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The Power of a Community-Minded Approach to Business 

Jun 21, 2017 07:26 PM

For the third consecutive year, Symantec has been recognized by Points of Light, the world’s largest organization dedicated to volunteer service, as one of the most community-minded companies in the United States. The Civic 50 provides a national standard for superior corporate citizenship and showcases how companies can use their time, skills and other resources to improve the quality of life in the communities where they do business.

As the leader of global Corporate Responsibility (CR) at Symantec, our team continually thinks about the approaches and opportunities to maximize our benefit to society; how we can take the actions and make the commitments that inspire, ignite and unite our employees, customers, business and society as a whole.

As I highlighted in a recent article, the definition of a business’ responsibility to communities is expanding. Today leaders in community engagement and CR recognize that everyone benefits when business looks at its responsibility to serve communities not as what can “I” - the business – do, but what can “we” do – viewing businesses as part of a much larger network that has the potential to create impact. For example, viewing the company as a collection of thousands of individuals (e.g. employees), as part of an industry made up of thousands of companies, as part of a broader business community, all of which together have the power to bring awareness to and significantly impact community issues. When we look at our potential to benefit society from this perspective, community engagement becomes a value driver in many ways. For example, at Symantec:

  • We hold ourselves to the highest standards, designing ethically-sound programs that are integrated into our business, delivering benefits to all of our constituents—from our customers to our shareholders to the world at large. We have developed a community investment strategy that is based on focus areas aligned with our key business priorities and objectives including: science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education and equal access to education, diversity, online safety and environmental responsibility.

Our signature CR program, the Symantec Cyber Career Connection (SC3), was launched in 2014 and is a collaborative effort leveraging the expertise and resources of Symantec (as a world-leading cybersecurity provider), nonprofit partners (with their tried and tested programs in skills development and job placement) and our customers and partners (who provide mentoring, internships, job placement) to address the global cybersecurity workforce gap.  

Additionally, through our software donation program executed with TechSoup, in FY16 we donated $20.8 million of software (retail value) to 22,796 nonprofits across 55 countries, so they could focus on their mission and worry less about the security of their information.

  • Our investment in the community is driven in large part by the passion of individuals. We believe in the power each employee to make a difference and together—from our Green Teams to community relations committees to local volunteer programs—our actions empower each other and communities in new and innovative ways. In FY16, we logged more than 28K volunteer hours of employee volunteer time. This amount equals 2.5 hours for each of the 11,430 employees with whom we ended the year.

From mentoring students in STEM and professionals in our SC3 program to helping resource strapped nonprofits protect their organizations to advocating for a fair and equal industry, Symantec’s philanthropic activities provide our employees with meaningful ways to put their skills to use and to grow professionally.

  • While the drive of individuals is key, we also recognize that providing the platforms and policies to support community giving helps engage individuals and strengthen our efforts. Through our Take 5! initiative we challenge employees to offer at least five hours of service each year, through our Dollars for Doers program employees can donate money for time volunteered and double (or even triple) this through our Matching Gifts policy, and our Global Service Week encourages all employees to come together for one week of service each year. Through philanthropy and community engagement, we connect the world to Symantec, helping our customers and partners understand who we are and what we stand for, driving trust and confidence in Symantec’s business and products.

It is an honor to be recognized for the third consecutive year as a leader in community engagement alongside the United States’ and our world’s top companies. We are all proving that doing good is good business and the extended impact of hands-on support as well as financial contributions. For example, Civic 50 honorees use community engagement to drive key business functions, including employee engagement (88 percent), diversity and inclusion (84 percent), marketing and PR (84 percent), and skill development (72 percent). Demonstrating that ultimately we are all part of one community, and helping each other by strengthening the communities in which we live and work, can only help ourselves, our businesses, and our industries.

The Civic 50 winners are public and private companies with U.S. operations and revenues of $1 billion or more, and are selected based on four dimensions of their U.S. community engagement program: investment, integration, institutionalization, and impact. The Civic 50 survey was administered by True Impact, a company specializing in helping organizations maximize and measure their social and business value. The survey instrument consists of quantitative and multiple-choice questions that inform the Civic 50 scoring process. The Civic 50 is the only survey and ranking system that exclusively measures corporate involvement in communities.

To learn more about The Civic 50, to see a full list of the winners and to access the highlights, trends, benchmarking data and best practices from the 2017 Civic 50, please visit www.Civic50.org

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