Corporate Responsibility

Old Mutual’s purpose is to help its customers thrive by enabling them to achieve their lifetime financial goals, while investing their funds in ways which create a positive future for them, their families, their communities and the world at large.

Sodexo, world leader in Quality of Life Services, announced today that it exceeded its 2015 goal to have women comprise at least 25 percent of its top 200 leadership positions globally by 6 percentage points; achieving 31 percent. The company made the announcement at a White House Diversity and Inclusion Roundtable, where it also announced higher targets of 35 percent by 2020 and 40 percent by 2025.

Ideagen CEO George Sifakis interviews Amway's Global Head for Corporate Responsibility, Jeff Terry regarding CSR work.

Today NAEM initiated its latest benchmarking survey on how companies staff, structure and assign responsibilities to the environment, health and safety, and sustainability (EHS&S) function.

Business needs another industrial revolution—one led by corporations like Phillips, selling light as well as bulbs, or Dell, creating a closed-loop recycled plastics supply chain to recycle computers back into new computers, or the Dow Chemical Company, recovering non-recycled plastics, and converting them into usable energy. While reducing waste is not a new idea, these companies understand the value of a circular economy at work, one in which resources are endlessly cycled back into supply chains, where waste simply does not exist.

I recently had the opportunity to speak with a group of graduate students about Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and my own career in social impact. The discussion was stimulating and the students asked probing questions. After the session, a young woman approached me and said that she would love to have a job like mine and change the world, to give away a company’s money to support worthy causes. My heart sank. In my experience, CSR can be a powerful force to transform corporate culture and align business activities with social benefit. While pure philanthropy remains an important component of CSR, the field has evolved beyond giving.

IKEA Sustainability Officer Steve Howard practically shook the earth when he announced early this year that the home furniture market had reached “peak stuff.” New product sales, he said, had already seen their heyday and were now entering a decline. And he wasn’t just speaking off the cuff—IKEA is currently positioning their business towards a circular economy while still hoping to double sales by 2020.

Consumer purchase decisions are increasingly influenced by a brand’s social purpose.

It’s no surprise that water is at the core of the United Nations’ new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), given its connection to health, climate change and resiliency. The SDGs seek to improve water quality and to substantially increase recycling and safe reuse globally by 2030.

Increasing the efficiency of water consumption at the industry level will help address these goals and also reduce scarcity issues. From using stormwater to flush toilets to installing low-flow nozzles where appropriate, conserving water will drive efficiency and also help companies save money. Here are some ways businesses can get started.