Two weeks ago I attended the Ethical Corporation’s annual conference on employee engagement in London. Unfortunately, I was only able to attend the first day of the two-day conference but I still took away some insight from what other companies, particularly within our industry, are doing to engage their employees on the topic of CSR. So this is what I’d like to share with you today:

IBM’s Michael Stephenson talked about online brainstorming events, called “Jams”, as a tool for employee engagement. IBM is well known for making use of jamming for employee communications.. For more information, have a look at their Jam website. Michael talked about a pilot jam that IBM ran for their Services division in the UK on the topic of reducing carbon dioxide emissions with 15% of employees participating.

Another interesting presentation was by Revital Bitan of Intel who spoke about Intel’s volunteering programs with an impressive 35% of the company’s employees volunteering. To learn more about Intel’s approach, read Revital’s blog.

Britta Rendlen of Swiss Re, who presented in the same session with me, talked about Swiss Re’s “COYou2” employee program. The re-insurance company supports employees in reducing their own personal footprint. Subsidy of up to CHF 5,000 can be claimed for investments into solar panels or heat pumps, when buying a hybrid car or an annual ticket for public transport. The supported investments vary by country where Swiss Re has a presence and from what I understood, it was quite an effort to implement the program but it is highly appreciated by employees and made use of. HP isn’t quite there yet but I was glad to see an announcement last month for a new scheme that our US colleagues can benefit from when investing into solar power systems for their homes.

HP involves its employees around climate change in our three strategic areas:

• Reducing our own operational impact on the climate
• Reducing the impact of our products on the climate and
• Educating and inspiring others to reduce their impact

We’ve already reported on some of our initiatives in this area like the work with WWF, our internal environment day events and our ideas competitions, but if you would like to learn more or receive the slide deck of the presentation I held at the Ethical Corporation Conference, just drop me a comment below.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Ulrike Haug

HP CSR Communications