargaining Agreements (EBA). He has assisted companies with industrial relations in the medical, aviation, telecommunications and manufacturing sectors.

In 2007 Stephen was a panelist at the Climate Change Summit and a guest speaker at Origin Energy’s Climate Change presentation, where he presented key learnings and practices that lead to an effective sustainability program. He was on the expert panel at the Green Capital Event “Is it easy being Green. Marketing in the age of Spin”.

Prior to joining Impact, Stephen held senior management positions in marketing and sales at News Ltd and Time Warner.

He enjoys golf, fishing, dining out and considers himself to be an expert cook.

Triple Global Recognition

Apr, 16 - Today we’re delighted to share that Impact has been recognised on the world communication stage not once, not twice, but three times over.  In the year we celebrate our fifteenth birthday, we’ve won two International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) Gold Quill Awards of Excellence and have also just been named best in show, winning the IABC’s annual 2010 Special Business Issue Award.  The awards are recognised as the most prestigious and highest level of professional acknowledgment within internal communication globally, and we’re ecstatic.

Our first Gold Quill of Excellence and the 2010 Special Business Issue Award were won by our change communication team for our work for Ford Australia. The awards recognised what was a complex campaign for a company in an industry facing a challenging operating environment. The work ensured crucial public employee and union support for a difficult business announcement, contributing to an overwhelming raft of positive media articles across all media outlets.

Our second Gold Quill was won together with Bayer Australia and New Zealand.  This award recognised communication excellence for the development and execution of Bayer’s B-Green project which drove and achieved measurable behaviour change across its Australian and New Zealand workforce around sustainability.  The project, steered our specialist sustainability communication team operating under our OgilvyEarth practice, led to a raft of energy, recycling and other initiatives and was also recently awarded the best internal communications program for all Bayer companies worldwide.

“These awards demonstrate Impact can compete on a world communication stage and recognise we’re delivering the highest possible level of strategic and creative counsel to gain vital employee support for business critical initiatives for companies in Australia,” says joint managing director, Tam Sandeman.

“This is the first time two top awards have been won by the same company in Australia and winning the overall Business Issues award was the icing on the cake.  More importantly, it showcases work in two areas gaining increasing importance on every Australian business’ agenda – sustainability and change,” adds Stephen Hale, co-MD.

The awards will be given at the IABC’s international conference in Toronto in June 2010.

Creating Big Change for Bayer

22 March – There is an ever increasing demand from a diverse range of stakeholders for companies and their employees to go about business in an increasingly responsible manner. However engaging employees in an internal environmental sustainability strategy and maintaining momentum can be challenging. Organisations consistently face the same questions – how do you get employees to see the link between the company’s environmental performance and their individual actions? What needs to be done to make a difference? Who needs to be involved? Where do we start? How do we convince them this is not extra work, just a more responsible way of going about our business?
Bayer Australia and New Zealand is one organisation that, working in partnership with OgilvyEarth, has successfully designed and implemented an internal environmental sustainability communication program. Bayer’s employees are engaged, empowered and motivated to make a difference and are provided with the tools, resources and support required to be part of the solution to improving Bayer’s sustainability.

So how did they do it?

Made up of multiple elements, the B-Green program rollout inspired employees to make a difference, reinforcing throughout communication “lots of small changes x 850 employees + family + friends = big change”. There were three things Bayer wanted their employees to do – Consider the environment in everything they do, take personal responsibility for their actions and embed care for the environment as part of their every day. This led to the development of the B-Green charter – “Think.Act.Live.”

The B-Green program provided employees with educational tools and resources to understand what daily actions they can take not only at work but at home as well, such as printing smarter and considering what can be re-used even before recycling; and what positive effects this leads to in the bigger picture.

Initial research had identified the need for leadership to demonstrate their personal commitment and support, so Bayer’s leadership team were actively involved from day one and continue to play an important role in communicating sustainability as a business imperative.

Bayer set specific reduction targets for their Australia and New Zealand operations and regularly measures and informs employees of progress.

The result?

Bayer Australia and New Zealand’s environmental performance has significantly improved.

Employees have taken up the challenge to make a change, providing a comprehensive list of their own ideas on what could be done to improve sustainability based on their first hand experiences in their role and area of the business; and the program continues to be an ongoing part of life at Bayer.

As just reward for their efforts, the B-Green campaign has won a prestigious internal global award for Bayer Australia and New Zealand, the “Bayer Award for Excellence in Communications – Employee Communications”. This is an international award with more than 800 submissions.

Just goes to show that employees are a big part of the solution. Remember – lots of small changes x lots of people = big change!