CSR in Europe, Middle East and Africa

White paper: From Green IT to Greening with IT

jeanne2007 — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:02:00 GMT

A few months ago, WWF published a HP-supported white paper called ‘From Green IT to Greening with IT’. The paper is directed mainly at policy makers and aims to explore the role of IT in business and government strategies for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. It particularly looks at how the current economic and financial crisis can be turned into an opportunity to promote the uptake of low carbon IT solutions.

The paper illustrates nicely the difference between the meaning of Green IT and Greening IT, which is, I think, really important to stress. Green IT refers to making IT more efficient to reduce GHG emissions from the IT sector, which account for 2% of global GHG emissions. Greening with IT, on the other hand, means providing low carbon IT solutions that reduce GHG emissions across different sectors. Examples would be virtual meetings that replace the need to travel as often, thereby reducing the levels of GHG emissions that are generated from the travel sector. Such Greening with IT solutions can be integrated in all businesses and can consequently have an enormous effect on reducing emissions, as they address the remaining other 98%.

We summarised the main points of the paper in an article. Please have a look at the article and the paper.

This paper is the last in a series of several reports that HP EMEA supported for WWF. You can find links to the reports at the bottom of the article.

For insights into IT as an enabler of a low carbon economy, I can also recommend reading blogs by Dennis Pamlin, the author of the reports.

Jeannette Weisschuh

Russian students win HP JA Global Business Challenge Award

jeanne2007 — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:38:00 GMT

Wow! Nearly 1000 students participated in this year`s JA Global Business Challenge and eight teams made it to the final. In the end, the Russian Team Topol-M won the prestigious award, which included a cash prize of US $3,000. Second place was awarded to Team 4 Life from Kazakhstan and Team Kiki Phi from China came in third. Congratulations to all of you!

The HP Global Business Challenge is a business simulation game devised by Junior Achievement which has been supported by HP over the last years. It is a global competition, in which student teams from secondary schools and universities run virtual corporations. The challenge is based on an online programme, where the students have to make specific business decisions for their companies. The aim is that the students acquire business knowledge and skills and understand the real effect of the decisions that they make.

For more information about this year´s HP Global Business Challenge Award, please read this article or go to the HP Global Business Challenge information website.

Jeannette Weisschuh

Working conditions: a worldwide issue

jeanne2007 — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:14:00 GMT

When we talk about working conditions in global supply chains, we often think of the human rights and labour issues in Asian factories that dominate the media. But what about working conditions in Europe? The European Agency for Safety and Health at Work conducted a survey among European workers focusing on the health and safety conditions of their workplaces. The main finding of the survey is that health and safety standards might suffer during the economic downturn. More information about the survey findings can be found here.

I found it interesting to see that the economic crisis impacts all different kinds of levels – including working conditions. I found it scary that three quarters of the respondents state that their ill health is related to their work and working conditions… The results of the survey are not too positive and are a cause for concern. I think that corporations must do their bit to improve working conditions or ensure that working conditions do not deteriorate. After all, employees are at the heart of corporations.

Jeannette Weisschuh

Winners of 2009 Ashridge Sustainable Innovation Award announced

ulrikehaug — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:41:00 GMT

You might have seen my earlier blog entries about our support for the Ashridge Sustainable Innovation Award and the video produced by WWF to support the award. Today, I am pleased to share with you the names of the winners of the essay competition!

First place went to Jonathan Alexander from the University of Bath, second was awarded to Luc Petit from Ashridge Business School and Srikanth Madani from the University of St. Gallen came third. They were awarded their prizes (EUR 7,000; EUR 5,000 and EUR 3,000 respectively plus career advice from Spencer Stuart) on Monday at the Swedish EU Presidency Conference called ‘Eco-efficient Economy – Towards Innovative and Sustainable Competitiveness’.

If you want to learn more about the winners and the Ashridge Sustainable Innovation Award, which was supported by HP, EABIS and WWF, you can listen to a podcast with Matthew Gitsham from Ashridge Business School and Jonathan and Srikanth or read our feature story.

If you’d like to read the 3,000 word essays by Jonathan, Luc and Srikanth, you can also download the Award Publication, which includes all the shortlisted essays.

Ulrike Haug

GET-IT Networking conference: Immersive Learning!

Daniela.Opp — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:24:00 GMT

This was just so amazing and very rewarding. On 16 and 17 October we held our second GET-IT networking conference in Cairo, Egypt. The conference was hosted by the Ministry of ICT in the ‘smart village’. We had representatives from 80 GET-IT centres, government organisations and educational institutions, as well as real entrepreneurs - our success stories - and they came from about 20 EMEA countries. We all joined hands during the conference and made the theme of the conference – Immersive Learning – a reality.

What did we do? The aim of the conference was to bring together delegates from our GET-IT centres, leaders from education and government and HP management, to exchange experiences, share best practices and get the latest updates on our GET-IT programme. This conference enabled participants to grow their own GET-IT network and learn from each other.

A real highlight for me was to see what GET-IT can achieve when we all come together and the impact that our GET-IT training clearly has on students and the local economy. Another highlight was hearing from entrepreneurs who spoke about how they were able to build their business or improve their economic situation as a result of their GET-IT training.

For instance, we heard from Aissatel Amet from France. She said that she had wanted to establish her own business as a web designer but she lacked sufficient knowledge in Excel programming and numbers. Her GET-IT training helped her to develop her knowledge and ability and she has now successfully launched her own business. These are moments that warm your heart.

The huge amount of work that went into organising this event was also a big highlight for me. It was clearly evident that the Micro Enterprise Acceleration Institute (MEA-I), the Suzanne Mubarak Peace Movement Foundation (one of our GET-IT partners in Egypt), United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) and of course HP really worked so hard and so well together. It was amazing. In addition to sharing experiences and best practice, we also provided our delegates and NGO partners with the latest developments of the GET-IT programme, specifically focusing on our online extension of the programme.

For example, in future the GET-IT centres will have the opportunity to get engaged in curriculum developments online and will be able to suggest topics of interest. Also, we have just launched our second serious game on the online GET-IT City platform. It is called GET-IT Blossom and it represents an extension of our existing online training platform GET-IT City.

GET-IT Blossom is an interactive training programme where the player is a manager of a flower business. The player has to make sure that his customers are happy, the turnover increases and the plantation and office-related work are run successfully.

It was so motivating and rewarding to see how the centres shared their experiences and engaged so well in ‘immersive learning’. To see how GET-IT helps students on a local level makes me feel very strong about our programme and I can’t wait to grow the scope and impact of this programme even further. We have made a lot of contacts within the centres and a number of governments are now really interested in growing GET-IT.

As you will remember from earlier blogs, GET-IT focuses a lot on online learning. This is why we made sure that the conference could also be accessed online to enable people who could not attend the conference in Cairo to participate from their own vantage point. They could do this, for instance, via our GET-IT Facebook page or our Twitter page and of course our GET-IT Homepage. You can find more information about the conference on all of those pages.

I would like to finish my blog entry by extending a big thank you to everyone who participated in the conference. Thank you for all of your contributions, your trust and your work. Let me also thank our partners, the Micro Enterprise Acceleration Institute for all their hard work in helping to organise the conference, as well as to the Ministry of ICT and the Suzanne Mubarak Women´s International Peace Movement for hosting us and for their support both before and during the event. Chapeau!

Daniela Opp, Manager Social Investment, EMEA

PS: you can find recent news about GET-IT on our homepage, our video or latest case study.

Trend not only in the US: Responsible social citizens wanted

jeanne2007 — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:16:00 GMT

Last month I came across an interesting Time article. Even though they talk about the American consumer, I think this is relevant news for us in Europe as well.

The article describes how consumers in the U.S. look for companies which strive to be responsible social citizens. It gives us an interesting history lesson, starting with Milton Friedman’s famous position that corporations have a responsibility to increase profits only for their shareholders to the civil society movement of the 1990s (boycotts, demonstrations etc) and the creation of social investment funds. Where are we today? According to a Time survey, more than 60 per cent of those asked said that they are buying organic products. More people buy energy efficient products. Almost 40 per cent of the survey respondents indicated that they bought a product because of the social or political values of the corporation. This is music in my ears.

Even though the survey featured only Americans, I am sure that we would find a similar trend here in Europe. If anyone knows about similar surveys here in Europe, please let me know.

Jeannette Weisschuh, Director of Global Citizenship, HP EMEA

Blog Action Day: Climate Change

jeanne2007 — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 10:23:00 GMT

For the third consecutive year, our blog is participating in the Blog Action Day. The idea of the Blog Action Day is to encourage bloggers all over the world to post an entry on the same topic on the same day to raise awareness. The motto is: One day. One issue. Thousands of voices.

After last year’s topic on poverty (read our blog entry here), we are back with an environmental issue: Climate Change. Climate Change has been at the top of the agenda for many years and this is why: Climate Change constitutes environmental, economic and social risks. But there are also opportunities, especially for businesses that are committed to finding ways to alleviate climate change.

As a technology company we look at the environmental impact of our operations, the life cycle of our products and how we can help our customers reduce their carbon footprint. Let me highlight some of our latest eco solutions products and services to give you an example of how we do that. With our Eco Solutions programme, we offer more than 115 products that feature our HP Eco Highlights label. Our DeskJet D2545, for example, is made of 83% recycled plastic material. This version also uses 40% less energy than its predecessor. For an overview, have a look at our Eco Solutions Website.

Did you know that saving 1,000 business flights between London and New York for one person can prevent more than 1,200 tonnes of CO2 emissions? It also saves around $2 million in airfares. HP Halo Videoconferencing System offers an alternative to business travel and, at HP, we use it wherever we can to reduce our carbon footprint. By offering Halo as a service to our business customers, we help them reduce their footprint too. Believe me, it feels like being in the same room with your colleagues who might be in the U.S. or China. You can connect up to four Halo rooms simultaneously. I try to use it wherever I can because it saves my time, my colleagues’ time and most of all it saves greenhouse gas emissions. To get an impression of HP’s Halo Telepresence and Videoconference effects on the environment, take a look here.

HP has also just launched SkyRoom, which brings videoconferencing right to your laptop in your office. SkyRoom is a software which enables the user to have live, real-time conversations in instant face-to-face meetings. But that’s not all. SkyRoom also allows users to share videos and presentations with each other. It actually nearly resembles a normal business meeting with your colleagues, except that you do not have to travel or invest hundreds of Euros. Soon this software will be pre-installed on several business desktops and workstations. So, with HP SkyRoom, videoconferencing becomes an affordable alternative to business travel. For more information on this, have a look at the website: www.hp.com/go/hpskyroom.

Technology advances quickly, doesn’t it? It does not only make our lives easier, but it also helps us to reduce our impact on the environment. As a single company, I think we are already making good progress in helping to alleviate climate change. But we must remember: there is still a long way to go and we will have to fundamentally change the way we live and work to help avoid the dangers of climate change.

Jeannette Weisschuh, Director Global Citizenship, HP EMEA

Nigerian team selected as winners of HP Responsible Ideas Contest in Africa

ulrikehaug — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 12:41:00 GMT

You might remember previous blog entries about the 2009 Responsible Business Competition that we’re running with Junior Achievement (JA) Africa.

The latest milestone of this initiative is the selection of the winner of the African Responsible Ideas Contest, which took place in September. I’m pleased to tell you that the student team Black Diamond from Nigeria won first prize!

I was one of the panel of HP experts responsible for judging the finalists from the three participating countries (we’re running this contest as a pilot in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa this year) and it was a challenge to pick a winner out of all of the inspirational ideas that were submitted. On the panel, we had employees from the participating countries, from the HP CSR team and also two judges who had actually run student companies in the JA programme when they were still in school.

Black Diamond convinced the jury because they combined both social and environmental responsibility in their business idea. They had organised a rock concert in their home town of Lagos and used this event to raise awareness about HIV/Aids. They are also planning to use the proceeds of the event to implement a recycling scheme in their school and eventually their community.

I really enjoyed being on the panel of judges and working with JA in the three countries. It’s encouraging to see the various kinds of entrepreneurship education programmes that they offer to young people. If you know of any entrepreneurship initiatives for young people in Africa, please share them by posting a comment.

Ulrike Haug, CSR Stakeholder Programmes, HP EMEA

Conference on 'Arab Women in Science and Technology' in Dubai

jeanne2007 — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 11:39:00 GMT

It is always very rewarding to get insights into different cultures and to learn from them. Last week I had the opportunity to present at the first women´s conference of the Arab Science and Technology Foundation in Dubai.

The conference should probably be regarded as a historical moment. It was the first time that female researchers from different Arab countries have come together to exchange experiences in professional development and to discuss the most burning issues relating to business success. Even if many women are capable of overcoming cultural, religious and political constraints so that they can pursue their own careers, there is still a long way to go to bringing more women into decision-making positions.

In Saudi Arabia, for example, 60 per cent of students are female, but only 1.3 per cent of women are board members of major companies. What happens to all these highly qualified women when they leave university?!

Looking at the unemployment rates of graduates in the Middle East, the percentage of women is extraordinarily high. So there we are. There is obviously still a barrier to hiring qualified women for respective positions. It is interesting to see that, in Dubai, it is still common practice for job advertisements to state a preference for men. Women don’t even seem to get a chance to apply.

Whilst in Dubai, I had an opportunity to talk to some of our partners from our Graduate Entrepreneurship Training programme, including the Dubai Women´s College. I learned that there seems to be a greater demand for women to be more highly qualified in the use of technology and a greater need to help them set up their own businesses. What an excellent opportunity! I have been very pleased to see that, through our GET-IT programme we can obviously make a good contribution.

Talking to ‘Young Entrepreneurs in Dubai’, an organisation supported by the Dubai government to significantly increase the number of entrepreneurs over the next couple of years, the response has been similar. Jobs that, in the past, were made available by the government will not be funded in a similar way in the future. It seems as though graduates from universities now need to take much more personal responsibility for their future careers. And entrepreneurship is one of the answers - especially for women.

I very much hope that the Arab Science and Technology Foundation will be able to maintain the inspiring momentum of the conference and that they will continue to support women researchers in their career development. The heat is on and congratulations to all women in this region who are already on their way.

Jeannette Weisschuh, Director of Global Citizenship, HP EMEA

Clarion Awards for our Global Citizenship Report

jeanne2007 — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 11:34:00 GMT

I have exciting news: Last week we were honoured to receive the Clarion Award in the category ‘Strategic Communications’ for our Global Citizenship Report 2008.

The Clarion Awards have been given by The International Visual Communications Association (IVCA) since 2003. Each year the association honours best practice in communications relating to CSR, diversity, sustainable development, social inclusion and ethical debate.

Earlier this month we were informed that we were one of the five nominees in the award category for ‘Strategic Communications’. Last Friday was the BIG DAY. Dr Kirstie McIntyre and Bruno Zago from the HP EMEA Environment team went to the awards ceremony and were very pleased when HP was announced the winner. I think we can take this award as a good indication that all the hard work around our FY08 Global Citizenship Report has paid off.

The jury said that we received the award because our Global Citizenship Report constitutes ‘a comprehensive report with excellent examples, demonstrating a strong sense that HP really take their responsibility seriously and that it is well embedded into their corporate psyche.’ Please take a look at our report and let me know if you agree with them.

Each year, we want raise the standards of our Global Citizenship Report. With this new distinction, the bar has been raised even higher. Let’s go for it!

Jeannette Weisschuh, Director of Global Citizenship, HP EMEA

Do not rest on your laurels: HP sets new energy reduction goals

jeanne2007 — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 05:50:00 GMT

I came back from my holidays last week. Normally your first day back after a two weeks away is a little bit ‘tough’, but this time it was brightened up by this HP announcement: HP sets new energy reduction goals.

Having achieved our goal of reducing combined energy consumption and associated GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions of our operations and products to 25 per cent below our 2005 levels, we have now taken up our next challenge, related to the integration of EDS into HP: to reduce the energy consumption and associated GHG emissions of our products to 40(!) per cent below our 2005 levels by the end of 2011.

It is encouraging that there are always good reasons to aim even higher. My holidays might be over, but I can look ahead now with great enthusiasm. My team and I will soon start planning, organising and defining our Global Citizenship priorities in the region for our next financial year. You can be sure that we will keep you posted here on our blog.

Jeannette Weisschuh, Director Global Citizenship, HP EMEA

HP ranks first in Newsweek Green Ranking

ulrikehaug — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 10:34:00 GMT

Newsweek have just published their new Green Ranking list of the biggest companies in the U.S. I was very pleased to see that HP ranked #1. As Daniel McGinn points out in his article, such rankings can be quite controversial. Not all companies report on their environmental performance. Either that or they only report on selected parts and so it’s difficult to compare companies against each other. Nevertheless, Newsweek think they have found a sound methodology by working with KLD Research & Analytics, Trucost, and CorporateRegister.com. Here is some more information on how HP scored in the different categories.

What do you think about Green Rankings? Leave a comment and let me know!

Ulrike Haug, CSR Stakeholder Programmes, HP EMEA

Innovation in Education Grant feature story: technology mobilises minds

Daniela.Opp — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 10:26:00 GMT

Over the past month, we have worked on a feature story which gives a good overview of this year’s Innovation in Education Grant Initiative. This year 50 schools and universities in Europe, the Middle East and Africa received state-of-the-art HP technology and a cash grant to help them bring their projects to life. In addition, all grant winners were invited to attend the 2010 HP Innovations in Education Worldwide Summit.

All details can be found here.

Daniela Opp, Manager Social Investments, HP EMEA

Sustainable procurement: 80 % of respondents invest and the trend is increasing

vp9a83272 — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:24:00 GMT

As one of HP’s supply chain auditors, I always look for news and best practices relating to responsible supply chain management and procurement. This summer HEC Paris and EcoVadis published an interesting study: The Sustainable Procurement Benchmark report. The study is based on a questionnaire which was sent to procurement executives in 95 of Europe’s largest corporations. Here are my personal highlights of the study.

It is good to read that around 75% of respondents take Corporate Social Responsibility issues into consideration when they go to the market. What is more relevant for me, however, is to see that nearly a third of the respondents use CSR as selection criteria. That is good news and I would think that this number will increase even more. For us at HP, sustainable and ethical practices undertaken by our suppliers are decisive factors when we consider them for inclusion in our supplier base. Our regular evaluations and audits aim to ensure that our Social and Environmental standards based on the EICC (Electronics Industry Code of Conduct) are met by our suppliers’ factories.

The final highlight of the study from HEC Paris and EcoVadis is that around three quarters of respondents apply sustainable procurements as a measure for supplier performance. This is an acceptable high percentage, isn’t it? Sustainable procurement is at the top of the agenda and the study indicates that it is there to stay.

For those companies who are interested in learning more about responsible supply chain management, they can visit the CSR Europe portal. Whether you are a buyer or supplier, you can find a wide set of available standards and codes and a lot of other materials on best practices relevant to a sustainable supply chain.

I am always on the look out for supply chain or procurement studies. If you come across some, please let me know.

Karl Daumüller, SC SER Lead Auditor

Social Investment: What do we do?

Daniela.Opp — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 12:34:00 GMT

On this blog we always give you updates on our programme achievements. We decided to bring these updates together in a short article, to give you a great overview of our social investment approach and our main programmes. Click here to read the article.

I am looking forward to your comments to our Social Investment approach.

Daniela Opp, Manager Social Investments, EMEA