Tuesday, January 23, 2007

checklists from book Values-Driven Business by Ben Cohen and Mal Warwick

checklists from book Values-Driven Business by Ben Cohen and Mal Warwick

Contents

From Chapter 2: Are you ready for a Values-Driven Business?
from Chapter 3: Turning your Employees into Partners: A Checklist
from Chapter 4: Partnering with Your Suppliers: a Checklist
from Chapter 5: Mobilizing your Customers for Social Impact: a Checklist
from Chapter 6: Digging Deeper into Your Community: a Checklist
from Chapter 7: Minimizing your Environmental Footprint: a Checklist



From Chapter 2: Are you ready for a Values-Driven Business?

Are you willing to sit down with your employees (and perhaps other stakeholders) to discuss your company's vision, mission and values?

Do you feel sufficiently confident about the quality of your products and services that you are prepared to stand behind them?

Are you in compliance with all relevant federal, state, and local regulations, registration requirements, and tax laws?

Are you prepared to take steps to reduce the impact of your company's operations on the environment?

Are you prepared to raise employee's wages, if necessary, to bring them up to a living wage?

Are you committed to sharing the burden of health-care coverage with your employees - and, if feasible, to underwrite it entirely?

Are you committed to gender, ethnic and racial diversity among your employees - and to taking steps to ensure that they feel included in your workforce?

Are you prepared to screen your suppliers for environmental and labor practices and involvement in their communities - and to shift your business elsewhere if that should be necessary to conform with your company's values?

Are you committed to contributing - through volunteer efforts, in-kind donations, philanthropic gifts, or some combination of these - to the betterment of the community or communities where you do business?

Are you committed to sharing a portion of the profits of your business with your employees?





from Chapter 3: Turning your Employees into Partners: A Checklist

Put a profit-sharing plan in place, distributing a meaningful share (at least 10 percent) of quarterly or annual profits to all qualified employees (e.g., those who have been on the payroll for a specified period of time, those who work full-time).

Institute a program to provide employees with equity in the business, through either an employee stock ownership plan or some other means.

Provide for the election of a nonmanagement employee to your board of directors.

Read Jack Stack's book The Great Game of Business to familiarize yourself with open-book management and determine whether it makes sense for your company.

Visit ACORN's Living Wage campaign to learn about living-wage standards and how to determine the living wage for your business.

Working with selected managers and employees, prepare a "wish list" of employment benefits that your company doesn't already offer. Then poll your employees to learn the priorities they place on those potential benefits. As conditions allow, implement these benefits starting at the top of the list.

With your managers or selected employees, brainstorm ways that the company might offer new employment benefits at little or no cost.

With outside assistance if necessary, explore the extent to which your company is successful in promoting diversity and inclusion among the employees and discuss ways you might improve your performance in this area.

Institute a system by which employees may make suggestions for improvements in any area of the company's operations without fear of reprisal - in writing, if necessary, but ideally in an open forum or through an employee representative to your board.

At least once annually, hold an all-staff meeting to discuss ways in which the company might improve its social-bottom-line performance.





from Chapter 4: Partnering with Your Suppliers: a Checklist

Make a list of all the contractors, vendors, and suppliers that serve your business. Determine how many of them represent ownership by people of color or women.

Prepare a short questionnaire about employment practices, covering any issues of interest to you, including matters such as employee ownership, diversity and inclusion policies, job benefits, profit sharing, and the like. Canvass your contractors and suppliers using this questionnaire.

List the ways that suppliers or contractors might contribute to the community. Ask them how many of these activities or practices apply to them.

Quiz your suppliers, vendors, and contractors about their environmental practices. Figure out how well they meet your own company's high standards in this field.

Investigate whether a promising woman-or minority-owned firm might meet your company's needs as a supplier if it receives technical or financial assistance from you.

Determine whether your contractors and suppliers are aware of the vision, mission and values of your company. Share that information with them. If desireable, offer a tour of your facility to provide them with a fuller understanding of the values that drive your business.

If your company works with suppliers outside the United States, make site visits to their facilities to satisfy yourself that their business practices are consistent with your values. If necessary, contract with an agency such as Verite to investigate on your behalf.

Conduct a survey in your community to learn whether any businesses or nonprofits that hire the disabled might provide you with necessary goods or services.

Produce a flyer or brochure that clearly sets forth your company's vision, mission, and values, and distribute it to all your existing vendors and contractors. (Include it with your marketing materials, too!)

Ask each of your vendors for a list of the ingredients it uses in its products. Are they nontoxic, natural or organic? Do they use recycled materials? Do their products contain any known or suspected carcinogens?






from Chapter 5: Mobilizing your Customers for Social Impact: a Checklist

Use available space on your product packaging to highlight an issue that is of great concern to you and your employees. Invite customers to call a toll-free number set up by a nonprofit organization that will provide additional information and channel activists into productive activities.

Produce a free customer newsletter, either online, in print, or both, and devote some of the space to statements about issues of concern - ideally including suggestions about practical steps readers can take to act on an issue.

Offer free or at a discount other companies' products or services that convey a sense of caring to your customers and deliver a social benefit. For example, you might help a business owned by women or people of color to get off the ground by introducing your customer base to its products or services.

Either on your own or using the services of a public relations agency, seek to have articles or interviews placed about your work in trade publications, using as a publicity hook your company's outspokenness on a controversial issue.

Either on your own or using the services of a public relations agency, place an occasional feature story about your company's active involvement in public policy issues in a local newspaper or magazine or on radio or television.

Prepare inserts on issues of concern to place in your packages or invoices, ideally including explicit information about how readers can take action to support the position you advocate.

Offer tours of your plant or offices to introduce customers to the values that drive your business and the policies and practices that you've put in place. Use the opportunity to urge them to participate in an advocacy campaign in which your company is involved. Distribute take-home materials that enable them to take action on that campaign.

Participate in community events by setting up exhibits or information tables at which you can distribute literature on issues that matter to you as well as to inform visitors about your company's products or services.

Make philanthropic contributions to nonprofits that embody the values you champion and that take action on the issues that represent your highest priorities.





from Chapter 6: Digging Deeper into Your Community: a Checklist

Set up a company-wide volunteer program to help build homes for Habitat for Humanity, take part in an environmental cleanup at a stream or beach, or work in some other constructive way with a local nonprofit organization. (Not everyone will participate, but many will. Either way, it's a benefit.)

Consider whether your company might "adopt" a nonprofit or a fledgling minority - or a woman-owned business through cash contributions or an investment, mentoring, and sharing of resources, perhaps including unused office space, office equipment, and furniture.

Talk to your employees - and to the appropriate local authorities - about the possibility of holding a block party for all your neighbors.

Set up a philanthropic matching-gift program that will match employee contributions to charity at least one to one. If necessary, set a limit on the total donations any employee may submit for matching.

Contact your local community foundation (if there is one). Determine whether gifts to the foundation could be a viable alternative to selecting individual nonprofits to receive the company's support.

Hold a staff meeting to discuss philanthropy with your employees. Ask for ideas and opinions about different ways to organize a philanthropic program for your company.

Sponsor a forum for local companies to discuss the advantages of values-driven business.

Hold an open house for the community. If it's appropriate, set up tours of your plant on a regular schedule and invite all to learn about your work.

Talk to the principal of the local high school. Volunteer to host a session for students to learn about your company's work - and the world of work in general.

Once a month, invite a leading local nonprofit organization to speak briefly at an employee staff meeting to familiarize you and your coworkers with its work. If you have the space, open these meetings to your customers.

When possible, locate your company's operations in underserved communities to generate employment and job training opportunities.

Focus on one critical community problem and use your company's financial and political influence to create change.

Host an annual donations celebration, honoring the nonprofit groups your company supports.






from Chapter 7: Minimizing your Environmental Footprint: a Checklist

to reduce your use of materials and nonrenewable resources, you might

Question whether you really need to make a purchase or to travel or whether you can use ground shipment to save energy and money as opposed to air shipment

Conserve heating and cooling energy by adjusting thermostats to 68-70 degrees in the winter and 74-78 degrees in the summer

Turn off lights and computers, and use energy-efficient (Energy Star-rated) computers, appliances, and lighting, including money-saving, long-life, compact fluorescent lightbulbs instead of incandescent bulbs

Install low-flow toilets and faucet aerators to lessen water use

Use electronic communication to reduce the amount of printing and paper used

Consult an architect about salvaging materials and using green design to increase the available natural light in your facilities in order to reduce lighting costs

Set aside space for secure, sheltered bicycle parking and offer a stipend to any employee who rides a bike, walks, carpools, or rides public transit to work at least three days per week

Reduce the amount of packaging used for your products
to reuse materials that might otherwise go to waste, you could

Redesign your product and packaging so that it can be reused if possible. For example, reuse pallets, utilize reusable totes (shipping containers) and biodegradable peanuts, and ship your goods in cartons you've received from suppliers instead of buying cartons or having your own manufactured

Seek to place outdated computers, cell phones, and office furniture with schools or nonprofits that can utilize them, and participate in surplus-exchange programs where businesses and government agencies let each other know about unused materials

Send laser printer cartridges to be refilled with toner and returned to you for reuse

Use rechargeable batteries that save money and can be reused hundreds of times

Reuse plates, mugs, and silverware instead of buying disposable plastic plates, cups and cutlery

Set up a composting program to take all food scraps to turn them into a great fertilizer, along with any lawn clippings, leaves and other organic material
to increase the extent to which you recycle the materials you use, you might

Educate employees on recycling, set recycling goals, and set up a program that makes it easy to recycle and rewards employees for achieving the goals, such as throwing them a party

Purchase office products (from packaging and furniture to pens and toilet paper) with recycled content in order to close the loop

Set up a program to recycle all unused electronics (from computers and cell phones) and other products, such as cleaning solvents

Talk to your municipal government (if it has in place a recycling program) or to a local environmental organization to determine whether you're recycling all the materials that are eligible

Ask around town to find out whether a local entrepreneur has started a business to pick up materials for recycling

Insist on the use of at least 30 percent postconsumer recycled paper (paper collected through recycling programs) and nontoxic, agri-based inks in all your printed materials, including publications, letterhead, envelopes, invoices and other standard business forms

Consult the Social Venture Network's Corporate Standards for Social and Environmental Responsibility and find practices appropriate for your business.

You can't manage it if you don't measure it. Conduct an energy and environmental audit internally, using a third-party auditor, or do what many SVN companies do: have a supplier, customer, or another company audit you in exchange for your auditing it. Perform such audits/assessments periodically so you can monitor your progress.

Find out whether a government agency or a nonprofit organization in your area offers free or low-cost environmental audits.

Check out the power company, too, to learn whether it might help you lower your gas and electricity usage.

Based upon the audit's findings, work with your board, partner(s), managers and employees to draft an environmental policy statement and environmental management system that will guide your company's resource use in the future.

Enlist a member of your staff as a volunteer "environmental coordinator", or, depending on the size of your company, hire a part- or full-time environmental coordinator who will take responsibility for monitoring compliance with your environmental policy statement and canvass other employees for new ideas to lessen the company's environment impact. Companies that have implemented environmental policies have learned that this position becomes a profit center, not a cost center.

Research the ingredients in your products, including those supplied by vendors, and eliminate all toxic substances.

Contact your suppliers or vendors to learn about their environmental policies. Switch to new vendors, if necessary, to conform with your expectations that all your suppliers and contractors should minimize their impact on the environment.

Place your environmental mission and requirements on your purchase orders.

If you sell products that require replacement, offer your customers an incentive to return the product and packaging to you for reuse when they purchase replacements.

When designing new products and considering the materials to be used in them, plan for the products' full lifetime, including their manufacturing, transportation, use and disposal. Ensure that your products are either reusable when reconditioned, returnable to you, or readily biodegradable if they can't be recycled.

Before undertaking any major capital project, from building to changing HVAC systems to installing a new piece of equipment, search for existing standards for environmentally superior products (e.g., use the LEED standard) to guide new or renovated building construction, even if you are not seeking LEED certification.

Over time, look at every service you provide and every product you make and ask the question, "Can we do this with sustainable materials, using less material and less energy, and make it less toxic, more durable, refillable and reusable?

Whenever possible, use ground versus air transportation and e-mail or fax versus "snail mail."

Investigate whether you can purchase power from renewable sources rather than the dominant power company.

Measure and report cost savings due to reduced energy use and reduced waste.

Explore whether you or your landlord could install solar panels on the roof, energy-efficient lighting, water-efficient fixtures, energy-efficient windows and doors, occupancy sensors and insulation to lessen or eliminate your purchase of energy.

Work at making continuous improvement toward minimizing your environmental footprint and maximizing sustainability, no matter how small your progress may seem.



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