Category Archives: CSR

Has Coca Cola hit or missed the CSR mark with its Happiness Phone Booth labourer project?

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Coca Cola is all about happiness. The soft drinks giant has been looking to associate itself with the concept of happiness for years, and these efforts regularly involve cause-related marketing activations. The latest effort by Coca Cola in the United Arab Emirates, named Happiness Phone Booth, gave laborers in the country an opportunity to make a call home. The special Hello booths didn’t accept coins but rather Coca-Cola bottle caps. Each bottle of Coca-Cola could be “turned into” a 3-minute free international phone call. Watch the clip below to understand the project in its entirety.

The controversy about this idea, which is clear in the comments underneath the video, is about the source of the bottle tops themselves. Are the labourers given Coca Cola bottles? If so, then why not make this clear on the video. If not, either the labourers have to spend two Dirhams out of their daily 18 Dirham salary on a bottle or find other means (which I’ll leave to your imagination).

So Coca Cola, shouldn’t you have targeted a group of the population who can afford your products for this cause-based marketing campaign?

What are your thoughts? Has Coca Cola done good? Or can it do better?

Make a New Year’s Resolution for your company and go volunteer in 2014

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Volunteering will benefit you, your employees and your business more than you may imagine (image source - www.zmetravel.com)

Volunteering will benefit you, your employees and your business more than you may imagine (image source – http://www.zmetravel.com)

You’re finished with the festive period, the time of year when we have a tendency to overindulge. Now, having seen in the new year, most of us will have made a number of resolutions for our own betterment. But if you’re thinking of a way to make a difference in 2014, why not take a step forward and make a resolution for your company and community?

The concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) is gaining a foothold among businesses across the region and one method that all businesses, both large and small, can adopt is to volunteer their time to support local charitable organisations.

There’s a misconception among business owners that volunteering or other forms of CSR is the preserve of large corporations. Nothing could be further from the truth. Giving back by donating your time and expertise to your community can be beneficial to you, your staff and business for many reasons. Not only can volunteering help your community and create a shared sense of achievement among your employees, but giving back can even help your business grow in way that you may not expect. Here’s how:

Volunteering can broaden your experience

Volunteering provides an opportunity to work on something different, with new people in a new place for a new cause. The experiences are not only personally rewarding, but you may and your staff will develop new skills and thinking from the not-for-profit sector that may benefit your own business. When you volunteer for the right reasons to give back to the community, you’ll not only develop new perspectives but you’ll also become more of an empathetic, well-rounded leader and be able to bring these skills and experiences back to bear on your own goals and those of your business.

Your employee morale will improve

Giving to the community has significant benefits for employee satisfaction. Studies by London in 2010 found that 94 per cent of companies had found that volunteering positively impacted employee morale. Volunteering allows your staff to give back to their communities, learn new skills and participate in causes that many of them may passionately believe in, such as the environment, good health and childcare. Volunteering has been found to boost employee health as well as their morale.

Doing well is good for your business reputation too

As a business owner, no one will know better than you that your actions impact your business reputation. Giving back to the local community will have positive effect on your brand. The more that you become part of your local community, the faster your reputation as a business that cares will grow. Volunteering helps your company show that you are empathetic and that you do understand the needs and concerns of local communities.

Develop new relationships and strengthen existing ones

There’s no better way to develop and maintain good relationships than working together with others for a good cause. Getting out there and volunteering will enable you to meet new people who you may not otherwise meet. Even if these relationships don’t initially seem relevant to you and your business, the power of networking will mean that you’ll have a group of individuals outside of your usual business circles to consult with and give you different perspectives.

If you haven’t ever volunteered before and don’t know where to start, there are a number of organisations and bodies that can advise you. For companies based in Dubai, the best place to start is the Dubai Chamber of Commerce and its Engage team that already has a strong connection with most of Dubai’s charitable organisations. The Engage team may be able to point you and your business in the right direction as to how and where to start. The Dubai Chamber of Commerce and the Engage team can be reached at responsiblebusiness@dubaichamber.com.

For companies in Abu Dhabi, the Abu Dhabi Sustainability Group is a governmental organisation that promotes sustainability best practises and would be best placed to provide similar advice as to where to start in the UAE’s capital. You can contact them at contact@adsg.ae.

For business owners in Saudi Arabia, your best resource may be the Ministry of Social Affairs, which has a database of all locally registered charities in the kingdom. The ministry has offices in most of the kingdom’s cities, so do check out its website at http://www.mosa.gov.sa.

Volunteering doesn’t have to take a tremendous amount of time or energy and yet giving back can be one of the most rewarding things you do over 2014 for yourself and your employees. Get started today and make a difference not only to yourself, but to your local community as well.

This piece was first published on the Kipp Report.

Is the Middle East’s CSR industry forgetting about its youth?

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We’re in a region where the majority of the population is under the age of 24. The youth is the story of the Middle East. And yet I didn’t feel this way at a recently-held event on corporate social responsibility here in Dubai. Many of the speakers were in their fifties or sixties. The audience, while slightly younger, were still old enough to be a decade or two above the region’s median age.

While the speeches about sustainability and social responsibility were notable for their good intentions and advice, there still seems to be a good deal of the old leading the young rather than empowering young to help themselves. There have been a couple of notable attempts to break this mould, such as Coca Cola’s Ripples of Happiness which supported university students in Bahrain, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Jordan to identify opportunities for CSR and employment projects.

I hope that corporations and governments understand what I’m trying to convey above. If we’re going to engender change in the region, the agents of change will be the youth. They need to be given the chance to set an agenda for social change and social responsibility rather than have ideas developed by older generations.

For more info about Coca Cola’s Ripples of Happiness please see the video below which is from the Dubailynx.com website.

What is innovation? And what does it mean for Saudi Arabia?

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I was reading over the news this week and came across an announcement by General Electric. The American engineering giant recently announced a one billion dollar investment in the Kingdom, including the establishment of an innovation center in Dhahran’s Techno-Valley in the country’s oil-producing Eastern Region (you can read about the announcement here).

The company showcased the facility last week to a select number of media, and gave a glimpse into how the center would be the focal point of the company’s engagement with local customers, Saudi-based researchers and universities and industry groups. More cryptic (to me) was the statement that the GE innovation center will act as a hub where “entrepreneurs and companies can incubate business ideas and pursue innovation in energy efficiency, aviation, healthcare, and elsewhere.”

I’m always thrilled to see investment into Saudi Arabia, particularly when it’s focused on knowledge transfer and supporting Saudi nationals in developing their skills and abilities. But one question has stuck in my head. What is innovation in this context? Will we see new technologies and products being developed by GE and its partners in Saudi? And why Saudi Arabia for an innovation center?

To be fair, the region is not known for developing world firsts, unlike the United States. In the 2011 there were two million patents filed worldwide. Of that number Saudi Arabia filed for 990. The Kingdom is primarily known for its consumption of goods rather than value creation through local entrepreneurship and knowledge creation.

Efforts have been made to introduce systems and concepts to foster more local innovation – the Kingdom’s Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority has set up various centers to support entrepreneurs establish new companies and increase the competitiveness of small to medium sized businesses. There are 120,000 plus Saudi nationals studying at universities abroad under the King Abdullah Scholarship Programme, whose knowledge will also make a major impact on the nation’s economy.

There is one area where Saudi Arabia innovates and that is in the oil and gas sector. Situated in the Eastern Region, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM) is renowned for its academic research into the oil and gas industry. KFUPM has successfully partnered with the private sector to further its academic research and find practical applications for its academic output.

My hope is that GE’s new innovation center, which is located alongside KFUPM, will build on the wealth of oil and gas/energy knowledge that has been created in the Kingdom’s Eastern Region to create new applications that we will see being put into use in other parts of the Middle East.

For me, innovation is taking that (in many cases) latent ability and talent and nurturing it through mentoring, support and guidance. If GE can pull this off, and gradually benefit the many industries that GE has a hand in on a local level I’ll be delighted as will many others who understand how much Saudi and its people are capable off. Let’s hope others follow in GE’s footsteps and consider their own innovation investments in the Kingdom.

GE has committed to support Saudi innovation alongside KFUPM. When will other multinational companies follow?

Going above and beyond: How IBM is supporting Sharjah through training and education (and all for free)

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Corporations often about about giving back. The phrase corporate social responsibility is often uttered by executives. But how many companies really get their hands stuck in when it comes to providing knowledge, skills, and experience to local communities.

IBM’s remit has included encouraging ICT adoption among Sharjah’s youth

One company that I admire and respect for how it does things differently is IBM. IBM, or Big Blue as the company is also known, is a vendor to the Government of Sharjah for its e-government project. IBM did what few other vendors do, and sent a team of volunteers over to Sharjah to help develop a communications strategy that would promote Sharjah’s e-government services to the Emirate’s citizens and residents. Here’s a couple of bite-size quotes from IBM’s press memo.

An international team of 14 IBM employees chosen for the company’s Corporate Services Corps program has arrived in the United Arab Emirates to volunteer their expertise in support of e-literacy and social development in the Emirate of Sharjah. As part of the project, the team will work alongside the Sharjah e-Government Directorate, Sharjah University and the Supreme Council for Family Affairs Centers.

The team of 14 IBM experts from the United States, India, Austria, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, Japan and Australia will be on the ground in Sharjah for a month. At the Sharjah e-Government Directorate, a team will help refine a national strategy for promoting e-services of the Sharjah government to residents.

At the Supreme Council of Family Affairs, an IBM team will help the council and its organizations realize an e-literacy program and move closer towards realizing its goals of helping Sharjah women and youth improve their IT skills.

IBM’s Corporate Service Corps are teams of subject matter experts who give their time free of charge for a month to help local economies, improve skills, and provide a foundation for success in a variety of disciplines to small businesses, educational institutions and non-profit organisations.

As a person who is passionate about communications, I find it interesting that IBM focused on working with Sharjah on how to promote e-services. In a sense it acknowledges the truth that having a good technical setup and list of services just isn’t enough. If you don’t know about the services and/or your habits are ingrained then you won’t use a new services. It’ll be interesting to see how IBM and the Sharjah Government will look to tackle the issue of change, to promote services that contrast with how government affairs have been traditionally run in the Gulf (think lots of office trips and paperwork).

In addition, how will the initiative have tackled internal change, to convince government employees who would have never thought about either using e-services or promoting electronic government.

I’d love to know if IBM considered the prospect of using traditional communication methods such as a majlis (usually a night-time gathering of several dozen men, or women, in one room discuss everything from personal issues to business) to talk about and listen to ideas on how to publicize e-services as well as demonstrate the ease with which one could complete a government transaction or service without having to talk to someone face to face or leave one’s house or office.

How will IBM and the Sharjah Government promote e-services to a society that is both traditional and conservative?

In a conservative society with many different cultures, nationalities and languages what tactics can be used to convey a message successfully? The thought of using centuries-old concepts and practices to make a success out of a cutting edge technology project to change how government services are requested and delivered is fascinating. Again, I wonder what IBM came up with on this project.

All in all, this is what CSR should be about. Supporting a government e-services project through communications? Providing advice and training for getting more women and youth into technology? And for free? I hope others follow in IBM’s footsteps. We all could do with more corporate love through such projects.

PS for more news on IBM’s Corporate Service Corps initiative have a look at the website http://www.ibm.com/ibm/responsibility/corporateservicecorps/ or follow the hashtag #ibmcsc!

Where’s the corporate response to #Sandy?

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The response to tropical storm/hurricane Sandy online has been remarkable. There’s little anyone else is talking about, and even as far off as the Middle East people are sending their wishes to those caught in the storm’s path. To give you an idea about how Sandy has been trending on social media, have a look at the analytics graph from Hashtag.org for #sandy.

The graph, from hashtags.org, is from a one percent sample of Twitter traffic over the past 24 hours.

Everyone has been pitching in to provide help, support and comfort to those affected. According to thenextweb, Twitter has supported relief efforts by promoting the following twitter accounts @RedCross, @FEMA,@NYCMayorsOffice, and @MDMEMA. “Twitter is also listing government accounts and resources on its blog and giving #Sandy a custom page,” according to the piece by Harrison Weber on TNW.

Even celebrities have been taking to the social media space to talk about Sandy.

https://twitter.com/ABFalecbaldwin/status/263245395025600512

Aside from the danger to life posed by Sandy, the main talking points have been flooding and power outages. As a big fan of the likes of ABB (my former company) and GE, I was hoping that they and others would be talking about the disaster and lending a hand to get everything back on track. Estimations are that eight million people are without power right now in the Eastern seaboard of the US, and that utility company staffers are traveling from as far as California and Texas to help out in New York.

And what is on GE’s Facebook page?

This was GE’s latest post to their Facebook page, which is liked by over 900,000 people. There’s no mention of Sandy.

And ABB?

ABB’s latest Facebook post which was put up in the afternoon of October 30. Again, no mention of Sandy.

This isn’t exactly an empirical study, but it worries me that two of the world’s most respected electrical engineering companies are not lending their support or even making their support known by social media. While I understand that many corporates don’t want to be seen to be taking advantage of the situation, surely there’s a time and place for them to offer their support and advice publicly.

Not talking about what is affecting millions of people seems so out of place, especially when on social media and when the companies mentioned provide solutions that power our utilities.

After all, aren’t we supposed to be talking with each other via Facebook and Twitter. Or do we go on, ignoring global events? Hardly being socially responsibly on social media, is it?