Should we pay our interns?

I was listening to an interesting piece on the radio a few weeks back about internships on NPR. The piece talked about the importance of getting an internship for students hoping to get into good jobs after college. Not surprisingly, the more sought after the job field, the more competition there is for internships. And it is increasingly common that companies don’t pay interns. Of course, it can take quite an investment of time to get someone acclimated, linked-up and trained-up and then they go back to school just as they are performing effectively. And there are plenty of potential interns chasing even the unpaid positions so why is there a need to pay?

The journalist then went on to talk about the cost of going to school and how some students have to get paid work during the holidays or they cannot afford to be at school. Of course those are the students from less advantaged backgrounds. And so, unintentionally, unpaid internships perpetuate the economic divide. Students from more advantaged backgrounds can take internships that lead to the best jobs. Students from less advantaged backgrounds cannot afford to go for those internships and so are disadvantaged in applying for those jobs.

Corporate responsibility and sustainability are amongst the most sought after fields these days. I see unpaid internship positions advertised all the time. I have had students come up to me at conferences and offer to work for me as interns for free. It is a tough call. I have no budget for paying an intern, so it is that or nothing. Why deprive someone of the opportunity? But if removing barriers that discriminate against the economically disadvantaged is going to be recognized anywhere in the corporate world it would be from within the corporate responsibility field and it seems to me that unpaid internships are one of those barriers.

Breakfast Panel - Setting the Table for the National Broadband Plan

I have been invited to speak on a breakfast panel in DC on November 10 by BroadbandCensus.com. It is part of a series called, "Setting the Table for the National Broadband Plan." This one is on the environment. Other speakers include Jennifer Alcott, Telework!VA Program Manager and Steven Ruth, Professor, George Mason University School of Public Policy.

You can book via the eventbrite link at the top of the BroadbandCensus homepage. The link with a photo of eggs and bacon on a plate. If the panelists get to eat I guess I won’t be eating much :-)

Dilemmas in Corporate Responsibility – Privacy and Safety

In my mind, the most challenging issues for corporate responsibility officers involve conflicts between different CR priorities. In the ICT sector the tensions between privacy, freedom of speech and online safety is one of those issues.

Balancing these priorities can present real ethical dilemmas. Here are just a few of the dilemmas in this space that have been enhanced by the internet;

• How much privacy do you allow individuals on line - a battered woman seeking help needs to remain anonymous but what about an adult trying to engage in predatory online chats with children?
• In my eyes a private citizen battling the authorities in an oppressive regime deserves the protection afforded by privacy, but I don’t want someone battling with deadly weapons where I live. I might prefer we stopped them using the internet to enhance their plans.
• What level of access prevention is applicable for sites that are illegal, hateful or immoral?
• As a consumer, what components of information from my online activities can be used to select the advertising presented to me?

There are cultural differences to consider too. I think it is generally true that Europe (including the UK) puts a higher priority on online safety at the expense of privacy and freedom of speech. Whereas, relative to Europe, America tends to balance freedom of speech and privacy more highly.

Later this week I am attending the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI) conference in DC. FOSI (of which BT is a member) is one of the organizations that works with companies to consider these issues, exchange views and develop conclusions and solutions that balance the issues appropriately. FOSI’s focus is protecting kids and families on line. I attended last year and found the discussions important and fascinating – true ethical dilemmas. I plan to tweet from the conference this year so I can share my thoughts in real-time.

Guest Post: Johnson & Johnson

My October 13^th post Interpreting The Top Ten received a number of comments including from Jay Whitehead, publisher of CRO's ranking and from Chris Coulter who produces the Globescan report. I thought it would be interesting to hear from one of the companies that appears high in the rankings and Brian Boyd, VP of Environmental Affairs at Johnson & Johnson (3rd in Newsweek rankings) kindly shares his thoughts on the topic in this guest post.

Just being realistic, can anyone think of a more complex and all-encompassing “business issue” (and so deftly expressed in one simple word) than the concept we now know as “sustainability”? I can’t.

So it’s no surprise to me that “how we measure it” is going to evolve and vary. As a sustainability practitioner in a company that has been measured, ranked and rated for many years, you learn early that chasing ratings and points is a bit of the tail wagging the dog. While I agree it’s far more pleasant to come out near the top of any ranking vs. the bottom, the key is in how we use them. I find sustainability rankings to be quite helpful for tracking business trends, understanding stakeholder expectations, and gaining access to inventories of the latest sustainable business practices….all of which are fundamental to informing any business strategy. But given the demands of creating, aligning, measuring, and improving sustainability strategy and metrics in a large global company, reacting to “ranking volatility” just isn’t possible. So we view them as one of many important inputs to future strategy.

As for trying to reconcile the myriad sustainability rankings with each other, I don’t think that’s possible either. There are so many, each with its unique purpose and proprietary angle, many in competition with each other, it doesn’t seem likely that standardization or equivalence is anywhere near on the horizon. So for now, we’ll keep trying our best to set good business strategy, sustain strong performance …..and hopefully the good rankings will follow.

Brian Boyd is Vice President, Worldwide Environment, Health & Safety at Johnson & Johnson. Brian joined Johnson & Johnson at McNeil Consumer & Specialty Pharmaceuticals in 1990, where he progressed to become Manager of Environmental Engineering. In 1997 he was promoted to Manager, Engineering, for the McNeil Las Piedras manufacturing plant where he led the plant launch team for MOTRIN production.

Brian joined Worldwide Environmental Affairs in 1999 as Director where he was instrumental in the development of the global environmental dashboard, external manufacturing and supplier programs, the MAARS process and in supporting all of our business groups. He was promoted to VP, Worldwide Environment, Health & Safety in November, 2003.

Social Media Impacts Corporate Responsibility

I was reading the first edition of the In Context Bulletin, a quarterly newsletter on corporate sustainability. In the latest issue, a topic close to my interests caught my attention. The article was focused on social media and how these web tools can better target your corporate sustainability messages.

Personally, I thought the article missed the true value of blogging and how it can impact corporate responsibility. I posted a response on the In Context blog expressing my thoughts.

The world of corporate communications is changing. There used to be a clear line of demarcation between the individual as an executive communicating a corporate message and the individual as a private citizen exchanging personal views. Corporate communications that represent the company position tend to be one too many. Private citizen communications are two-way but limited to very small audiences.

With internet tools and blogging especially, there is a significant blurring of these two options that I see will bring great value to corporations and to corporate responsibility.

In fact, I have written a couple pieces on why I personally blog and tweet.

The internet and social media tools that are now available act as an equalizer for individuals to voice their thoughts. These tools also allow executives in large organizations to share their personal views and become connected with their stakeholders.

Having a company blog open to comments from readers helps in some way show the importance of weighing differing viewpoints directed toward that company. When a business executive can truly express his or her views, blogging provides a strong foundation for individual accountability. And through opening him or herself up to a more personal connection with readers I believe the executive blogger (CR practitioner or otherwise) creates an environment in which the views of their external stakeholders are front of mind in their decision-making.

Blogging as a communications tool for CR practitioners is interesting, but blogging as a mechanism to bridge the gap between company executives and stakeholders is a compelling route to ever-improving corporate responsibility.

I’d be interested in hearing your take on the impact of social media on corporate responsibility. Why do you participate in social media and what impact has it had so far?

IT – Still Missing the Big Opportunity

With the exception of teleconferencing as a substitute for travel, the recognition by IT practitioners of the value they can bring to the overall improvement in environmental performance of company they serve is woefully short.

This is my fourth and last post adding my personal thoughts on the results of a survey of IT Professionals on Green IT that BT conducted in June 2009. The full results came out in September.

Previous posts commented on employee attitudes and action and on the impact of ROI on Green IT.

Respondents to the survey identified participation in activities such as disposal of electronic equipment, recycling, energy star, consolidation and virtualization, in the order of 70% to almost 90%. But as the attached graph shows, with the exception of teleconferencing, other more strategic contributions to the wider energy efficiency of their organizations are only reported to be in the range of 15% to 35%. This is the equivalent of seeing the cost IT incurs for the company, but missing the value proposition of IT.

(click the image for a larger view, hit 'back' in your browser to return)


Listed in the left column of my blog under the heading “ICTs Carbon Footprint” are many of the reports written on the potential of ICT to reduce carbon emissions. Even the most cautious of these, SMART 2020, identifies the carbon reduction ‘opportunity’ of implementing ICT solutions to be five times bigger than the ‘burden’ of the whole ICT sector. Other reports identify much higher leveraged benefit.

I think that IT departments and folks within those departments with an environmental appreciation are still missing an opportunity to position themselves and their functions as of strategic value to the company’s environmental footprint reduction efforts, rather than as an energy burden that needs to be reduced at all cost.

I am at BSR but the Real Sustainability News is at Supercomm

I am at BSR in San Francisco. Shortly I am speaking on a panel about sustainability engagement. My topic is employee engagement and one of my points is that for effective employee engagement you need visible senior management support.

At the same time as BSR, Supercomm09 is happening in Chicago. Supercomm is an international event for broadband communication providers, carriers and vendors. Thousands of people attend from the ICT sector.

In one of the sessions, five leaders in the telecom industry were asked on the SUPERCOMM stage what technology they would invest in today if money and budget were not an issue. These are technical guys (CTO, CIO, VP of networks etc). According to XChange Magazine, two of them, BT’s George Nazi and Sprint's Matthew Oommen presented ideas about clean energy and energy efficiency as their wishes.

This is the sort of visible leadership I am going to be referring to when I speak this morning. It lays the groundwork for effective employee engagement.

Of course speakers at BSR will address issues of social, economic and environmental sustainability. But the real news, and evidence of good progress, is when two of five senior business speakers on a technical panel at a regular trade conference put green issues at the top of their wish list.