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A look at sustainability programs lead by top technology and travel corporations, their road to success, and the benefits.

An increased number of corporations commit to minimizing the environmental impact of their business operations and to promoting sustainable business practices in local, national and global markets.

While consumers, business-to-business (B2B) companies, manufacturers and wholesalers are showing a greater interest in ‘Going Green’ -sustainability means more than reducing energy bills or making green products.

Adopting ‘Green Thinking’, many corporations are currently in transition and at various sustainability maturity levels. By incorporating sustainability into their business strategy, the successful companies took several eco-friendly initiatives to improve operations, reduce energy costs, redefine performance metrics for processes and operations, and all levels of employees. Furthermore, they took initiatives to ‘green’ their supply chain, as well as leverage their corporate social responsibility.

Page Mill Consultants in conjunction with Kanal Consulting recently completed a study of best practices among 25 leading corporations, among them 14 were from the San Francisco Bay Area. The research provided important insights on how companies are benefiting from their sustainability initiatives and resulted in a knowledgebase of ‘best practices’ which companies can apply to maximize the success of their initiatives on the road to sustainability.

At a ‘Sustainability Best Practices’ event last month, Charlie Goldenberg (Page Mill Consultants) and Vijay Kanal (Kanal Consulting) presented their findings and moderated a panel discussion with select study participants from Adobe Systems, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Cisco Systems, Intel, and Sabre Holdings/Travelocity.

Click here for details about ‘Value Creation from Sustainability Best Practices’ presentation.

The panelists discussed their successes and challenges in driving sustainability into company-wide practices:

· Adobe - Randy Knox, Senior Director, Facilities

· AMD - Donna Sadowy, Manager, Global Regulatory Affairs, Energy & Environment

· Cisco - Darrel Stickler, Sustainable Business Practices Group

· Intel - Carrie Freeman, Corporate Sustainability Strategist

· Sabre Holdings/Travelocity - Leilani C. Latimer, Director, Sustainability Initiatives

The panelists agreed that governance is critical for driving corporate sustainability. Once policies and goals are in place at the visionary and strategic levels, driving the direction of green initiatives, setting metrics and measuring results are as important. Governance has additional benefits such as better management of resources, better communications, cost savings, and ownership at all levels of the corporation. The panelists pointed out that sustainability can be a leverage point to save costs and increase profitability.

For more information about their organizations' sustainability achievements, please refer to the bottom of this article.

    Here are excerpts from the discussion:

Where did the most ROI (Return On Investment) happen? What was the value achieved?

ADOBE - LEED certification had a significant value. Adobe achieved platinum level on their four buildings in the Bay Area – in San Jose and San Francisco. Next, the company is addressing their commitment to renewables. Other significant results were reducing employees’ travel by 50%

AMD – Last year went through carbon footprint certification. Also had success with tier 1 suppliers who supported their green supply-chain program. AMD corporate building received a Gold LEED certification.

Cisco – Incurred significant savings on employee travel. Another opportunity was reducing the need for office space by enabling virtual workforce, exercising flexibility and letting more and more employees to telecommute, which also cut energy usage and associated costs. In 2009, Cisco saved a 100 million dollars in employee travel in comparison to 2006 travel expenses, not counting hotels, restaurants, transfers, and other related business expenses.

Facing the economic downturn, how can companies continue their sustainability initiatives? How does governance play a role in your organization?

Intel – Rigorously addressed renewables, energy savings, and LEED certification. These efforts will continue this year. Intel looked at the strategic point of view of the entire corporation instead of approaching site-by-site. One of the major outcomes of their sustainability initiatives are efficient data centers.

Sabre – Linked sustainability strategy to their overall corporate strategy. Then prioritized their initiatives and programs. In 2008, with the economic decline, the travel industry suffered loses. Sabre revisited their plans and took action at the visionary level: they realigned their strategies and chose to focus on several sustainability initiatives – the ones yielding cost savings across the board. Therefore, the items that influenced cost savings got a heavier weight in their corporate ‘greening’ efforts. Not only top management was affected, Sabre also focused on engaging middle management. For example, sustainability goals were integrated as part of management’s business objectives.

     The panelists agreed that many employees are becoming more and more interested social responsibility. In the high-tech industry, to attract young engineers and college graduates, organizations need to incorporate social responsibility into their company’s values and beliefs.

How would your governance practices engage stakeholders?

    The moderators referred to four critical groups of stakeholder: customers, employees, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), and investors.

Intel – Communicates with the stakeholders and keeps a two-way dialog. Intel’s approach is to collaborate, get feedback, and engage. Align the business objectives with sustainability goals and get top executives buy-in. The corporate culture is recognizing positive and effective influences due to peer-pressure, not only up and down in the ranks, but also horizontal.

Cisco – As for general awareness, transparency is key: keep communicating internally and also externally. Cisco is trying to push sustainability down into the business processes, since the culture is quite mature to get employees involved. The green initiatives are broad: facilities, information technology (IT), design, supply-chain, resources management, and engaging with NGOs (the ones that really make a difference).

Intel – One of the successes of their environmental leadership was tying employees’ goals, at all levels, to sustainability objectives. Here, a percentage of compensation is tied to the company’s environmental goals.

    The panelists noted that sustainability best practices require incorporating goals into all the business areas. They gave several examples of sustainability steps their organizations took in the past 2 years:

ADOBE – Enables customers to purchase software online and downloading it versus shipping the software products, with complete packaging of manuals, license agreements and digital media. Adobe also encourages employees to work form home. They also offer alternative transportation mode programs to employees. Telecommuting also saves office space, leasing office buildings, and reducing costs.

Intel - A call center with hundreds of customer service personnel doesn’t really require hundreds of personal computers. A terminal is sufficient to address customer needs, which ended up in reducing computer usage, saving on IT services, and more.

Cisco – Enables virtual workforce and encourages employees to work from home. This not only reduced the commuting impact (reduction of CO2, saving employees’ commute time, increasing employee morale, promoting employee safety, more), it also increased productivity. To realize benefits, the company measures the carbon emission savings. This was a cultural change and some people had a hard time with this concept. IBM operates similarly.

More information about environmental initiatives and sustainability successes:

· Adobe -  Adobe’s sustainability commitment

· AMD - Corporate Responsibility and Environmental Performance

· Cisco - CSR Report and Environmentally Responsible Products and Supply Chains

· Intel - 2008 Intel Corporate Responsibility Report - click on 'Environment'

· Sabre Holdings/Travelocity - Corporate Sustainability Initiatives and Corporate Environment information
 

Crossroad image from green.sympatico.msn.ca    

 JOB LEADS

For career opportunities and openings, check the following:

· Adobe - Career Opportunity

· AMD - Careers

· Cisco - Career Opportunity

· Intel - Jobs at Intel

Sabre Holdings/Travelocity - Careers

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