CSR from a traditional job - Career advice from the trenches

Responsible Careers: As an aspiring CSR professional, you might be looking for examples of professionals who successfully launched CSR initiatives while not being employed in the CSR department of a company.  These success stories can provide you with career advice and concrete examples of projects that you could try to implement in your current position.  Past profiles featured in the series included:

Betsy Hansen: a Marketing professional, was able to change how Sun Microsystems was planning and promoting events. Her initiatives had tremendous results in terms of environmental impact (as well as cost savings).

Hamlin Metzger created his own position as Senior CSR Manager at Best Buy through his ability to successfully influence others to integrate social and environmental responsibility into their projects.

Hilary Sinclair:  As a process improvement manager, Hilary gathered insights from colleagues and used these insights to create a Green Team initiative at the eBay offices in Vancouver.

All these stories illustrated that driving socio-eco innovation can in fact save money to your company.   Another approach is to build a strong corporate culture and reputation by engaging employees in projects that serve their local community.  Seth Marbin, Jennifer Chin, and Ramin Taleghan achieved through their GoogleServe program.  Let's further explore what career advice can be derived from this case study, which was published the Net Impact Impact At Work Brochure.

Career Advice #1: Find like-minded individuals - Seth Marbin, an AmeriCorps alumnus, knew what powerful impact volunteers can have on their local community.  He had an idea, but didn't know how to bring it to life.  To test the waters, Seth posted his idea of engaging Googlers in community service in their local community on the internal idea marketplace.  By doing so, Seth was able to quickly realize that not only it was a good idea, but that many Googlers wanted to get involved.  By leveraging internal communication platforms, Seth was able to partner with employees that he would have been very unlikely to meet otherwise.  The number of employees interested in participating also make it easier to demonstrate the value proposition of the GoogleServe idea to key members of Google's executive team.

Career Advice #2: Position the project as a pilot - A key to success for GoogleServe was to position its first iteration as a pilot project.  Perception is reality, and pilot projects just seem more transient (and less risky) than full-blown program proposals. Furthermore, people are more comfortable with 'learning as you go' approaches when they are used in pilot projects than when they are proposed as a strategy for new programs.  This also encourage other people to set up and propose new and innovative ideas that might make the program even better.

Career Advice #3: Let other co-create the program - As a team Seth Marbin, Jennifer Chin, and Ramin Taleghan engaged Googlers to participate in a week-long volunteering program.  But how could they manage local community projects with offices all around the globe?  They did not.  Instead, they provided information about the goals of GoogleServe (i.e. volunteer to make your local community a better place), but left each local team with the flexibility of defining that would each project look like.  They also provided a training module to help local team leaders formulate their project and engage their local team.  As a result, 3,000 Google employees across 45 offices participated in a variety of projects worldwide.  Projects included planting trees in Palo Alto, cleaning a local beach in Haifa, and providing youth education programs around environmental issues in Poland.

GoogleServe has grown from its first iteration into a second iteration in the summer of 2009 that included 5,000 Googlers from 60 offices around the world. Participating in GoogleServe might also have benefits to both employees and Google. Indeed, as the 2003 'Good Companies, Better Employees' report by Tuffrey demonstrates, employees that participate in company-sponsored community service are more likely to recommend their employer as a good place to work.  In addition, employees reported higher level of job satisfaction.  Higher retention rates as well as higher reputation ratings are also observed for companies that offer company-sponsored volunteering opportunities to their employees.  This is good data for you to include in your next pilot project proposal!

What other pieces of career advice do you have for aspiring CSR professionals or SEIs? I look forward to reading your comments and questions!