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Corporate Social Responsibility

The most practical guide to making more impact with

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“When the wind blows there are those that build walls, and then there are those that build windmills.”This book is for those who build windmills.

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Table of contents

Introduction

A little introduction from the makers of this guide............................

This playbook is for CSR leaders who want to act now...................

Chapter 2 The Purpose Maturity Model

Introducing The Purpose Maturity Model..........................................

Corporate Purpose................................................................................

Moving towards a company purpose via CSR...................................

GoodUp’s Purpose Maturity Model......................................................

The five phases of purpose maturity....................................................

In between phases................................................................................

On to the ‘How‘......................................................................................

Chapter 3 Impact Success Cases

How the Deloitte Impact Foundation created a boost in

engagement on their impact program................................................

Inside Unilever. The role of a sustainability director in a

purpose-led organisation......................................................................

How Accenture leverages a competitive workforce to create

massive exposure and impact.............................................................

Chapter 1 The challenges of CSR

Lack of mandate - no commitment from leadership.........................

Low awareness of/on impact programs among employees.............

Program scalability.................................................................................

Measuring impact..................................................................................

Tackling these challenges.....................................................................

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This is GoodUpGoodUp is a social venture on a mission to let everyone live up to their purpose. We enable change-makers in corporate organisations to

take action toward positive impact, together, every day.

Corporate organisations are effectively huge networks. Networks with the means and scale to create the global shift in business thinking

that the world needs. We believe that EVERYONE can do something, big or small, to better the world. But not everyone feels free and

empowered to do so.

GoodUp creates spaces within organisations that promote impactful action. Our platform connects and inspires purpose-driven individuals

across every organisation we work with, via a bottom-up approach. This is how we create a chain reaction of impact, inside and outside the

organisation.

Learn how to use our platform to engage more people on your impact programme. Visit goodup.com

Helping corporates to become a force for good

A little introduction from the makers

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Ensuring a bright future with our Big Hairy Audicious Goal

By 2030 we will have engaged one billion people in making a positive impact on society or the environment by using their skills for good.

Connect with us

If our mission resonates with you, please join our network of impact leaders and enthusiasts via

Wouter Bakker

Linkedin

Maarten Tol

Linkedin

Paul van Schie

Linkedin

Sezayi Arslan

Linkedin

Or subscribe to our newsletter on goodup.com

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This playbook is for CSR leaders who want to act now

This ebook focuses on how to involve more employees and other stakeholders in your CSR programmes.

You’re the right person to read this book when:

You’re looking to improve the world as we know it with your company.You’re already working on changing your business from the inside.You understand the urgency of meeting global climate goals. You’ve experienced first-hand that the disastrous effects of the pandemic are paving the way for a more sustainable, inclusive business culture.

You’re looking for concrete inspiration on how to move forward on your company’s impact goals.

We’ve written this book to share what we’ve learned during a decade of collaboration with forward-thinking change-makers and organisations all over the world. Want to see our impact track record? Feel free to check out https://www.goodup.com.

From why to howIt strikes us that most literature and research we see on CSR is focused on strategy rather than execution. It’s focused on why CSR should be - or will become - more important. It seems like most people within the corporate landscape are more interested in building long-term strategies and talking about change.

But as consensus about the importance and relevance of CSR has grown - we understand the why - we’ve learned that the

biggest challenge CSR leaders face is execution. Many of you are looking for practical inspiration that is more focused on the how. That’s exactly what we’re out to deliver in this ebook.Firstly, we’ll dive into some of the core challenges that we see CSR leaders, and social impact leaders in particular, struggle with daily.

Secondly, we’ll introduce a practical framework that CSR leaders can use to determine how to evolve their programme. We call it GoodUp’s Purpose Maturity Model.Thirdly, we’ll provide 3 very detailed case studies from influential organisations in 2021. They will show you how successful CSR leaders are currently moving forward to engage more people on impact programmes.

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Let’s face it. Most CSR ambitions are still far behind where they need to be if we want to meet global benchmarks like the UN sustainable development goals. The most striking example that we’ve seen of where we are now and where we ought to be is reflected in this very cynical image created by Brandalism.

Brandalism is an activistic branding agency, that launched the above poster campaign when HSBC communicated about their net-zero ambitions. Activists across the UK took over billboards and bus stops with spoof HSBC ads.

This is one harsh piece of evidence of the fact that sustainable statements by large companies are increasingly received with scepticism. The above purpose bashing campaign is the first that we’ve encountered, but who knows how many could follow.

Let’s face it

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When you’re an ambitious CSR leader who’s working hard to create change in a large organisation, this kind of scepticism about your work can be disheartening.

But when you get right down to it, the above image doesn’t suggest that CSR efforts are in vain. On the contrary. What we see in the above picture is a public consensus on the importance of moving CSR into a new era. More people than ever are ready for positive change, so your work is among the most relevant and exciting jobs out there.

At GoodUp, we are inspired daily by brilliant CSR leaders who take this huge potential for positive change and make it happen.

But we also know that a lot of you are struggling to find an internal audience, to get board-level support for sustainable KPIs, to clear a budget that fits today’s challenges and your ambitions to contribute to solving them.

Enjoy the read!

Most companies have only just begun to shy away from Milton Friedman’s stakeholder paradigm, into a new model of economic reality: the stakeholder paradigm, or purpose economy. Sustainability is rarely integrated into the bottom line. Most large corporate shareholders maintain their modus-operandi, focusing on quarterly growth instead of long term business continuity. And as they do, so does the executive board.

In our experience, some of the bigger challenges for CSR leaders can be found in gaining influence and reach in the organisation. In connecting with all the relevant stakeholders and persuading them to join the company mission beyond increasing shareholder value.

The role of a CSR leader is complex. Whereas most functional roles are focused, either internally or externally, on the product, marketing, or people, the perfect CSR leader has to master all these areas to be successful. Doing CSR right has become a balancing act

of strategy and execution, of finding top-down support and bottom-up awareness and engagement in the company, and of managing internal and external communities.

Doing all of this alone is impossible. The ultimate CSR leader is a t-shaped enabler. Providing proof of concepts and showing personal wins, while building relationships across the organisation to compensate for small teams and budgets.

Diving into more detail, these are the four most common challenges that we see our community of CSR leaders struggling with.

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Folkert van der Molen

Owner Dutch CSR portal www.duurzaam-ondernemen.nl

and founder Dutch National Sustainability Congress and

CSR Manager of the Year Election.

There’s tons of inspiration in this ebook. Clear examples of how to

mobilise employees to contribute to the sustainable mission - or

rather the societal purpose - of a company. It’s all about the power

of people; taking a collective approach to sustainability. This ebook

shows how you get your people to work together on sustainability

and societal impact, to change your company for good from the

inside out. Because working to make a positive impact on society

and the environment is just much more fun than working to make a

positive impact on the profit margin.

“

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The challenges of CSR

Chapter 1

2. Low awareness of - and action on - impact programs among employees

Without board-level support, CSR leaders are dependent on the intrinsic motivation of their colleagues at other departments and organisation levels to contribute to their programme.

Luckily, there is clearly an increase in the number of people interested in making a positive contribution to society. People search for meaning in their jobs. Nine out of ten employees are willing to earn less as long as they can do work that’s meaningful to them. They’re also 69% less likely to quit within the first six months. And they stay on average 7.4 months longer than employees who find their work lacks meaning. Study after study confirms that people consider environmental and societal impact when making their buying decisions.

Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen how more large companies have come out with public statements, establishing commitment from the executive board to social, environmental, and sustainable business practices. We all know the Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation, and a multitude of individual press releases indicate a true change in leadership thinking.

In the field, though, we’ve noticed how CSR professionals rarely see these public commitments translate into a higher degree of mandate. Into an expansion of their team, into significant budget changes, into anything more than a new strategic statement.

1. Lack of mandate - no commitment from leadership

In reality, many companies fail to bridge what we call the ‘purpose gap’. The purpose gap arises when board-level intentions and efforts to embed purpose don’t lead to an implemented strategy that is truly felt and executed by employees, customers, and other stakeholders. Therefore, businesses fail to meet their potential to change the world for the better.

To be able to unite internal stakeholders around sustainable goals, the commitment of senior leadership needs to be translated into concrete actions. Sustainability, in whatever form you want to promote it, needs to be on the agenda of executive meetings to be able to get a foothold in the organization.

This challenge prevents a lot of CSR leaders from tackling the other three challenges.

The Challenges of CSR

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3. Programme scalability

With limited resources and small teams, many CSR leaders are faced with scalability challenges.

The role of the average CSR leader is both strategic and operational. This is why a lot of the work of social impact professionals revolves around involving colleagues on their impact projects individually, while setting up collaborations with NGOs, social enterprises, and other partners.

Building these internal and external relationships takes up a lot of time and is often barely scalable.

momentum for CSR. We’ve seen a massive increase in people who participated in activities beneficial to the community (source 1, 2, 3, 4, 5). This trend presents opportunities for today’s smart CSR leaders.

But despite these increasing ambitions, the number of people acting on them is still relatively low.

How many people actually stop eating meat or fish after watching the hugely popular documentaries on climate change or biodiversity? A lot of people will claim they will change their behaviour. But few do (source). Of course, this is not a complete overview of the state of the world. But it’s a fair representation of how awareness does not necessarily lead to action.

In our experience, behavioural intentions only lead to action given proper nudging, enablement, and support. And crucially, given the right amount of time and momentum. Change doesn’t occur overnight. Especially in large organisations, where most incentives are geared towards bottom-line growth.

Despite all the horrors that the past year has brought us, the pandemic and its impacts have provided

As a consequence, little time remains to analyse your current impact programme, revise the strategy, and adjust according to new learnings.

Oftentimes when it comes to increasing the scale of CSR practices, it takes a crisis to propel CSR efforts to the next maturity stage (we share more on maturity stages in our next chapter). In other words, now is the perfect time to move forward!

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4. Measuring impact

One of the most significant barriers to CSR implementation and leadership buy-in has been the perceived difficulty in measuring the impact of impact programs.

Although the concept of the triple bottom line was established back in 1994, most CSR leaders are still struggling to quantify their economic, environmental and social value.

Collecting impact data is a huge challenge, especially when it comes to measuring the combined impact of hundreds or thousands of people in a corporate community.

Three common ways to measure CSR success are to:1) benchmark one organisation’s achievements, 2) seek recognition for CSR best practice - for example by taking part in responsible business awards, and 3) report on KPI’s such as volunteering hours or environmental performances.

We absolutely applaud the data-driven mindset. Still, most of these measurement methods present a problem in the long term: they measure incremental instead of absolute success. For example, success is waged against other companies’ achievements, or internal benchmarks. They don’t provide a lot of insight into the actual impact on our global challenges.

This is why today’s frontrunners are taking it one step further, by connecting their targets to SDGs, or installing Science Based Targets.

5. Tackling these challenges

The rest of this ebook aims to help you tackle some of the above challenges.

Firstly, we’ll introduce our framework of how CSR typically evolves in large companies. Then, we’ll dive into three detailed stories of innovative approaches to engaging more people on CSR projects in your organisation.

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The Purpose maturity model

Chapter 2

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Over the past ten years, we’ve spoken to and collaborated with countless impact leaders. This has helped us build a wealth of knowledge on how to practically and effectively involve people in their organisation’s CSR strategies.

In our view and experience, CSR is at a turning point. Impact agendas are finally finding their ways into board rooms. Companies are learning that their societal license to operate is at stake. But to contribute to achieving the SDGs and move towards a sustainable future, businesses need to change way faster.

At GoodUp, we believe that purpose is currently the most promising business

tool to increase our speed of change, and make lasting, sustainable change happen. Here’s why.

Introducing: The Purpose maturity model

The pinnacle of CSR is purpose

Corporate purpose

Purpose has become one of the most widely used terms to describe sustainable business ambitions.

Most business ambitions nowadays are described in mission and vision statements. Or, in terms of Simon Sinek’s why, how, what. In our view, there is a crucial difference between most of the common ways of describing business ambitions, and purpose.

Most of the time, business ambitions are discussed within an economic context.

By our definition, corporate purpose

is a way of describing the reason for being for your business, grounded within the context of society and the environment.

In other words, purpose re-establishes the connection between a company and all of its stakeholders. Using these connections as a north star for all corporate decision making is an effective way to shift how we think about business success. And yes, that’s more complex than a pure focus on shareholder value. We advise you to embrace this challenge.

At GoodUp, we define purpose as what you as a business, organisation, or individual does to benefit society and the environment.

Side note: if you’re not sick of the word purpose by now, way to go!

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Moving towards a company purpose via CSR

Over the years we’ve seen that transforming into a purpose-driven company often starts with CSR. There are several different triggers for a lasting commitment to purpose, like a leadership change, an activist employee movement, or external factors influencing the importance of a stakeholder approach. The teams to act first will usually be CSR, sustainability, and corporate foundations. As soon as these teams are successful in their efforts to embed social or sustainable projects in the company, the relevance of the topic further increases and responsibilities tend to expand into other departments (typically HR, communications, marketing, innovation) as well as other

levels within the organisation. Given the right amount of time and a lot of puzzle pieces falling into place, they can eventually become purpose-led. But more on this later.

Working together closely with dozens of large businesses who’ve made this journey from CSR to purpose, we observed similar dynamics across different companies.

More specifically, we’ve experienced some defining moments that turned out to be precursors for CSR adoption and, eventually, culture change.

Combining our observations, conversations and experiences with renowned CSR literature (especially the brilliant work of sustainability leader Doctor Wayne Visser), we’ve built a five-phase framework that shows how companies evolve from the start of their CSR journey to a purpose-led business: GoodUp’s Purpose Maturity Model.

GoodUp’s purpose maturity model

GoodUp’s Purpose Maturity Model provides points of reference for CSR leaders to decide onstrategy outlooks and concrete next steps in their impact programs. Our model distinguishes:-

Five phases of purpose maturity 1) Explore (Let’s start something!)2) Scale (Let’s do good!).3) Integrate (Let’s do less harm!)4) Accelerate (Let’s optimise impact together with our network)5) Purpose-led (Let’s be a force for good together with the ecosystem!)

Let’s walk through this framework together.

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ExploreScale

Integrate

Accelerate

Purpose-ledThe purpose maturity model

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Four precursors for change that many companies have in common:1) Strategic change and leadership endorsement.2) Involvement of specific internal and external stakeholders.3) Metrics and targets.4) New way of working for employees5) Adoption of technology.

Five phases of purpose maturity

Explore

Companies in the Explore phase have only just started exploring their CSR options. They feel like they should start doing something with this thing called sustainability or inclusivity.

It’s often run by employees who feel they ‘have to do something good for the world’. But their company itself does not run a strategy. What follows is a laundry list of scattered and small initiatives, including offering support for local charities and more involved activities like sending employees out on team events to fish plastic out of local watersheds.

Strategic change and leadership endorsementFour main causes can create the right amount of urgency for a business to

start a sustainability journey. Most often, it’s

• A leadership change. • Increasingly, an activist bottom-up

movement of employee change-makers triggering leadership to move forward on the topic.

• Thirdly, demand from consumers and related business opportunities for sustainable brands. Marketing-driven sustainability initiatives often fail to bring lasting change to a company, unless an internal movement has already been established (please refer to phase three; integration).

• Lastly, social or environmental pushes from legislators, surrounding communities, or other stakeholders to spark change.

In any case, senior management will usually appoint a sustainability leader. A person running a limited agenda alongside their ‘normal’ job. There is often no clear mandate nor a proper budget to accelerate change.

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Stakeholders involved Usually, a company begins their sustainability journey by appointing a person to lead the effort. That person will constantly be looking for time, money, and attention to get things done. There is ample leadership support: the appointed frontrunners are highly ambitious, but often not enabled to fulfil their work, which is why sometimes they get burned out or leave the company.ww

Metrics and targetsAt this stage, metrics still need to be established as a strategy has yet to be formed.

New way of working for employeesOther employees are invited to attend inspirational events, sign up to volunteer, or asked to donate money to a good cause.

Adoption of technologyTowards the end of this first phase, employees will be able to participate in random projects that help a variety of NGOs, social ventures and other local causes. Enthusiastic change-makers in the company will start to work on these projects. CSR leaders might use spreadsheets and standard communication tools to manage the work.

The right technology can help you find strategically relevant projects and generate way more awareness and engagement on these projects.

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ScaleThe transition point between phase 1 and 2 occurs when an impact strategy has been established and endorsed by leadership. Companies in this phase have defined an impact strategy (CSR, corporate foundation, or community engagement strategy) and run one or more impact programmes.

Managers are appointed and get a (small) budget to work toward impact. They set up long-term partnerships with NGOs, social ventures, and foundations to continuously provide their colleagues with opportunities to act on sustainability and inclusivity projects. A lot of their work entails reaching out to the change-makers and impact enthusiasts in the company to enable and support them to make an impact.

Strategic change and leadership endorsementAt this stage, leadership endorsement has been established, but active

involvement has not yet changed. Senior management is satisfied with the established impact strategy. They do not yet feel that they need to do more than just plan the strategy and appoint a leader to make the strategy come to life.

Oftentimes, CSR leaders in the Scale phase are empowered by their board to talk about the required impact agenda in one-to-one conversations. But CSR is not embedded in key communications, nor are there visible actions from top-level management. Limited support and tight budgets make it challenging to bring the strategy to life in a meaningful way.

Stakeholders involvedTeams remain small. In some cases, the CSR team is expanded with one or two colleagues, trainees or interns, or a full-time team assistant. To create progress, successful leaders collaborate with various departments to embed CSR in key areas and bring it closer to the business. At the end

of this phase, CSR leaders have established good relationships with their HR, Communications, Innovation, and Marketing counterparts. They’re starting to work on ideas to include CSR in all their plans.

Metrics and targetsThe most important metrics at this stage are awareness and visibility, the number of people who have joined the impact programme and the number of time people dedicate to and spend on these projects. Measuring impact often is a nice-to-have.

New way of working for employeesEmployees are allowed to assist on impact projects. They get the space (1-10 days a year) to spend on volunteering or CSR projects. Sometimes, they are even invited to start projects themselves. CSR and Purpose slowly come to life for them, but they don’t feel that they can truly contribute to the company’s purpose in their daily operations.

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Adoption of technologyTime and money are scarce resources, which is why technology is used to automate some of the work. For instance, CSR teams leverage technology to communicate their strategy and programme. They also use tech to reach out across business units and company levels so that the entire organisation is reached without too much manual intervention. NGOs and other partners are invited to submit their projects too. This way, employees get different calls to action.

Combining top-down communication with bottom-up activation is the key to successfully engaging colleagues in the impact strategy.

Towards the end of this phase, technology can help to match personal skills to projects that need those skills. The benefit to this is that making a true impact with your unique skill sets on projects close to your heart feels even better. Giving people the chance to do good with their

Integrate

Integration means bringing CSR to the core business. Companies do this because they realise that doing good has little value when their products and services still harm society or the environment. During this phase, partnerships and impact projects will be aligned with the overall company strategy.

At the same time, people will be able to use their unique personal skills to do those projects. Moving into this phase currently is the main challenge for most large companies.CSR and sustainability leaders feel this seismic shift where they still bear full responsibility, but accountability

is suddenly shared throughout the organisation. It is at this moment that their day-to-day work changes. They no longer have to chase every colleague to think about sustainability and contribute to projects.

Instead, people come to them to share ideas on how they want to add to impact activities. The CSR lead becomes more of an enabler and facilitator, linking change-makers to the right impact projects, and relaying the best impact projects for marketing and employer branding purposes. Integrated reporting shows the added value internally and externally.

This is the phase where CSR transforms into purpose because the role that your company wants to take in society becomes visible to outside stakeholders. A company will move to the next phase when all employees are activated on the company purpose and when progress on your footprint moves you closer towards the acceptable impact levels within Kate Raworth’s doughnut model (this model

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talents sparks personal purpose and boosts employee advocacy.

As a result, CSR managers are increasingly supported by colleagues, which is why the success (impact) of their strategy increases.

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describes how, when we continue to overuse the earth’s resources, we will cross tipping points that cause unacceptable environmental degradation).

Please refer to our Deloitte case study to read a step-by-step approach to how to move into this phase.

Strategic change and leadership endorsementLeaderships starts to own the impact agenda. The CEO and CFO will start to be concerned about progress on impact targets. Leadership endorsement is a huge catalyst for impactful change at this stage. The most successful CSR leaders we’ve seen are in a position to personally request their CEOs to start or support impact projects. The CEO can then nudge mid-level management to run impact projects.

Stakeholders involvedIn this phase CSR, HR, Marketing and top-level management are collaborating to ensure that making impact is on everyone’s agenda. This also means that sustainability and impact will be strategic company assets rather than sideline statistics. Involving more employees on the impact programs is still priority. In some cases, outside stakeholders such as customers or communities will also be involved during this phase. Usually, there’s still a sense of caution around the subject of marketing the CSR position though. This wmakes sense, considering the harsh critiques on purpose washing, and general public mistrust in sustainable claims by large companies.

Metrics and targetsStarting off, metrics from the Scale phase will still be important. During the Integration phase, impact metrics will be linked to SDGs, GRI alike frameworks and will include

Science Based Targets. At the end of this phase, impact metrics are often introduced into team or even individual targets throughout the company.

New way of working for employeesFor other employees this is a challenging stage. Their daily work will start to change. If properly organized by their employer, they are suddenly asked to leave the car at home, to have meatless lunches and to start looking for opportunities in their factories or supply chain to reduce emissions. They are invited by others to assist on their impact projects and start to feel that their company is changing. Employees get the feeling of working for a purpose driven company which will boost employee advocacy, improve productivity and reduce costs.

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Accelerate

Companies move into this phase when the internal organisation is truly engaged with the company purpose. Because the internal organisation is engaged, they can start to expand their scope outside. Eventually their network of stakeholders will become part of the purpose movement as they are invited to start and contribute to impact projects in line with the company purpose.

Unilever (see case study later in this ebook), IKEA, Adidas and DSM are some of the few big corporates and purpose frontrunners that are currently working towards this phase. These companies already involve stakeholders in their ambitions. Successful community engagement and supply chain management will lead to more collaboration between people inside and outside the company. Within the scope of the purpose maturity model, these

corporate frontrunners are hovering somewhere in between the stage of Integrate and Accelerate. Their leadership is fully on board and their long-term strategy to become fully purpose-led has been rolled out. They’re truly transforming their business. As such, they are leading the change towards the stakeholder economy.

The role of CSR leaders in this stage will usually evolve from a facilitating and enabling role, into a consulting role inside and outside the organisation. As most of the companies in this phase gain PR exposure for their leading role in the purpose economy, the CSR leader can also serve as one of the core media spokespeople.

With CSR now more embedded, impact initiatives can include building new circular business models, reducing the use of plastics in your supply chain, improving working

4Adoption of technologyCSR and purpose teams will need technology to engage employees across organisation levels, departments, locations, countries and continents. They need to be able to track the real-time performance of their programs along the same metrics and automate a lot of the work of keeping people informed about new impact projects. Because of the size and scope of the programs at this stage, they will need a central space to organise, gather, measure and communicate about all impact projects.

In most cases, they use an integrated system that runs all of their projects, and is easily implemented alongside their other internal communication technology such as Teams or Yammer.

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conditions throughout the production chain and other similar practices. New products and services are created with supply chain partners and even with competitors, at the benefit of society. The impact of all these initiatives still contributes to clear company goals. The company goals are clearly quantified and linked to the SDGs or SBTi. Unilever, for example, has committed to halving its use of virgin plastics, as well as collecting and processing more plastic packaging than it sells, by 2025. And they won’t reach that alone.

Companies in the Accelerate Phase act beyond their company walls to collaborate with their network: their supply chain, their communities. All with the goal of not only making the business successful, but society as a whole.

Strategic change and leadership endorsementLeadership starts to own the impact agenda. The CEO and CFO will start to check up on the progress of impact targets. Leadership endorsement is a huge catalyst for impactful change at this stage. The most successful CSR leaders we’ve seen are in a position to personally ask their CEOs to start or support impact projects. The CEO can then nudge mid-level management in the right direction.

Stakeholder involvementIn this phase, CSR, HR, Marketing, and top-level management collaborate to ensure that impact is on everyone’s agenda. This means that sustainability and impact will be seen as strategic company assets rather than sideline statistics.

Involving more employees in impact programmes is a huge priority here as they are your agents of change. That’s why impact targets should

find their way into performance management cycles. This requires HR to step in. The change to impact targets will be challenging for mid-level management, as they have been raised with traditional, ROI-based metrics. They will need guidance on how to deal with impact metrics.

In the Integrate phase, the most successful and exciting move is to democratise the CSR strategy. This means dispersing ownership and giving all employees the space to work on impact projects. The biggest concerns lie in potential consequences for daily operations.

One way to counter these concerns is to start small by including dedicated teams such as sustainability and innovation with CSR practices. But by keeping the involved teams limited, it will take much longer for your people to feel that you’re serious about your impact ambitions. Your strategy will not come to life as a consequence.

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Purpose-led

On the most mature side of the Purpose Maturity Model, you’ll find companies that have purpose fully integrated into their DNA. We call them purpose champions as impact becomes their number one metric

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Considering the harsh critiques on greenwashing, and general public mistrust in sustainable claims by large companies, we strongly advise you to democratise your way of working.

Metrics and targetsIn this phase ‘traditional’ business results such as quarterly growth, will start to appear as results of the purpose strategy.

New way of working for employeesEmployees now feel that making profit and making impact can go hand in hand. When they talk about work, they will proudly explain what positive impact they’re making together with their colleagues. By ensuring that they have the space to contribute in their daily work, they will become true brand ambassadors.

combined with a profitable business model. They expand their thinking from their network towards an impact ecosystem. These companies celebrate positive impact beyond their own organisation and network.Famous examples are Patagonia, The Ocean Cleanup, Greyston Bakery, The Plastic Bank, Tony’s Chocolonely, and The Vegetarian Butcher.One trait many of these companies share is how short they have been around. Purpose-led companies are fairly new (Patagonia being one of the few exceptions that we know of) and have a clear societal mission that has been woven into their DNA. Patagonia endeavours to create positive impact first and generate profit second. For Patagonia, impact directly leads to profit. Over the past years, we have not witnessed any full transformations to purpose-led.

Adoption of technologyTechnology in this phase is needed to connect external communities with the internal community. Companies will start to connect their partners, employees and suppliers with the customer base and other stakeholders.

A true impact movement kicks in and collaboration will become more important than competition. A mix of technologies will be used to bring together all impact initiatives, connect individuals, measure and scale impact. Privacy legislation like GDPR is key to organize as well as intellectual property.

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aim can only contribute to their overarching goal.

Metrics and targetsPurpose-led brands report on their business success in terms of impact. For example, take a look at the annual reports of Tony’s and Patagonia.

When it comes to impact metrics, most purpose-led brands are very open about their successes as well as their failures. They will gladly report about how they did not succeed in reaching their goals. In fact, not reaching their goal, or purpose is the main reason they exist in the first place. Their success is measured by more than reaching their goal, it’s measured by the impact that they made, by the good that they did in general.

New way of working for employeesEmployees who get the chance to act on their company’s purpose are

true brand ambassadors. Their strong sense of purpose compensates in the case where they earn less. They feel that they are part of a family and proudly talk about their jobs outside of the context of work. Often, efforts to find work-life balance will be replaced by a true balance in life, which is the result of doing something you love and feel is meaningful daily.

Adoption of technologyPurpose-led companies use technology for similar purposes as companies in the Accelerate phase but take it one step further. They feed the ecosystem with ideas and projects and invite everyone to contribute and benefit from these initiatives. Patagonia, for example, has built its platform Action Works to involve internal and external stakeholders in volunteering work based on unique skills.

GoodUp can provide a platform like

Strategic change and leadership endorsement

Needless to say, there is full leadership endorsement in purpose-led companies. Managers lead by example. Similarly to leaders in the Accelerate phase, purpose-led CEOs are usually advocates for purpose-driven business.

Stakeholder involvementPurpose-led companies are often out to transform consumer behaviour, and usually advocate for a change towards stakeholder capitalism. Tony’s Chocolonely, a well-known Dutch chocolate brand, works toward ending slavery in the chocolate industry. It empowers employees, customers, communities, partners, and suppliers to join in on this mission. Tony’s Chocolonely realises that the only way to change the world is through collaboration. This is true even to the extent that they embrace competition, as more companies with the same

In between phases

Changing how a business operates and changes its culture from within is a complex process that requires governance, lots of communication and skill. Not to mention a lot of time and the right amount of urgency and momentum.

We strongly advise companies to carefully decide which part of their impact to democratise. Without careful consideration and planning, some teams feel that they are in the Accelerate phase, while others don’t

On to the ‘how’

The next section of this ebook goes through three detailed accounts of companies going through different phases of the Purpose Maturity Model.

feel the freedom to make an impact in their daily work at all. Also, people across the business might start impactful projects, without everyone knowing about them.

It’s vital to communicate about purpose-drivenness before giving people the freedom and space to act. Many people will be disappointed when they hear about change, but don’t see anything change in their work. At GoodUp we take a case-by-case approach to determining a company’s position on the Purpose Maturity Model.

Action Works, completely tailored to any brand and strategy. Ultimately, we are working towards a global marketplace to connect all global change-makers, companies, and organisations based on impact themes.

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How can we help?

Using a decade of experience in bringing CSR and purpose programs forward, we can help to:

Determine your position in the Purpose Maturity Model and how to move forward. and what is keeping you from moving forward.

• Connect with maarten via maarten@goodup.com for a free in-person scan, or

• Do a quickscan online to get an estimate of your position in the PMM.

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2 Provide the technology and professional support that you need, to facilitate the growth of your program in each phase.

• Get in touch for a free, live tour of the platform and our services.

Let’s talk CSR!

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Impact success cases

Chapter 3

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GoodUp has been a partner of the Deloitte Impact Foundation (DIF) for years. Over the past year, we’ve seen from up close how their continued efforts led to a huge spike in employee involvement in their impact program. In this detailed case study, we talk to Deloitte’s Laura Grootenboer, Programme Manager at the Deloitte Impact Foundation, to reconstruct how they’ve turned challenges into opportunities.

How the Deloitte Impact Foundation created a boost in engagement on their impact program

Deloitte’s impact strategy and ambitions Through the Deloitte Impact Foundation, Deloitte…

1. Empowers people for a better future through WorldClass.Deloitte’s Global WorldClass program intends to positively impact 50 million futures worldwide by 2030. In the Netherlands, the DIF wants to reduce inequality by helping 350.000 children and young adults with initiatives that focus on education and employment, and indirectly also support the Dutch economy in the long term.

2. Protects the natural world through sustainability initiatives.Through international sustainability-related initiatives Deloitte protects the natural environment by addressing the root causes and effects of global warming and degradation of land,

I feel it. I really feel it. But now everyone who’s not talking about

purpose and impact on a daily basis like me yet, they should start feeling

it as well.

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water and air. This focus area aims to support future generations on the planet to live in a healthy and sustainable environment.

3. Contributes to an endurable societyThis final, broad theme applies only to Deloitte’s employee-led initiatives to allow all Deloitte employees to start an initiative that is close to their heart or even in their local community. The initiatives provide support for challenges related to the quality of life in the Netherlands such as living conditions, health, loneliness, safety and economic welfare. Initiatives may have a national or local scope, and their tenure may be of a temporary or long-lasting nature.

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Laura GrootenboerCSR programme manager at Deloitte

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Laura: “The Deloitte Impact Foundation enables all Deloitte employees within the Netherlands to start or join projects that impact society. Our people use their unique expertise, knowledge, and network within these projects. Contributions can be really small, like doing short skill-based voluntary activities such as making the financial prognosis of the local football club for next year, coaching students with a socio-economic disadvantage, scaling social enterprises, and professionalising non-profit organisations. But there’s also way bigger partnerships, such as our long-term commitment to supporting the Ocean Cleanup with expertise ranging from consulting to risk, tax, legal and finance.”

Over the past years, Laura and her colleagues at the foundation have worked relentlessly to involve more people in their initiatives. Recently, they found a new angle to reach their goal, based on new insights. Laura expressed her enthusiasm about sharing this approach and its results with other impact leaders.

Leadership endorsement

During our conversation, Laura mentions several times how the endorsement of impact and purpose as strategic assets, has opened a lot of doors for the impact foundation.

Since June 2020, the foundation got repositioned from the communications and branding department to the corporate strategy office, directly reporting to Deloitte’s Chief Strategy Officer and consequently increasing its level of authority - a sign of Deloitte’s impact ambitions. Also, a director (Christel Samson) was appointed with the responsibility to

embed the strategy, PMO and external relations. The impact ambitions are fully endorsed by senior management on a strategic and operational level. On a strategic level, Deloitte board members have adopted the strategic Deloitte Impact Foundation pillars. The CEO sponsors all education projects, the COO sponsors all sustainability projects, and the CQO (Chief Quality Officer) sponsors all Endurable Society projects. Laura says, “I feel fully supported by our board. They are true ambassadors of the cause and act whenever needed to strengthen the commitment to our impact ambitions.”

Laura shares an example of the operational level:

We were shooting the after movie for a project called Building Bots with Kids, that teaches kids about software automation and inspires them to choose a technical study. I asked our CEO if he would like to join, he lives in the neighborhood. He said he would

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love to, and joined the team for lunch and a class. He shares his enthusiasm in the after movie. Besides endorsement by senior management, Laura feels that the momentum for impact and purpose has grown since the pandemic.

On momentum

For Laura, the momentum of impact at Deloitte cannot be captured in a step-by-step process. Laura mentions numerous internal and external events that are occurring simultaneously, and accumulate to something that can best be described as culture change.

“A million things are happening. Due to Covid, the newfound awareness about inclusion and diversity (I&D) issues, increased awareness about climate change, etc. global issues are now starting to ‘click’ for many more people. As a result, making a positive impact is something that more people are starting to act upon globally throughout Deloitte. People are acting on our purpose which is making an impact that matters.” Nonetheless the Deloitte Impact Foundation did recently make some breakthrough decisions that dramatically increased their understanding of when people engage in impactful activities.

Teaching kids about software automation

and inspire them to choose a technical study

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The realisation that led to a break through

Laura says, “about a year ago, I was very much focused on communicating all that we do at the Deloitte Impact Foundation: creating and sharing stories inside and outside the organisation. Until then, we had just hoped that inspiring our colleagues by sharing stories would trigger them enough to start contributing to the impact foundation as well. What we realised was that there are things other than inspiration that people need to actually start a project. To succeed in our business environment, it’s not enough to just be inspired.”

Research

The Deloitte Impact Foundation generated valuable insights through some very thorough internal qualitative research. The goal of the research was to identify what generally prevents people from joining an impact foundation project.

Phase 1.The first phase of the research focused on finding out how much awareness people at Deloitte had regarding the Deloitte Impact Foundation. One hundred colleagues across all business units, and organisation levels were asked questions like:

· Do you know the impact foundation?· What do you know about it?· Where would you go to find more information about it?· Can you name any of our projects?

Laura: “The results were good in the sense that a lot of people knew about the foundation. But there were also lots of misconceptions about what it is

that we actually do and don’t do. So, people knew our brand, so to say, but there was no way that they were going to come up with a project idea that fits our strategy and way-of-working. For example, people thought that they would be able to use our resources for beach clean-ups, which is not the case. This was a big insight.” What also became clear, was that there were a lot of different needs within the different business units and levels in the organisation. This is why, in phase 2 of the research, we took an individual approach per business unit.

Phase 2.Phase 2 consisted of conversations with ten to fifteen people within each of Deloitte’s six business units. The goal here was to identify challenges that people experienced in joining impact projects. “What we noticed is that part of these challenges were people pointing towards one another to start acting,” says Laura. “In one stereotypical

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example, a millennial consultant would say, listen, I have some great ideas and would love to support, but there’s no way that I’m going to come up with a big, impactful Deloitte project because I don’t have the network that this partner has.” She continues: “At the same time the partner would say, listen, millennial generation, you are the guys with the ideas, you should start the projects. They were more than happy to provide support with their network, but did not have the time to become a pioneer when it came to project initiation.” At this point the team had gathered the challenges. They proceeded by bringing together people from the same business unit, but in different organisational levels, in deep dive ideation sessions. The goal of these sessions was to come up with solutions together. Besides some specific, creative solutions and outcomes, there was one general learning that the entire foundation agreed on:

The internal ambassador network that they had created to engage more of their colleagues on impact projects was not hitting the mark. The foundation used to run an ambassador network with Deloitte colleagues who were enthusiastic about impact and purpose. Ambassadors could sign up and give introductory presentations about the foundation to colleagues, among other activities. “We didn’t have a good spread of people with different backgrounds, different job levels, different business units,” says Laura. “Ambassadors were not well informed about our strategy and often felt it was mainly a nice community to be a part of. This set-up was insufficient to create the structural change that we are out to make.”

And so, they got to work.

Cracking the case of CSR employee engagement - Deloitte’s new changemaker network

The foundation realised that to be able to really embed impact and a sense of purpose in the organisation, these topics had to be embedded into daily decision making. They decided to completely redesign the purpose, structure, and activities of their old ambassador network and bring it to an entirely new level. Laura says, “We talked to all the business leaders and asked, who do we need in your management team to lead our new changemaker network within your business?” This way, instead of a solely bottom-up approach (including enthusiastic impact makers), the foundation

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worked to leverage the business hierarchy, top-down, into their changemaker network. “We entered the conversation saying this is a part of Deloitte’s strategy, who are you going to appoint within your management team to be responsible for this topic, who will make sure that it’s a topic on the agenda of every management meeting that you have?” says Laura. Since cracking the CSR case, the management team of each business unit has brought forward their own ‘purpose lead partner’ who ensures that impact is a topic on the agenda of the management team. This partner also provides the necessary support to changemakers located throughout the other levels of that business unit. This is how impact and purpose are being governed in the business. “One thing to note here is that you cannot simply copy-paste a Changemakers Network from one business to another”, says Laura. “Each Purpose Lead Partner is

taking his or her unique approach to involving colleagues within their business in impact projects. And they should. They know best how to get their people moving. They know best with which types of projects they can add the most value. You need to take this case-by-case.“

How a new dynamic leads to new challenges

For Laura, and the foundation, a lot has changed since they first broached the topic of CSR. “Before, a large part of our efforts went into creating communication materials, chasing people with content and hoping that it would trigger them to participate in projects. Now, changemakers come to us with cool projects, people we should talk and connect with, stories we should hear,” says Laura. There has been a complete shift

in dynamics to a point where the foundation encounters a new challenge to keep up with the amount of ideas and initiatives coming their way. “We’re already doing so many things that people don’t even know about,” says Laura. “How do we communicate about this in such a way that it inspires other people to join this movement as well? There’s Inclusion & Diversity, there’s client work, there’s all the foundation projects, and all these topics strengthen each other. How do you bring all this together to create a real culture change?” In a more abstract sense, this dynamic triggers a new range of challenges. These challenges are felt not only within the Deloitte Impact Foundation, but throughout the rest of the organisation. Purpose is becoming a part of the Deloitte DNA, which is why client work, the internal organization and the pro bono work within the Deloitte Impact Foundation need to align and start to strengthen one another. Laura emphasizes how

purpose and impact are things that need to be felt and experienced, rather than communicated about. “I feel it. I really feel it. But now everyone who’s not talking about purpose and impact on a daily basis like me yet, they should start feeling it as well.”

We will be checking in with Laura at a later stage, and report on her progress towards solving these new challenges.

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Unilever is one of the most recognized purpose-led companies of our time. Former CEO Paul Polman’s famous Sustainable Living Plan showed how purpose and profit can go hand-in-hand for large companies. In speaking with Unilever’s Sustainability Director Benelux Anniek Mauser, we learned how sustainability and purpose have

Inside Unilever. The role of a sustainability director in a purpose-led organisation

been integrated into the business and what it means to be a sustainability director at a purpose-frontrunner.

Unilever’s four-level purpose strategy

Unilever’s purpose is making sustainable living commonplace. Its vision is to be a global leader in sustainable business and to show that a purpose-led future-fit business model drives superior performance. Anniek explained how Unilever has

integrated its purpose-led strategy in the business at four different levels.

Level 1Firstly, there is the global purpose; making sustainable living commonplace. Unilever’s global purpose has become famous over the years. Making sustainable living commonplace has guided the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan, is visible in all offices, a huge inspiration for employees and hard to miss in communications of the company. But in a local market such as the Benelux, the need was felt to translate this global purpose to engage and provide guidance to colleagues locally.

Level 2“We discovered that this global purpose and the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan (USLP) felt quite intangible for our people in Benelux sometimes,”

Anniek MauserSustainability Director

Unilever

“I’m inspired by our CEO, Alan Jope. Purpose and sustainability continue to

be top of the agenda and are integrated into our business with a strong driving

role for our brands.”

said Anniek. “In their minds, they connected our purpose and USLP with sanitation campaigns like hand-washing and access to clean water. These topics are hugely relevant in emerging markets - and since the outbreak of the Covid 19 pandemic of course globally - but we felt that we also needed to create a level of purpose that felt closer to home.” This is why Unilever Benelux chose to create, or rather identify, the local Benelux purpose: making daily moments more beautiful for everyone, more sustainable, more healthy and truly together.

During our conversation, Anniek refers to Unilever’s Sustainable Living Plan. This 10-year plan introduced by former CEO Paul Polman in 2010, was the core of Unilever’s purpose-led strategy. Following on from the USLP, Unilever commits to being a sustainable

leader and has developed a new, fully integrated corporate strategy: the Unilever Compass. This is defined below. The Unilever Compass is based on three core beliefs: that brands with purpose grow, companies with purpose last, and people with purpose thrive. Supporting the three beliefs, the Unilever Compass lays out 34 multi-year priorities under 8 key themes in the area of improving the health of the planet, improving people’s health, confidence and wellbeing, and contribute to a fairer more inclusive world. Each priority has ambitious targets, with corresponding programmes and projects. They tackle key challenges such as packaging and waste, gender equality, human rights, and fair value – as well as climate change and social inclusion. The Compass is underpinned by the same rigour as the USLP but is even more holistic, inclusive, and far-reaching. More details can be found at Planet & Society | Unilever

Level 3Brands form the third level. “We believe that brands have a societal role to play, captured in sustainable products – that is the actual responsibility a brand takes in terms of e.g. sustainable sourcing, the use of less, better or no plastic in the packaging – and the purpose of those brands.

That’s what we call brands with a purpose. We see that these brands grow significantly faster than the other brands. It’s great to see the purpose of more and more brands coming to life. Two good examples are Knorr aiming to help consumers to eat more vegetables, and the transition of Unox towards a more plant-based portfolio.”

Level 4The fourth level is people’s individual purpose. Anniek states that “we strongly believe in the relevance and power of people’s individual purpose. Some people have their purpose

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clearly defined for themselves while for others it is still hidden. We organise one-day purpose workshops for employees globally, to help people to distil their purpose. This helps them to make choices in life, craft better relationships with their manager and team, and live their purpose in their daily job. My personal purpose is creating snowballs for positive change, and I feel privileged that I can live my purpose in my daily job.” The role of a sustainability director in a purpose-led companyAs sustainability director for Unilever Benelux, Anniek reports directly to the Benelux General Manager. Anniek describes her role as very broad, consultative, and covering three main areas: supporting the business, external representation, and employee engagement. Sustainability and purpose have become more and more integrated into the business, which is why her

role has changed over time. Anniek used to constantly challenge people, raise the bar, and put sustainability on the agenda. Now, sustainability is much more part of everyone’s job, and Anniek serves as the internal advisor, coach, expert and connector. Moreover, to deal with specific challenges, the company has created unique roles for young managers to work across the business, and break through existing structures and habits to make a tangible impact. One example of such a role is the waste warrior. “Two people work full-time on reducing our operational waste to zero. For example, they look at how we can plan smarter, how we can ensure that obsolete products always find a way to consumers e.g. via collaborations with Too Good To Go or Food Bank donations, and how we can prevent waste of our point of sale materials. It’s fantastic to see how our business today breathes purpose. It has been and still is, a tremendous journey. Employee engagement is and will stay crucial in

this process” more about how people are inspired to act on their purpose at Unilever.

Supporting the businessAnniek supports the business with her expertise and network. This can go all the way from supporting marketing and sales teams with developing campaigns such as ‘Doe Maar Lekker Vegetarisch’, identifying relevant partners, advising on claims they can make, to helping local brands with sustainable sourcing processes, such as working on sustainable fisheries with Conimex for their shrimp crackers.

External representationThis entails interaction with a broad range of NGOs, the government and government bodies, academia, media, and others. For example, Anniek gives lectures and participates in panel debates with other leading thinkers in the industry.

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Employee engagementEmployee engagement always has been very important. To engage employees on the aforementioned four different purpose levels, Unilever Benelux felt the need for one central place to facilitate Benelux colleagues to get inspired, share and get into action.

Purpose engagement in practice

Unilever Benelux’s central platform ensures a tight integration of purpose in the company by combining making impact, personal development, and inspiration. “Our Purpose in Action platform is a one-stop-purpose shop for all purpose related initiatives and activities. Here, colleagues can find our brand purposes, personal purpose

projects of colleagues supported by the Unilever Benelux Foundation, and activities such as learning sessions, personal purpose workshops, master classes, and the Low Car Diet (which allows people to experience the use of electric bikes and cars).”

Making impactUnilever Benelux’s Giving Back initiative provides all Benelux employees with the opportunity to do eight hours of volunteer work annually during office hours. People can subscribe to activities or start initiatives themselves and call out for others to join. For example, employees can subscribe to become a coach for a newcomer. Facilitated by the Refugee Talent Hub, they help a refugee to find their way in the Dutch labour market.

“Another example of how we facilitate our people to make impact is by encouraging them to get out in the market, talk to consumers, visit shops,

explore new media channels, dive into relevant consumer insight studies and share their learnings and observations on the platform.”

Personal developmentOne inspiring example of Unilever’s investments in personal development can be found in its purpose finding workshops. During these full-day workshops, a facilitator helps people to identify their personal purpose by, among other exercises, going back to their childhoods, exploring what used to drive them and make them happy, and looking at crucial moments in their lives. “I’ve personally experienced that this is a wonderful way to go a level deeper in a trusted setting. You get to know and trust a small group of colleagues in an entirely different way,” said Anniek. There is a lot of enthusiasm for these purpose workshops - over 80% of employees have identified their personal purpose

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in this way. Unilever also offers an extensive ongoing learning programme. “Purpose is very much related to personal development and learning and we invest heavily in this. Every month we organise something that we call Learning Thursday, on which people can register for a wide range of learning sessions and workshops” says Anniek.

InspirationOne of the reasons to implement the Purpose in Action platform was to inspire colleagues with everything purpose related. People find their way to the platform easily and use it frequently. “For example, to inspire each other via storytelling, share individual purpose related experiences, share their purpose, and share brand purpose stories. Really exciting.”

I’m happy to see how purpose came to life over the past years in our

Benelux business. The Purpose in Action platform has done a great job

to help to facilitate this. It has helped to make getting into action very

accessible. And with the continuous development of the functionality of

the platform, we can continue to make the platform more relevant. I’m very

excited for example about the newly introduced KPI functionality, which will

allow us to make our purpose impact better measurable and tangible.

Anniek Mauser “

“

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How Accenture leverages a competitive workforce to create massive exposure and impact

Innovating to help clients and communities tackle societal issues has always been an important part of what Accenture does as a responsible business. One of the things they do is supporting their people to volunteer. The Accenture Netherlands Foundation’s team is tasked with engaging their colleagues in volunteering activities. We spoke with Accenture’s Corporate Citizenship

Accenture’s global purpose-driven strategy

Laura van den Hurk Corporate Citizenship

Programme LeadAccenture NL

“The phrase ‘sustainability is the new digital’ has really been

buzzing around the office lately.”

Programme Lead Laura van den Hurk and her colleague Suzanne Baijens about the company’s broader purpose strategy, and how their yearly Making A Difference Battle supports this strategy. We will dive into the topic of volunteering. And discuss the Making a Difference Battle as a successful vehicle to engage Accenture’s people in the Netherlands to volunteer, accelerate change and create value for their communities

Accenture’s purpose is to deliver on the promise of technology and human ingenuity. Julie Sweet, their CEO, recently stated that ‘today nothing shows greater promise than sustainability.’

In line with the United Nations Global Compact Sustainable Development

Goals (SDGs), Accenture’s definition of sustainability includes everything from environment and equality to technology and economy. Accenture continues to partner with the United Nations—alongside SAP and 3M—to launch SDG Ambition to challenge and support companies everywhere to raise the bar in driving progress on the SDGs. As part of the SDG Ambition Accelerator, they are helping to drive adoption among more than 600 companies across 65 countries.

Shared action and collaboration remain crucial to their strategy. Increasingly, they use SDGs as a universal language to create action

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Accenture’s approach to sustainability

Accenture believes that sustainability will become the new digital. Their view is that much like the digital revolution, that transformed how we live and work, so too will sustainability. It will permeate everything we do and drive new value and growth along the way. Accenture made sustainability their

Sustainability is multidimensional, and so is Accenture’s approach. They deliver value by embedding sustainability into everything they do, for everyone they work with. In the Netherlands this is embedded in the organization through three pillars:

1. Creating positive environmental impact by collaborating with clients. For example, helping their clients migrating to greener IT, cloud and software and industry transitions to low-carbon energy.

2. Improving business operations sustainably, with a focus on their own

with their clients, ecosystem partners, suppliers and other stakeholders. Against this backdrop, they have continued to focus their efforts against their top-priority SDGs:

top responsibility because it’s the right thing to do. But more importantly because they believe it will be the most powerful force of change in our generation.

impact and their people. For example, by creating more sustainable office spaces, acquiring electric car parks, and decreasing plastics usage.

3. Corporate Citizenship with a focus on our communities. For example, via volunteering and pro-bono partnerships.

This elaborate case study focuses on Corporate Citizenship. Therefore, we highlight only one of the key components within the Sustainability Value Promise, being: Accenture’s role as a Responsible Citizen. Within this component, Accenture is committed to making a difference through Social Impact (consisting of their, Societal Response to COVID-19, Accenture Development Partnerships, Social Innovators, Skills to Succeed, Tech4Good, Engaging People on Environmental Issues, and Volunteering).

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“Across the globe, one thing is universally true of the people of Accenture: We care deeply about

what we do and the impact we have with our clients and communities. It is

personal to all of us.”

Julie Sweet - CEO Accenture

The challenge: continuing Accenture’s biggest impact event online

Laura has been forming and executing the Dutch Accenture’s Corporate Citizenship programme for more than five years. Lately, she’s seen clear signs of a steady sustainable transformation. “Last year, Peter Lacy was appointed as our first Chief Responsibility Officer,” says Laura. “But more importantly, I feel all around me how our stance on the topic of impact has dramatically changed. Instead of doing what needs to be done, we’re taking bold action in changing our entire business from the inside out, while also taking our clients, people, shareholders, partners and communities along on this journey.”

Accenture is committed to playing a leading role in the transition to a low-carbon economy. On a global scale they have laid out a clear path to net-zero by 2025.locally, the Accenture Netherlands Foundation has decided to expand their strategic focus, and besides the Skills to Succeed programme, focus on achieving more environmental impact.

Skills to Succeed programmeSkills to Succeed Is a programme where employees use their unique skills to help others. For example, by coaching refugee talent or giving innovation classes in schools. Through these ongoing initiatives, nearly 4.6 million people have been trained by Accenture globally with the skills to make substantive improvements to their lives.

Engaging people on environmental issuesoThis programme empowers people to make a difference on environmental issues. Besides this being a global

focus, Laura noticed a drive of employees to make a difference on this topic. People want to work on challenges related to improving (marine) biodiversity, reduce plastic pollution, stimulate effective waste management, and accelerate sustainable agriculture.

Accenture’s team in the Netherlands has been successful at getting employees involved in their programmes. On their purpose platform, over 60% of their people engage in impactful projects every year. Until the pandemic, much of

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Accenture’s Making a Difference Battle

Accenture’s success came from in-person initiatives and events. Lockdowns and other Covid-19 restrictions led to many of these initiatives being cancelled. This didn’t help alleviate the pressure that many people felt at having to continue to deliver on their targets while working from home and all consequences of the lockdown. Engaging employees on impact initiatives became harder than ever. Suzanne says: “Some of our most important communications channels, like face-to-face and office communications, were obviously no longer effective. At the same time, other channels like email and chat became more saturated. I saw how response times increased and how people were struggling with managing their time in the new working situation. Working from home just requires a whole new level of communication to keep employees engaged on your programme.”

The team still wanted to make the goal of engaging 550 people with over 5000 hours invested in volunteering work. They had to find an innovative way to do so.

The Making a Difference Battle (MaDB) is a month-long competition that provides a fun and meaningful opportunity for employees to set up impactful projects that contribute to a specific SDG. The idea is this: Accenture employees are free to spend 24 hours over one month to come up with a business plan that solves a challenge an NGO, social venture, local community, or other good cause is currently facing. During this month, employees can join workshops, masterclasses, and training courses to work on the skills to help them form a business plan.

The result of these sessions is an elevator pitch for their idea. Employees with the best pitches are invited to compete in a final live event. During this finale, a professional jury of prominent business leaders votes for a winner. The winning team can execute their plan during work hours. The battle leverages the innate drive to make an impact in Accenture’s highly skilled workforce to create a massive spike in engagement for the programme. In previous years, the MaDB had been the biggest live internal impact event. With hundreds of employees spending thousands of hours on volunteering work, it’s one of the highlights of the aim to be a Responsible Citizen and contributes the most to the team’s volunteering goals.

The challenges of the MaDB Nature Edition

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Making a difference battle - A new approach

In the face of Covid, the CSR team had to get creative and come up with a new way to engage people throughout the organization. Therefore, the 2021 edition of the battle was set up to be more substantive than previous editions. Laura: “I think that one of the key success factors of our approach is our flexibility. We’ve always adapted to our surroundings in the organization, and we frequently establish new partnerships that match with strategic shifts. This is how our programmes stay relevant. It’s also an approach that fits with how I look at purpose. Purpose is deeply personal and thus different for every individual. The Corporate Citizenship programme helps people to find out how their skills can directly contribute to society.

This is where purpose is sparked.” The team chose to shift the focus of the battle from the Skills to Succeed programme to their new Focus on the Environment programme. Also, instead of opening the event for all ideas, five environmental partners were selected. They presented clear assignments that people could tackle.

From several small and ambitious organizations with a strong environmental focus and the aim to make a real difference to the environment, Laura’s team selected five final partners. The partners brought in a challenge they had a hard time solving due to a lack of resources, skills, and time.

Tiny forestsTiny Forests are densely packed native forests that fit into the size of a tennis court. IVN Tiny Forests has planted over 144 forests since 2015. This year IVN wants to scale the Tiny Forest concept internationally to 200 tiny forests with minimum effort from IVN. This requires a lot of personal involvement of the IVN tiny forest lead, which is not a scalable solution.Challenge: support IVN in scaling up the urban Tiny Forest Movement, across the borders into the EU, by analyzing the needs for a learning & community platform together.

CommonlandCommonland is on a mission to transform degraded landscapes into thriving ecosystems and communities. The organization currently operates in 8 landscapes and has set the ambition to grow to 100 landscapes by 2040. Commonland wants to build a robust data and information fundament underneath their business that

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supports these growth ambitions.Challenge: To help Commonland achieve more impact in the restoration movement by creating a solid basis for Knowledge & Information Management. The aim is to identify key areas that Commonland needs to address to allow future growth.

HivosHivos protects the Amazon rainforest. They lead the All Eyes on the Amazon, that supports indigenous people and local communities in their fight against deforestation and ecosystem degradation and human rights violations. Hivos, alongside partners, developed a Learning Platform that allows local and Indigenous forest defenders to share their valuable experiences and learning among each other and with other international allies that fight for preserving the rainforest, protecting human and indigenous rights, and fighting climate change.Challenge: strengthening the Learning Platform on the aspects of integration of data, data ownership, digital

security, and improving the way people can collaboratively develop and create content.Stichting KlimaatGesprekkenStichting KlimaatGesprekken turns climate-friendly choices into ‘the new normal’ by organizing workshops, training sessions, and masterclasses. They help individuals and organizations learn how to reduce their impact on the environment and talk about climate change.Challenge: due to Covid the foundation was forced to turn their workshop format into an online format that is equally efficient and attractive to join. How do they translate their learning and working models into online models and how do they create new online formats?

NatuurwijsNatuurWijs connects children with nature so that they respect and understand the natural environment. During their free-of-charge vacation tours’, groups of disadvantaged (primary school) city children get to

discover and experience nature in a playful way. This project aims to connect children with nature at an early age so that they grow up with love and a sense of responsibility for nature. The project has become high in demand, but the absence of a business model to cover expenses prevents the team from increasing their impact.Challenge: how can NatuurWijs make their successful concept “vacation Tours” available for a larger area through corporate sponsorships?The course of the Battle

Firstly, the team set out to promote the five challenges on Accenture’s do-good platform. Via the platform, five team leads and, later, four team members were recruited for each challenge.

In November 2020, the programme unofficially kicked off when the team leads met with the partners. The partners presented their challenges and in the weeks after the kick-off, the

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team leaders formed their teams.In January, the battle officially launched virtually. The teams got their first opportunity to present their approach to winning the Battle.

For two months, the teams were inspired by sessions on sustainability and learned the skills necessary to build a concrete business plan and create an engaging elevator pitch.

One of the highlights in these preparatory events was a deep dive into the HIVOS project All eyes on the Amazon. HIVOS shared inspiring stories and experiences from its organization in South America. Also, GoodUp facilitated a Storytelling workshop to prepare the teams for their pitches during the finale.

The solutions

IVN Tiny ForestUsing 144 hours, the Tiny forests

battle team conducted interviews, did validation sessions, and devised a roadmap that will enable IVN to implement their learning & community platform step by step. The platform can be extended on the way with additional functionalities to create a broader reach and fully support the tiny forests initiators. This will allow for future growth of the tiny forest concept.

CommonlandThe battle team spent over 200 hours creating a high-level roadmap and actionable first steps that Commonland can implement right away. The suggested approach promotes proper knowledge and information sharing with partners, which will enable these partners to embrace the Commonland methodology and kickstart/improve their landscape restoration efforts and results. This will be the foundation underneath the restoration of 100 landscapes in the next decade.

HivosVia multiple identification workshops, the battle team identified 45 initiatives for improvement, of which 22 were quick wins. The initiatives were prioritized leading to a step-by-step roadmap to improve user experience and security processes, increase the adoption rate and reduce risk. The most feasible initiatives can be picked up by Hivos starting tomorrow and be delivered within hours to days.Stichting KlimaatGesprekkenAfter several interviews with the KG climate coaches and participants and many workshops with the KG team, the battle team developed a “How-to-Guide for Online Climate Conversations” and revamped one of the offline games into an online game. KG will be able to use the game and the guide immediately.

NatuurWijsVia numerous conversations with the NatuurWijs team, as well

Winners of the accenture battle: IVN Tiny forest

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as NatuurWijs stakeholders and Accenture experts, the battle team created a tangible roadmap and checklist. With this, NatuurWijs will be able to find and select corporate partners within two clear scenarios.

The winnerAfter an intense pitch finale, a jury consisting of Irine Gaasbeek (Country Managing Director of Accenture the Netherlands), Geert Batterink (Accenture Foundation Board), Henk Jan Top (Accenture Foundation Board), Danka Oosterhof (Project Manager at the Dutch Sustainable Growth Coalition) and Marieke Harteveld (Global Strategist at WWF) chose the winner. They announced Tiny Forests as the winner of the Making a Difference Battle 2021. The prize for IVN Tiny Forest was to become the first full pro-bono partner of Accenture that focuses on SDG

15 (Life on Land). IVN and Accenture will collaborate to create an online platform that helps more people plant their own native forests. Besides the hundreds of hours of consultancy work, all the other partners received a cash donation.

The added benefitsThe battle was a success in terms of engagement rates, and Laura mentions several other benefits. For example, she noticed how the battle presents a huge opportunity for professional growth. “participants, particularly group leaders, get to work with our partners directly,” she says.“ This is something that is normally left

to more senior colleagues.” Also, people working across departments who would not normally meet, now collaborate on a topic that is close to their hearts. This presents a perfect opportunity to bond with new colleagues. “But the biggest highlight for me was that the energy just splashed off my screen during the live finale of the battle,” Laura says. “This is the feeling that we’re looking to create and spread throughout the organization. I was excited to learn that even from home, contributing to a good cause continues to deeply motivate people.”

Share the knowledgeWe hope you enjoyed reading this book! We had a great time collaborating and combining knowledge

from complementary viewpoints on the topic of CSR and purpose. We encourage you to share this

knowledge and we are always open to talk about new collaborations, so feel free to drop us an email

with your ideas at info@goodup.com.

Also, if you liked this ebook, stay updated on all news purpose related via:

Our Business Purpose Podcast

Our purpose enthusiast weekly

Our LinkedIn channel

Our purpose blog

Lastly, we want to thank Lester Isaac Simon, who’s leveraged his expertise as a writer to bring the

quality of this book to new heights. His purposeful contribution has been invaluable to the project.

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