While I was interviewing for my current role, one of the
most intriguing portion of the job description was getting Samsung’s Community
Involvement Committee put together. Several years earlier, our PR director put
a small CIC together, but the group mainly consisted of people who were appointed
to the position and didn’t care about it. They also didn’t really do much: they
went to DFW to greet the troops and held coat drives in the winter. About a
year after it was formed, it fizzled out. It then became my former boss’ pet
project, and he was determined to get it off the ground again. This is a
conversation I had with him, we’ll call him SP, and a member of the current
CIC, we’ll call her CC, about why corporate social responsibility is so
important to a company. SP was the senior director of human resources for
Samsung Mobile for seven years, and CC has been in PR at Samsung Mobile for
about four.
First I want to give you some background. Samsung’s worldwide
CSR platform is divided up into two umbrellas: region-wide (in my case, North America)
and subsidiary wide (in my case, Samsung Mobile). Region-wide, we have the NAHQ
CSR Council. It is responsible for big events, like a multi-million dollar
charity ball every year. They also work with schools across the country to fund
certain programs, especially in the software engineering field. Subsidiaries
are also responsible for CSR on a local level. My subsidiary has the Community
Involvement Committee; we are responsible for ensuring our employees are making
a difference in the communities where we live and work. We have three offices
in the Dallas area, and regional office sites in the Seattle area, San Jose,
Kansas City area, Atlanta, Herndon, VA and Bridgewater, NJ. We have home-based
employees who are expected to give back as well.
LM: SP, when I was interviewing for my job, you kept
mentioning the CIC. Why were you so passionate about it?
SP: Well, at the time, we only had Habitat [for Humanity].
That was good, but it wasn’t enough. We needed something to keep our employee
engaged and active the rest of the year, not just a few months in the fall.
LM: But if the CIC had failed once before, why did you think
it would work this time?
SP: It failed because it didn’t have the right people behind
it. [The PR director] was too busy with his daily fire drills, and most of the
other members were admins who were appointed to the committee. It started off
pretty strong and they had people behind them, but after a while, employees
stopped believing in what they were doing.
LM: When I started here, I got the committee up and running
in just a matter of months. We’ve sponsored more than 50 events in every
regional office site across the country and have engaged more than 500
employees. What’s different?
SP: A few things. First, the approach. Before you even
formed the committee, you communicated to the employees Samsung’s CSR beliefs. You
were able to associate [Samsung’s core value of] co-prosperity into all of your
communications and you branded the committee well. Second, you’re involving the
employees. One thing we did before you started was we looked at our [annual employee
satisfaction survey] results about what employees think about ways we give back
to the community. It sucked! We rated so low on that question that we knew
something had to change. You engaged the right people at the right time and
have been able to make a difference.
LM: CC, you are on the Samsung North American CSR council. How
important is CSR from a Samsung-wide perspective?
CC: Well like SP said, co-prosperity is king. We have to
engrain our values into our employees’ daily lives, or otherwise they won’t
believe in what we’re doing, they won’t buy into our programs and they won’t
trust what we tell them.
LM: Can you talk about some of the big Samsung-wide CSR
initiatives?
CC: The biggest initiative we have is called Hope for
Children, and it was started in the NAHQ CSR Council. It has grown since we
started it a few years ago from a smallish giving back to schools, but now it’s
the big, fancy ball every year in New York City with celebrities and football
players and media attention. Regis Philbin, Jennifer Lopez, Dan Marino and
Matthew McConaughey are always there and we have donated millions and millions
of dollars to their foundations over the years. We also have the Samsung Solve
for Tomorrow program, where we recognize one school every year in its measures
to incorporate technology into the classroom. We also partner with schools
across the country throughout the year to improve their engineering programs
and get students interested in that field. The overall Hope for Children
initiative focuses on education, health and green practices.
LM: CSR is a cultural thing. We are a very diverse company,
so how do you think we are able to appeal to everybody in what we do?
CC: As far as the CIC goes, the fact that the employees are
telling us what they want to do is how we appeal to them. Look at the race we
did last weekend. There were people from R&D, sales, marketing, finance,
legal, everywhere who came out to run. The Korean buy-in is also very important
because it shows our leaders that our employees are active. As [our president]
says, it’s not true volunteering if it’s on company time. You’ve got to go out
on your own time for it to be truly giving back.
LM: Thank you both so much for your time today!
Hi Lauren,
ReplyDeleteThis was very interesting. I didn't know Samsung had this cool program. How did they choose this particular cause to support? Are employees required to volunteer for/support it, and if they don't, is there any backlash? I ask because of the statement, "it's not true volunteering if it's on company time." When I worked for Reed Business Information, we could take three "volunteer days" off a year to work with a cause that was important to us. They encouraged employees to do this during work hours and it did not come out of accrued PTO. Thinking back, this was one of Reed's ways of participating in CSR. They could show that X number of employees voulunteered, basically on their dime. Truth be told, I really dislike voluneering, and would most likely resent it if my company suggested that I volunteer on my own time. Incidentally, I did not use my "volunteer days" while at Reed. This does not mean I'm cold or don't care. To support a cause, I'd rather donate money or educate others about it through networking. In fact, I worked for years at a non-profit that supports a mission I'm very passionate about. Anyway, thank you so much for sharing this and for reading my thoughts.
Yes, it's a great program that we have. One word that describes my company's culture is humble, and because of that we don't go on bragging and boasting about what we've done, CSR wise. Employees are not required to volunteer, but during our annual Habitat build, each department is assigned two dates to come out and build. Some departments are notorious for not showing up, while others (our R&D team, especially) has bailed us out so many times when those groups fail to send people. We've tried getting even one afternoon a week for our teams to go out and build on the house, but our president won't allow it. Yes, it's on the company's dime, but it's not on your own time. And I think there is HUGE difference between sending in a check and sending in a body to do some work. Donating money is easy--all it takes is going to a Web site and typing in your credit card info. Donating your time is completely different, and when you're finished with your good deed for the day, you leave feeling so much better. As one of the guys on my committee said one time, "we're an involvement committee, not a check-writing committee." I think there is a lot of merit behind that.
DeleteOn a side note, I think volunteering is a generational thing. I volunteer because of my mom. My mom volunteers because of my her mom, and so on. We go to a safari camp in South Africa every couple of years, and we have formed a really strong bond with our driver. He's from one of the towns near the camp, and with my dad's help he was able to set up a foundation for the kids in his home town. With donations and volunteer help, they were able to send about 20 kids to the nearest town (about 3 hours away) to see a movie, use indoor restrooms, eat popcorn for the first time and see another part of the world--even though it's not far away from their homes--that they might not have gotten to see otherwise. It's wonderful, and I'm so proud knowing I had a hand it that.
Nice interview, Lauren. The reading mentioned 'embeddedness' a few times this week. Do you think CSR is embedded in your company's values now? What are some ways to accomplish this? The Economist reading also mentioned that different countries have different views of CSR. Because yours is a multinational organization, is CSR being implemented the same way by the offices abroad?
ReplyDeleteAs much as I would love to say yes, I think we still have a long way to go. As I mentioned in my response to Lisa, I think volunteering and that mindset is a generational thing. I also think it's cultural. Even though about half of my subsidiary's population is Korean, we don't see them out at events very often. The ones we do see are young and have done a very good job of integrating into the American culture.
DeleteI can't say definitively if CSR is being implemented the same way in all of our other offices. I know our offices in SE Asia build schools, our African subs have helped revamp a lot of the schools all over the continent and they even just donated a load of computers whose batteries are solar charged. Last year when the earthquake and tsunami hit Japan, some of our crews from HQ hopped across the water and helped clean up. When the horrific wildfires in Texas were going on not too long ago, some of our employees from our Austin semiconductor plant had their homes burn to the ground. That sub took up collections and anything else to help those families get their feet back on the ground.
On our employee satisfaction survey, the question pertaining to whether or not we make a difference in our communities shot way up this year. The biggest leap it made was in people ages 25-34. I think as more people in this age range come into my company - well, every company for that matter - CSR is going to be more and more important.