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Submitted by Guest Contributor

Global Manufacturing Sustainability Director John Maguire joins us this week to explain how Unilever’s ambition to double growth while reducing its impact on the environment is at the heart of their business model and drives their very challenging sustainability targets.

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This week we announced that since 2008, the company has achieved a CO₂ reduction of more than 1 million tonnes from improvements in our manufacturing and logistics operations. The reduction is the equivalent to taking 250,000 cars off the road.

Although we recognize it is an important milestone on our eco-efficiency journey, we know we still have a long way to go to achieve our ambition.   

Putting sustainability at the heart of our business model in 2010 has undoubtedly been a solid starting point. Our sustainability program not only helps us to ensure best practice; it’s also an effective engine for growth. While working towards our 1 million tonnes CO₂ reduction, our sales grew by 26 percent, from €40.5 billion in 2008 to €51.3 billion in 2012. We’re finding that achieving global business growth in Unilever does not have to cost the earth.

Reducing Energy Usage

Like other FMCGs, we are operating in a market where energy prices continue to climb, resources are scarce and climate change presents us with many challenges and opportunities. Our primary focus is to reduce energy and where possible buy energy from renewable sources. In Europe, U.S. and Canada, we are already purchasing 100 percent of the electricity we consume from renewable sources.

While we are proud of the progress we have made, the next challenge is: how can we reduce our energy usage further while increasing our use of renewable energy sources?

Leveraging Our Global Scale

Our strategy of design once and deploy globally enables us to take a more cost effective approach to capital investment for the new eco-efficiency projects we are introducing across Unilever sites. We leverage our global scale by selecting ideas with the best financial and eco-efficiency payback and then implement them globally.

Like sourcing cost efficient renewable energy from biomass boilers. Biomass boilers have the double benefit of reducing bio-waste and helping us reach our 40 percent renewable energy target.

Only a few weeks ago, I visited our Boksburg factory in South Africa where we use the waste sunflower husk produced as a by-product and use it to generate heat energy in a biomass boiler. This significantly reduces the amount of energy, which would otherwise be produced from coal and is a good example of a circular value chain. This is just one of the 30 biomass units we have across the globe supplying more than seven percent of our renewable energy, with six more planned for this year in Latin America, Africa and Asia.

Investing in New Technology

While our strategy provides us with a clear roadmap to achieve some of our eco-efficiency targets, others are still very much a work in progress. Where possible we look to introduce new cost efficient technology into our factories and offices such as solar day lighting and motion-sensitive LED lighting.  

Love it or hate it, we use waste from the Marmite production process to power the factory that makes our divisive yeast extract. Marmite, itself a by-product of the brewing industry, is made at our Burton, U.K. site, where inevitably some sticks to the sides of the manufacturing equipment.

This residue, of which there is about 18,000 tonnes a year, needs to be cleaned out of pipes to prevent them from clogging and to maintain hygiene. We put the waste residue into an anaerobic digester, where It is eaten by bugs who give of methane that is then burnt to create energy.

Involving Our Global Factory Workforce

And our employees continue to play a crucial role. This year we have created a "small actions big difference" fund to encourage suggestions from our global factory workforce – with the stipulation that ideas have to result in delivering an eco-efficiency improvement as well as a good financial return.

In addition, we also plan to launch an employee engagement campaign to increase the number of people who get involved in sustainability improvements. This program will launch on the day we release our second year progress report of the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan on April 22^nd.

Tackling Our Water Challenges

We have made good progress in reducing the amount of water abstracted by our manufacturing sites. Since 2008, we have saved the equivalent of around 1.5 liters of water for every person on the planet. However, our future targets for reducing water usage during our manufacturing process are going to be very challenging.

Currently, we have invested in effluent recycling projects at four of our sites in South Asia. At our Indian manufacturing sites we are using rainwater for factory utilities such as cooling towers, boilers, manufacturing processes (following treatment) and toilet flushing. Our focus now will be to give more emphasis to factories in water scarce locations.

By 2020, we aim for water abstraction by our global factory network to be at or below 2008 levels, despite significantly higher volumes. This represents a reduction of approximately 40 percent per ton of production.

New Technology Without Changing Consumer Behavior

Further, to reduce water use, Unilever needs to develop new products and tools, which help people use less water. But we have learnt that while creating new product technology is important, it is not enough. We still need to motivate people to adopt the new water-saving behavior such as using less water when rinsing laundry by hand and changing habits in the shower.

We cannot do this alone. In the end it will require water pricing and water metering alongside consumer education to drive the right behaviors. At that point we will need to be ready with products and tools that help people make their water go further.

There is still much for us to do, but overall, we’re proud of the progress we have made so far on our manufacturing eco-efficiency targets. Next week, we will launch the second year progress report of the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan.

Stay tuned.

Previously: Sustainable Sourcing: Unilever Challenges Its Own Value Chain

About the Author

Based in Surrey, John Maguire is responsible for defining and implementing the long-term sustainability strategy for Unilever’s manufacturing sites globally. His team supports Unilever sites across the globe, helping them achieve the very challenging targets set under the Sustainable Living Plan. John has more than 30 years experience in the Supply Chain of FMCG Companies with previous roles involving managing operations in factories within the confectionery, foods, printing and packaging sectors

Despite being owned by Unilever, Ben & Jerry's steadfastly maintains its own vendor relationships and, most importantly, its determination to continue its social initiatives.

About ten years after the company began in 1978, founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield sat down and wrote a three-part mission statement.  As Greenfield explained, the community-minded organization, at some point, had to become a company and worry about marketing and distribution, but they wanted a concrete reminder of what they really stood for.

Ben & Jerry's created social, product and economic statements to define their mission. Whenever the company, led by their social initiative-minded board, needs to make a business decision, they use this mission statement as a compass to point the way. "The success of the business, quality of the product and the value we bring to the world go together," said Social Activism Manager, Chris Miller (formerly of Seventh Generation).

Many times companies will write a mission statement, only to revise it numerous times as their direction changes, Miller explained, but Ben & Jerry's mission statement has stood the test of time for twenty-five years.

Ben & Jerry's has three main areas of focus: Caring Dairy, fair trade practices and eliminating GMOs.

Caring Dairy

Ben & Jerry's works with more than 90 farms in Vermont (their home state) to source 100 percent of their dairy needs. They have established a program called Caring Dairy under which they work with the farms to meet guidelines for eleven global indicators, including:

• animal husbandry
• biodiversity
• energy
• farm economics
• impact on local economy
• nutrients
• pest management
• social human capital
• soil fertility and health
• soil loss
• water

The company helps farms implement sustainable farming practices that benefit the livestock, the land and the farmers. Farmers pledge not to treat their cows with hormones, learn how to conserve water, enrich the soil and run their farms better.

It's all part of a long-term strategy to invest in communities, Solheim explained. "We not only work with farmers to pay a fair wage, but to move them up on the value chain. We'll be back next year and the year after. They can count on it."

Fair Trade

As Greenfield mentioned, Ben & Jerry's has long been a big proponent of fair trade wages and practices.

Fair trade is about making sure people get their fair share of the pie. The whole concept of fair trade goes to the heart of our values and the sense of right and wrong. Nobody wants to buy something that was made by exploiting somebody else.

Again, relationships come heavily into play. As with the dairy farmers, the company looks to develop and maintain long-term relationships with the intent to benefit not only the farmers, but their communities. The company's goal is for all products to be fair trade certified by the end of 2013, but it does not plan to sever ongoing supplier relationships to meet that goal. For example, as part of Unilever, Ben & Jerry's could source their vanilla from the same fair trade supplier Unilever uses, but the company has a long-established relationship with a fair trade Ugandan cooperative and continues to work with them. The company's brownies come from Greyston's Bakery in New York, where they "don't hire people to bake brownies, but bake brownies to hire people." The bakery supports childcare, affordable housing, community gardens and health care programs, and Ben & Jerry's has ordered brownies from the bakery since the 1980s.

Ben & Jerry's also sources their cherries from Oregon, and although they are not certified fair trade, the company will continue to get their cherries from Oregon and pay a fair price due to the long-term relationship they have with the supplier and community. Ben & Jerry's also works with Fair Trade International and together they have established a fund where the company pays whatever difference exists between the prices they pay their current vendors and fair trade wages (if there is any), and FTI uses those funds to support fair trade practices worldwide.

"The real power we have to do good," Miller said, "is the money we spend on the business - purchasing fair trade ingredients, paying a living wage and investing in the community."

Anti-GMO

As much pride as the company takes in treating its own people well, they also take in making a quality product. Ben & Jerry's ice cream is a premium product marketed to adults (not children) and made with exceptional ingredients, fair trade and otherwise.

Twenty-two of their flavors (80 percent of ingredients) are already free of GMOs (genetically modified organisms), and they expect that all of their products will be GMO-free by the end of 2013. The day after they spoke to us, Solheim explained, the company was hosting a special workshop for their specialty suppliers to help them identify GMOs and avoid them. Ben & Jerry's supports change in the food system and is dedicated to helping rebuild non-GMO supply chains in the U.S. The company supports all measures to ban GMOs and mandate product labeling. They are implementing product labeling for themselves by 2014.

Get the dough out of politics

In addition to these business-related social initiatives, Ben & Jerry's also stands staunchly against Citizens United. During the 2012 election season, the company campaigned to get the dough out of politics. Cohen himself goes the extra mile with his personal crusade, the Stamp Stampede, and stamps money with slogans such as "Not to be used to bribe politicians," and "Stamp money out of politics."

"I think it's important for companies to stand up for something or things not just related to the widget that they sell, but issues as a whole," Miller said.

The word we heard the most from Miller, Greenfield and Solheim was "relationship" and how important their long-term relationships are to the company in its dealings with suppliers and investments in community, but one that wasn't spoken but demonstrated at every turn, was "loyalty."

Image credit: Robert Marschelewski/Flickr

The following is a guest post by our friends at Bard College's MBA in Sustainability Program (a 3p sponsor) - for the business leaders of the future who recognize the importance of all business moving towards true sustainability—economic, environmental, and social.

By Brady McCartney

Since its founding, the U.S. has seen its population steadily move from rural to urban environments: the 1790 U.S. Census reported a 95 percent rural to 5 percent urban ratio, the 1890 U.S. Census, a 28 percent to 72 percent ratio, the 2010 U.S. Census, a 20 percent to 80 percent ratio. While urbanization has produced large-scale economic and community development throughout the country, it has also created challenges with water and sewage, air quality, vehicle traffic, energy systems, and natural resource consumption. In an attempt to address these urbanization issues, groups of architects, engineers, urban planners, government officials, academics, and community leaders have begun to develop a possible solution: eco-districts.

An “eco-district” is a defined urban area in which collaborative economic, community, and infrastructure redevelopment is explicitly designed to reduce negative and create positive environmental impacts. Eco-districts were developed in order to scale the success of green building initiatives. By focusing on buildings and systems found within a defined district rather than an individual building, eco-districts are seen as the next step in reducing the environmental impacts of cities. Supporters claim that an individual building is not necessarily the optimal scale for water conservation, energy efficiency, and renewable energy creation systems, to name a few. An eco-district, on the other hand, has the potential to accrue more significant benefits and savings from greater systems optimization and integration because of the larger yet manageable scale of a district. As the Portland Sustainability Institute puts it, “Districts are…small enough to innovate quickly and big enough to have a meaningful impact.” Currently, many U.S. cities are in the early stages of testing the viability of eco-districts, including Living City Brooklyn’s Gowanus project; five pilot projects in Portland, Oregon; Washington D.C.’s SW Ecodistrict.

While the term “eco-district” may be new to many, supporters view eco-districts as a part of a forward-looking continuum: from green buildings to eco-districts to eco-cities. Though eco-cities are the longer-term goal, advocates of eco-districts presently view districts as more logistically possible than entire cities. And, equally as important, eco-districts are considered more politically possible than other initiatives such as a carbon tax or infrastructure redevelopment because they may not require major legal changes or federal spending.

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The author, Brady McCartney, is currently a dual MBA/MS degree candidate at Bard College’s MBA Program in Sustainability and Center for Environmental Policy. Brady has worked as a sustainable transit consultant for TransitCenter, an energy efficiency consultant at Bard College, and sustainable housing client manager for homeless men and women at North Beach Citizens. Follow Brady on Twitter.

[Image Credit: rs-foto, Flickr]

Submitted by Guest Contributor

This week -- and leading up to the launch of Unilever's 2012 Sustainability Report later this month -- we begin a series of conversations with the leaders and executives of Unilever reporting on how the company is performing against the famously ambitious goals laid out in its Sustainable Living Plan. From sustainable sourcing to changing consumer behavior, they will lay out the challenges, report on the progress being made and offer key highlights from 2012 that helped/roadblocked the targets.

We start off with Chief Procurement Officer Marc Engel identifying the challenges and laying out the process for Unilever to reach its goal of sourcing 100% of raw materials sustainably by 2020.

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This week we announced that more than a third of our agricultural raw materials are now sourced sustainably. This is a significant milestone on our journey towards a target of 100 percent by 2020.

Currently, our sustainable sourcing figure stands at 36 percent - up from 24 percent in 2011.

We are very proud of the rate of acceleration in recent years; given that it took us 10 years to get to 14 percent by 2010, what we have achieved over the past two years is no mean feat. I am convinced that putting the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan at the heart of our business has created an evolution with 173,000 employees now striving toward the same goals.

This has been a game changer for us.

Continuing the Pace…

But with good momentum, the next challenge for us is: how do we continue this pace? 

To create real impact and move things forward at scale, partnerships are needed. We cannot move the needle alone. So bringing like-minded businesses, NGOs and governments together to drive this agenda is becoming increasingly important. And it's starting to happen.

With Cross-Sector Partnerships…

In January 2011, a global partnership to accelerate sustainable agricultural growth was announced at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Unilever joined 16 other companies – among them Wal-mart, The Coca-Cola Company, Nestlé and Kraft Foods – to support the New Vision for Agriculture. Backed by a coalition of businesses, governments and farmers, the partnership seeks to improve food security, environmental sustainability and economic opportunity around the world.

It's a significant mission and working with others is becoming a critical success factor: by transforming global supply chains together, we can move faster in creating critical mass and also increase awareness among consumers of the benefits of sustainably sourced products.

And Constant Introspection

However, let’s also take a step back and ask ourselves the question - how do we define sustainability? Is it just ‘green’?

With the bar continuously being raised, we see and support a shift from looking predominantly at avoiding the environmental “negatives” to actively enabling positive social impact. And to drive this without doubt or confusion, we have explicitly included this in our company vision, which is to double the size of our business whilst reducing our environmental footprint and increasing our positive social impact.

So when we look at sustainable sourcing, we look beyond our environmental impact.

Like our partnership with Netherlands-based Sustainable Trade Initiative (IDH) and the Kenya Tea Development Agency (KTDA) on co-funded farmer field schools. Between 2007 and 2012, 450,000 smallholder tea farmers were trained to the Rainforest Alliance standard [in preparation for certification]. Because of the clear impact and urgent need, in 2012, Unilever, IDH and our partners agreed to invest a further €4 million to take the sustainability initiatives to scale.

Now, this training has the potential to benefit not only farmers working with Unilever but the tea industry as a whole.

Besides, investments like this increase agricultural productivity and create better livelihoods. If smallholders have access to agronomy training, better quality seeds and fertilizer they can significantly increase their yields. This in turn leads to higher farmer income.

The next step: financial literacy training, especially for women, to help direct higher income to be spent on improving livelihoods, through nutrition, health and education.

This lifecycle approach feeds from a recent report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations The State of Food and Agriculture 2012, which explains the benefits of investing and driving sustainability in the agricultural industry. Stepping up in agriculture would not only allow us to feed the world, but also to reduce poverty and hunger and promote environmentally sustainable practices.

A true win-win scenario.

Offering Sustainable Choices to Consumers

Every day, the future of our planet continues to be threatened. Climate change, water scarcity, reducing yields due to unsustainable farming practices, all threaten agricultural supplies and hence food security. All this, while populations continue to exponentially grow and aspire to higher standards of living. Still, one billion people go to bed hungry every day.

It’s clear that is is not viable – and that we have to decouple growth from our environmental footprint and increase our social impact.

While we're committed to use research, resources and our reach to evolve sustainable solutions for our supply chain, it is equally important to never lose sight of the value that embedding sustainability brings to many of our brands.

The trick is to find the sweet spot between the brand delivering something good for the planet or societies, while offering something good for our consumers – be this convenience, quality or price; or a combination of all. Like Lipton Tea and Magnum Ice Cream: Rainforest Alliance certification delivers benefits for the environment and quality benefits for the consumer. Or our first Knorr soup labeled to have been made with ‘sustainably grown tomatoes’.

Small examples but emblematic of the direction we are pursuing.

The challenge is huge, and we fully realize that Unilever can’t solve the issues alone. To create large-scale change we need everyone involved to be part of the solution. Our commitment is relentless, we learn everyday day by working with others, and we believe that many small actions will eventually make a big difference.

Are you in?

About the Author

Based in Switzerland, Marc Engel is responsible for Unilever's spend and delivering its target to source 100% of raw materials sustainably by 2020. Unilever Procurement has 1,700 procurement specialists who are all partnering with suppliers to deliver sustainable profitable growth tea farmers in Kenya and Tanzania.

Prior to being appointed Unilever's CPO in 2008, Marc has held a variety of roles since 1990 across the business including Regional Supply Chain VP, Ice Cream Latin America, Managing Director of the Ice Cream businesses in the Caribbean, Central America, Andina and River Plate and VP, Supply Chain for Spreads, Dressings and Olive Oil.

American coffee shop titan Starbucks is ramping up its ethical sourcing programme with a new farming research and development centre in Costa Rica. The move forms part of the company’s ongoing billion-dollar commitment to ethically sourcing 100 per cent of its coffee by 2015.

Starbucks plans to adapt a current 240-hectare working farm, located on the slopes of the Poas Volcano, into a global agronomy centre. This will enable the company to expand its Coffee and Farming Equity practices (C.A.F.E.), the ethical sourcing model developed in partnership with Conservation International.

The new centre will also influence the development of coffee varieties based on the insight offered through soil management processes. This  work could offer significant advantage in the development of future blends, says the company.

“This investment, and the cumulative impact it will have when combined with programmes we have put into place over the last forty years, will support the resiliency of coffee farmers and their families as well as the one million people that represent our collective coffee supply chain,” said Howard Schultz, Starbucks chairman, president and ceo. “It also opens up an opportunity for Starbucks to innovate with proprietary coffee varietals that can support the development of future blends.”

In total, Starbucks has invested more than $70m in collaborative farmer programmes and activities over the past 40 years, which include C.A.F.E. practices, farmer support centres, farmer loans and forest carbon projects. All of these integrated programmes directly support improving farmer livelihoods and a long-term supply of high-quality coffee.

The new facility will build on the work currently happening at five Starbucks farmer support centres. These are located in Rwanda, Tanzania, Colombia, and China – as well as the brand’s first farmer support centre which opened in San Jose, Costa Rica in 2004.

“The convergence of climate change and ecosystem deterioration creates stress on the ability of farmers to produce crops. The work of Starbucks over the last several years to address many of these issues facing coffee producers is very impressive,” said Peter Seligmann, chairman and CEO of Conservation International. “The opportunity this continued investment brings will ensure the most innovative resources are brought to bear for sustainability and resilience across all farming communities.”

Supermodel Gisele Bundchen has teamed up with charity Practical Action to raise awareness of the impact of energy poverty.  

According to Practical Action, in Sub Saharan Africa, two in every three families live without electricity and around 3bn people cook on open fires inside their homes - filling them with toxic smoke - resulting in the death of close to 2m people a year.

To mark the UN’s Year of Sustainable Energy for All, Bundchen, travelled to Kenya and experienced the realities of energy poverty first hand, taking part in a dawn firewood collection with women in Kisumu, Western Kenya, who still cook on traditional fires that fill homes with toxic smoke.

Practical Action is working to install improved cookstoves and smoke hoods which remove up to 80 per cent of the toxic smoke inside homes (pictured below). Margaret Gardner, director at Practical Action said: “The international community recognises a number of basic rights: the right to water, the right to food, the right to health, the right to adequate housing, the right to earn a living and the right to take part in cultural life. Missing from this list is the right to energy. Yet, everyone needs energy. Energy poverty denies people a basic standard of living, which should be available to all.”

Around half of Cambodia’s tropical flooded grasslands have been lost in just 10 years according to new research from the University of East Anglia (UAE).

The seasonally flooded grasslands around the Tonle Sap, Southeast Asia’s largest freshwater lake, are of great importance for biodiversity as well as a vital fishing, grazing, and traditional rice farming resource for around 1.1m people.

In 1995, the grassland area spanned 3349 km2 but by 2005 it had been reduced to just 1817 km2 – a loss of 46 per cent.??Despite conservation efforts in some areas, it has continued to shrink rapidly since, with a further 19 per cent lost in four years (2005-2009).

Factors include intensive commercial rice farming with construction of irrigation channels, which is often illegal. Some areas have also been lost to scrubland where traditional, low-intensity agricultural activity has been abandoned.

The research has been led by Dr Charlotte Packman from UEA’s school of Environmental Sciences, in collaboration with the Wildlife Conservation Society Cambodia Program and BirdLife International.

“The area around the Tonle Sap lake is the largest remaining tropical flooded grassland in Southeast Asia. It is hugely important to both biodiversity and the livelihoods of some of the world’s poorest communities. Our research shows that these grasslands are disappearing at an alarming rate,” said Dr Packman.

“Rural communities have been left vulnerable to land-grabbing and privatisation of communal grasslands. Intensive commercial rice production by private companies, involving the construction of huge channels and reservoirs for irrigation, is denying local communities access to the grasslands on which their livelihoods depend and destroying a very important habitat for threatened wildlife.”

Researchers compared aerial photographs taken in 2005 with land cover maps from 1995 and 1996. They found that the greatest losses had occurred in the north and west and in inner floodplain areas. They then collected habitat information from almost 1,000 points to establish the rate of habitat change between 2005 and 2009 in the largest remaining area of grassland. This showed that grassland in the key southeast area had declined from 923km2 to 751km2 in four years.

Almost all of this loss was attributable to either intensive rice cultivation, which had risen by 666 per cent during that period, or newly constructed reservoirs.

A major medical centre in India will soon be receiving a significant amount of its energy from the sun courtesy of Californian technology from Sunpreme Solar Systems.

A 150 kilowatt rooftop solar system has been commissioned at the Guru Nanak Dev Super Speciality (GNDSS) Hospital and will be the largest commercial rooftop installation in Punjab, as well as the first in India to use the technology.

The system will generate 225,000 kilowatt hours of clean electricity annually and will be a centerpiece to the hospital’s holistic approach to environmental stewardship. The system generates enough solar electricity to power 200+ Indian households, and offset 316,000 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions - the equivalent of planting 53 acres of trees, in just single year of production, says the company. Over 25 years, the system is expected to generate energy savings of over Rs.9 Crores (US $1.7M).

Currently, women in Europe have to work 59 extra days to get to the same salary as their male counterparts, but the ‘Proposal on increasing Gender Equality in the Boardrooms of Listed Companies’ aims to change that by boosting women’s representation on corporate boards of administration. Patricia Mansfield-Devine reports  

This is set to be an important year for working women in Europe. Legislation tabled by Viviane Reding, vice-president of the European Commission, is aiming to crack the ‘glass ceiling’ that keeps women across Europe in lower-level roles at work, where they wield less influence and command smaller salaries.

Currently, women in Europe have to work 59 extra days to get to the same salary as their male counterparts, but the ‘Proposal on increasing Gender Equality in the Boardrooms of Listed Companies’ aims to change that by boosting women’s representation on corporate boards of administration.

Currently, across Europe, more than 96 out of 100 company presidents are men. Some 85 per cent of non-executive board members and 91.1 per cent of executive board members are also men, while women make up only 15 per cent and 8.9 per cent respectively. Voluntary initiatives have failed to improve this figure and the EC believes that legislation is now required Europe-wide, especially as two thirds of member states have introduced no legislation at all, and there the situation has generally not improved or actually worsened.

However, EU legislation, which aims to increase the percentage of women non-executive directors to 40 per cent, will only apply to firms listed on the stock exchange, so self-regulatory measures are also required, and here the Norwegian model is being used as a paradigm.

Norway increased the proportion of women in boardrooms from 8.5 per cent in 2003 to 44.2 per cent by 2008 and the EC believes the country’s experience holds important lessons, key among which is that success in promoting women depends on a mixture of regulatory and self-regulatory measures such as women’s leadership programmes.

The Norwegian business confederation’s ‘female future’ programme helps companies to recruit and train women leaders, and the EC believes that companies across the EU could follow that example to prepare and train women in management positions for board-level positions.

“Recruiting and developing women isn’t only a moral imperative,” says Regina Eckert of the Center for Creative Leadership, a non-profit organisation dedicated to leadership education and research. “For the kind of goals that companies want to attain, they need women. Particularly if your buyers or consumers are female, then you need a certain representation of women who are similar to the buyers, because you get more customer-focused services and products that way.”

Four essential steps
At a company level, the CCL  believes there are four steps to take to increase the number of women in senior positions. The first is to promote women’s networks. The firm’s research shows that effective leaders are those who can build and leverage high-quality relationships and networks. Good leaders understand others at work and have a good sense of what is going on around them, says the CCL and they use their influence to obtain the resources they and their teams need to function effectively.

But women leaders often don’t have the same strength or reach of networks as their male counterparts do. This is where development can help: building women’s networks across functions and levels can help women become effective leaders and support organisational goals.

 “As a starting point, women can set up career advisory boards featuring a diversity of relationships inside and outside the company, with people that can give them advice, or challenges, or support for their own career,” says Eckert. “They can provide access to information, hand-holding, role-modelling or affirmation, so that women can expand their capabilities and capacities.”

The CCL’s advice is to make career advisory boards as diverse as possible and to include on them not only typically powerful men but also powerful women and people from very different backgrounds.

“It’s not easy for junior women to simply network with men who are more senior,” continues Eckert, “because there are some group dynamics that militate against women networking with those in more powerful positions. For instance, often men and women’s life circumstances are very different, so the things that make you bond informally with someone who’s junior - that you have something in common, or that you see something of yourself in them, for instance - are less likely to take place.

“The most striking difference, however, is primary childcare responsibilities. Most childcare in Europe still devolves to women and having roles that are gender-specific actually makes it more difficult for women to network than it is even for someone of a different ethnicity or a different religion.”

Mentorship programmes
The second step recommended by the CCL is to set up a formal mentorship programme. Pairing women who have leadership potential with mentors, both male and female, who work in other areas of the company, can help them raise their visibility, build networks and refine their leadership skills. Research by CCL and other organisations has shown that learning from other people, especially role models and mentors, is the second most powerful source of development and learning.

However, because senior women in the workplace are in a minority, they often lack role models and mentors, and are sometimes hesitant to actively seek them out. Including male mentors in the scheme has the added benefit of promoting awareness among male leaders, who can open doors they did not realise were closed to female colleagues.

Mentee relationships
Companies can go about setting up mentoring programmes in various ways, says Eckert. “If they are set up well they need a lot of support,” she says, “because you need somebody who monitors the quality of each relationship and helps the mentor as well as the mentee if things aren’t working out. Simply setting up the programme isn’t enough - it needs ongoing support from a trusted confidant inside the company.”

CCL trains both mentors and mentees in what needs to be discussed in the relationship, and works on getting the contracting right, outlining the responsibilities on both sides and sensitising people to what kind of learning can be gained from a mentoring relationship.

“Mentees often don’t ask for help,” says Eckert. “It’s not in our societal stereotype. We’re educated to be self-sufficient and to take help when it’s offered, but not to ask for it. And for mentees in general, there’s a certain amount of insecurity about what might be allowed in a mentoring relationship, and about how to deal with sensitive issues. Our training often liberates them to say: ‘I’ll ask my mentor about that’.”

Better work-life balance
The third step that companies can take is to develop a career management structure that promotes women’s self-awareness and confidence, based on constructive feedback. Women’s exclusion from the ‘inner circle’ of influence in the workplace is often reinforced by a lack of self-confidence and the perceived need to prove themselves first, rather than believing in their own potential.

“Most women don’t talk about it but it is totally common to think we’re insufficient and to strive for a lot of external recognition,” says Eckert.

“We train women to understand that what they’re doing is good and to have self-belief and self-confidence, and that not everything you’re doing needs to be recognised from the outside. Very often women are our own hardest critics.”

The fourth step that can aid women at work is to promote a better work-life balance. For instance, women remain overwhelmingly the primary caregivers for children and their  role within the family is often seen both by companies and women themselves as an obstacle to their career development. However, CCL research shows - perhaps somewhat surprisingly - that managers who are committed to their parenting responsibilities are seen as better leaders by their bosses.

“The crucial thing is that it’s not leaders who have children, it’s leaders who are committed to that role, who take it seriously that they have children,” says Eckert.

“If you’re committed to your parenting, there’s a positive spillover. Family life is about constant negotiation and finding a balance between your own goals and the goals of the people around you; it’s about sensing and reading other people in your environment and very often you have to negotiate in a non-verbal way, especially with kids; you are constantly in a situation where you have to manage potential conflicts in a way in which the family overall is preserved. These skills are directly relevant to effective performance as a senior workplace manager.”

Trust your employees
Organisations that are serious about retaining women and getting the most from them need to take steps to counter the prejudice that family and career cannot be combined, says the CCL, and the long hours culture is particularly detrimental. “We tell organisations that asking people to pull a 10 or 12 hour day isn’t a smart move,” says Eckert. “We know from physiological data and stress management data that you’re not more efficient if you work 10-12 hours than if you work 7-8 hours in a concentrated fashion.”

Not only is it not useful or sustainable for companies to ask people do to that, she says, when they do so, they lose the talent that won’t comply with that kind of pace.

“We link it back to trust,” she says. “If you trust your employees to do their job well, you need to allow them autonomy over how they achieve their results. If you can create a culture where people are held accountable for the results they achieve and not the time they spend doing so, you’re going to have much happier and more productive people.”

A new guide from the IHRB will help investors work with companies to ensure they have the systems and know-how to deal with human rights risks, Margaret Wachenfeld, director of legal affairs at the think tank, tells Liz Jones

Human rights risks now go well beyond the issue of child labour in supply chains these days. According to Margaret Wachenfeld, pictured right, director of legal affairs at the Institute for Human Rights and Business (IHRB) and lead author of a new investors guide, investors need to be aware that risk profiles are changing very rapidly and that risk issues change over time.

“There’s been a real pick up in the scope and depth of human rights issues in business and much wider issues being discussed,” Wachenfeld told Ethical Performance. “New kinds of companies and sectors are involved too. ICT, for example, where the issue of privacy and data protection are new on the radar.”

“Traditionally human rights risks involved sectors which engaged lots of labour or where there was an obvious impact on the environment – so manufacturing and mining for example. But these days you’d be hard pressed to find a sector that’s not affected.”

“The Guide can help investors work with companies to ensure they have the systems and know-how to deal with human rights risks,” Wachenfeld maintains.

Indeed, working within UN Guiding Principles, investors these days have a responsibility to evaluate human-rights-related risk across their portfolios. To help facilitate greater take up of this best practice requirement, the IHRB - in collaboration with Calvert Investments and the Interfaith Centre on Corporate Responsibility – has produced a guide that shows investors how to effectively integrate human rights into investment decision-making and corporate engagement.

Investing the Rights Way: A Guide for Investors on Business and Human Rights provides practical insights into how the globally accepted framework of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights can help investors assess and address human rights risks in their portfolios and more effectively benchmark and engage the companies they hold.

The guide addresses mainstream investors across all asset classes and provides an overview of key developments, standards and resources.

Professor John Ruggie, former UN Special Representative on Business and Human Rights and Chair of the Institute for Human Rights and Business commented: “The UN Guiding Principles affirm that all companies have a responsibility to respect human rights in their operations and their business relationships. ‘Investing the Rights Way’ highlights strategies investors can use to help them prevent and remediate negative impacts.”

Wachenfeld says that one of the main messages of the report is that ‘the train is leaving the station’: “That’s meant to convey that after a 6 year process, the UN Guiding Principles are accepted and that investors and companies will be increasingly asked how they are applying those principles. What the report hopes is that at some point, those principles become a reflective part of every day business.”

Wachenfeld admits that human rights is not yet as high up the ESG agenda as it should be – “it’s not even where S or G are” - but believes it is only a matter of time: “It took a while for environmental issues to get recognition. There was a time when you’d look out over the city of London or New York at night and it would be ablaze with light. Then the realization of what a waste of energy that was got through and now flicking the switch at the end of the day is normal.”

Investors, managers and service providers can use the guide in a number of ways to engage with companies on human rights and screen companies in or out of a fund. It can also help benchmark or rank companies on their human rights performance against their peers and explore what lies behind a company’s public reporting statements. The guide can also help investors establish whether a fund, investor or company should invest in a particular region, country or sector.

Wachenfeld is keen to point out that the report is not just about raising the issue, but “gives investors a tool to help them ensure they are asking the right questions”. She admits that the report is basic but believes it can work on a number of levels: “It can help improve practices of more mainstream investors and make human rights part of the ‘S’ agenda for them. In the longer term, it can help in different asset classes such as equity infrastructure funds and human rights impact. It may also prove a way of providing more Key Performance Indicators to their portfolios.”

Ed Potter, Director, Global Workplace Rights with The Coca-Cola Company believes the guide has a wider audience: “Although this guide is written for investors, it also provides a succinct and clear roadmap for all companies on implementing respect for human rights and engaging with the investor community on human rights policies, human rights due diligence, and mitigation of human rights impacts.”