Virtual Technology

Team Virtual Technology Presentation from William Allen

Excerpt from Keurig Sustainability report

Keurig Green Mountain Inc. Sustainability Audit
By: William Allen, Alicia Anderson, Brandi Borman, Patrick Dupuis, Ariel Jackson, Steven Morton,
Melissa Strle

Keurig Green Mountain Inc. has come a long way from its humble beginnings in 1981 as a small specialty coffee store in Vermont, USA. The company was originally called Green Mountain Coffee but then transitioned into Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Inc. In 1993, two engineers approached Green Mountain Coffee Roasters to invest in a single cup brewing system, and Keurig was born (Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, n.d.). An initial public offering was completed in September of 1993. In 1997, Keurig became the first to offer coffee in a K-Cup portion pack for the Keurig Single-Cup Brewing System. In 1998, the first single cup coffee brewer for offices was delivered (Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, n.d.). Since then, the company has experienced tremendous growth.

In 1995, net sales were $34 million but increased to $84 million in 2000 and then to $224 million in 2006 (Keurig Green Mountain Sustainability Report, 2014). In 2010, net sales further grew to $1.36 billion and went on to reach enormous volumes with net sales of $4.71 billion in 2014 (Keurig Green Mountain Sustainability Report, 2014). To reach this level of growth, Keurig utilizes strategic partnerships with 80 coffee brands allowing for 575 hot and cold beverage varieties for its brewing system (Keurig Green Mountain Sustainability Report, 2014). Keurig primarily operates within North America and has established facilities in six U.S. states. Its principle Canadian office is in Montreal, Quebec where Keurig’s management team, coffee roasters, and packaging plants are located (“Keurig Green Mountain,” 2015). As the company has expanded in sales and profit, Keurig’s commitment to sustainability increased as well. 

Interestingly, two of Keurig’s corporate values are “We play to win” and “We brew a better world” (“Keurig Green Mountain,”2015). It is important for major companies to recognize the importance and value of a strong business case for sustainability. Berns et al. (2009) determined after reviewing facts and identifying a strong business case, leading companies will publicly commit to ambitious sustainability goals, demonstrating that investment in sustainability leads to strong business results. Keurig’s website indicates it is using the power of business to brew a better world through building resilient supply chains, sustainable products, thriving communities, and a water-secure world (“Keurig Green Mountain,” 2015). Keurig identifies both a solid business foundation in combination with sustainable values to justify its goal of having a positive impact on the world.

An analysis of six sustainability dimensions at Keurig Green Mountain Inc. was audited to provide an overview of the strengths and weaknesses of current sustainability practices at the company. The sustainability dimensions analyzed include corporate governance, environment, social and cultural, economic, technology, and community engagement. To determine Keurig’s overall sustainability rating, the individual dimension ratings and rationale of sustainability practices at Keurig’s are also provided.

For the complete report click here

Empathy Can Not be Taught!

The reason is simply if we were to take a test before the class started, everyone would already know the answers.

Empathy in the Workplace

Is the lack of empathy affecting the quality of work or services in your organization?

In a recent conversation about things which could affect the quality of work for customer service based organizations, the idea of a lack of empathy being the cause was suggested. This might seem like a stretch, but it got me thinking, how much does empathy affect customer service, especially the quality of service?

First, let’s revisit the meaning of empathy;

From the University of California at Berkley’s Greater Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life explains empathy is “the ability to sense other people’s emotions, coupled with the ability to imagine what someone else might be thinking or feeling.”

From the online Webster dictionary, “understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of others”

Empathy can be an important characteristic for anyone working in a customer based industry, as it allows an employee to truly see and sense how the customer is feeling, basically understanding how important something is to that customer, and how it affects them. Since I’m a Medical laboratory technologist, I believe empathy plays a large role in the quality of work lab techs perform.  Most lab techs don’t have the opportunity to interact with patients; however, we need to understand the work we perform on patient samples are ultimately for that patient, not the Doctors and Nurses, which technically makes the patient the customer.  

Without empathy, those providing the service may not be as willing to go above and beyond to satisfy customer needs/wants, or in the case of patient samples, maybe a technologist would be too quick to request repeat samples or do everything possible to ensure turn-around-time benchmarks are met. By feeling empathy, service providers would be more engaged in their work, realizing there is someone connected to that work, particularly in a healthcare setting, anything which can be done should be done.

According to Marsha Collier (@MarshaCollier, an author, radio personality and an educator specializing in technology and inspiring business), the ” Most essential qualities for a customer service rep” are;

1. Empathy

2. Patience

3. Sense of humor

4. Power to fix issues

Empathy being the most important of these items, allows service providers to truly understand what the customer’s concerns are, how they are feeling, and gives them the sense which empowers them to want to do all they can to help.  

How does it improve customer service?

When employees demonstrate empathy, customers will have a better experience, and employees achieve better results, especially working as a team. When it comes to dealing with customer complaints and concerns, most people tend to want to just say sorry for the inconvenience and provide discounts or other items such as gift cards. However, what customers want more than anything else, they want to be understood, which is simply and inexpensive, we simply show empathy.

Can we teach empathy?

With all the continuing education, many organizations and professionals complete nowadays, we as a society are seeing less empathy, lower quality customer service, even though there is an increase in knowledge and competencies.

If we ask people in your organization how important showing customers empathy is, they would already know the correct answers. Training sessions often include handling of customer service issues and how empathy should play a part in treating customers they way the need to be. The part of this which doesn’t make sense is if we fast forward to the end of the training session, the employees didn’t really learn anything helpful as the already knew how customers should be treated. Can we really tell someone how to feel? It's like telling an employee at the Louvre museum they need to have more passion and love for the Mona Lisa more. It's just not possible to tell someone or train someone how to feel.

PJ Manney (2008), wrote an article “Empathy in the Time of Technology: How Storytelling is the Key to Empathy." In which he describes how storytelling is extremely important in developing empathy. He goes on to point out how empathy has slowly decreased over the decades and how this closely correlates with fewer people reading books nowadays. We all know that good book which instilled feelings which closely mirrored what the characters were going through and feeling, or how about the chick flick (for lack of a better word) which also created strong feelings. This is where empathy comes from.

If empathy is best and most effectively developed by either reading or watching stories, then why is it the primary method for organizations to “teach” empathy is training sessions or maybe online courses? If this is the case an hour-long training session is going to do very little to teach someone empathy. An organization would get far more impact by providing a required book club where employees would read a selected book and instead of training sessions, the organization holds simply meetings to discuss theses books.

Over the last decade, there has been a strong push to further knowledge and competencies which we find now includes our personal time being used for such activities. Organizations believe this has a great benefit to professionals, customer service, and to the bottom line. However, this seems to be having the opposite effect. We need to get back to activates which promote empathy. We need to slow down, take in a book or two and give back some of our personal time to activities which promote a better sense of well-being and empathy will follow. 

Would like to know your thoughts on empathy, please leave a comment below. 

References

Goh, Gareth. 2015. "Empathy: The Must-Have Skill for All Customer Service Reps." http://www.insightsquared.com/2015/02/empathy-the-must-have-skill-for-all-customer-service-reps/.

Manney, PJ. 2008. "Empathy in the Time of Technology: How Storytelling is the Key to Empathy." Journal of Evolution and Technology (http://jetpress.org/v19/manney.htm) 19 (1): 51-61. http://jetpress.org/v19/manney.htm.

Together we can achieve anything

We often can't see the solution to a problem due to our attitude to that problem.  It's not the problem which causes the issues, but rather our attitude. We need to keep an open mind and explore all options. When we work as a team amazing things can happen. 

Tips for solving problems. 

• Utilize effective brain storming 
• Actively listen to all members of the team
• Don't reject any idea until these questions are seriously asked. "Why won't this idea work, why will this idea work?"
• Remember big things happen when everyone works together. 
• Keep everyone engaged. 

Corporate Social Responsibility

Cause-Related Marketing and Strategic Philanthropy

The main similarity between cause-related marketing and strategic philanthropy is they both benefit the public and the organization through corporate social responsibility (CSR). According to Saraf, V., Singhai, S., & Payasi, S. (2012), CSR benefits the organization in two ways; “reducing the negative effects…caused by the processes and product usage”, and “increasing the positive contributions” from within the organization. Rick and Williams, (2005) describe philanthropy as historically being an individual’s contributions to society rather than an organization. Companies primarily practiced cause-related marketing prior to the 1950’s. Since then companies have realized there are great benefits to involving others within the organization with their CSR activities.

According to Ferrell, O. Thorne, D. & Ferrell, L (2010), cause-related marketing and strategic philanthropy can be compared utilizing 5 different categories: focus, goals, time frame, organizational members involved, and cost. (p. 350).  Cause-related marketing generally involves one product, for example, MacDonald’s donating ten cents for every happy meal purchased; this primarily involves the marketing department. The main benefit to this approach is the advertising and increase in sales as consumers see a portion of their money going to a good cause. Strategic philanthropy is an organization-wide effort which involves the financial support and/or employee volunteer time. Employees tend to be involved and help out the cause, for example, Wal-Mart associates raising funds for the IWK which is then matched by Wal-Mart home office. As Rick and Williams reason “a company cannot survive in a sick community; therefore, companies that spend a portion of their resources to address social problems are helping secure their own long-term survival” (as cited in Spence & Thomson, 2009, p. 372). Both cause-related marketing and strategic philanthropy provide an organization with the CSR society demands of them.

References

Brill, B. (2009), Tis the season for strategic corporate philanthropy. Crain's Chicago Business,      32(50), 14.  

Ferrell, O. Thorne, D. & Ferrell, L (2010), Social Responsibility and Business, Chapter 9, pg. 350

Ricks, J. & Williams, J. (2005), Strategic corporate philanthropy: addressing the frontline talent needs through an educational giving program. Journal of Business Ethics, 60:2,   147–157

Saraf, V., Singhai, S. &  Payasi, S. (2012). Corporate Social Responsibility: Building Brand and Linking Corporate Strategy with Philanthropy. BVIMR Management Edge, 5(2), 88- 97.

Spence, C. & Thomson, I. (2009), Resonance tropes in corporate philanthropy discourse.          Business Ethics: A European Review, 18(4), 372-388. doi:10.1111/j.1467- 8608.2009.01570.x

What does it mean to be Sustainable?

Many organizations are starting to realize they need to do more than just go “green”. When someone talks about going green they are usually concerned with only the environment, and this determines the path they take while conducting their business. As Werbach (2009) pointed out after the effects of hurricane Katrina in the introduction of our text Strategy for Sustainability, we need to do more than fight for the environment. True sustainability needs to include not only environment but also;

·       Social

o   Anything which affects all levels of society

·       Culture

o   Embracing culture diversity

·       Economic

o   How will everyone (and corporations) obtain what they need, not just financially but food, water, and security

As werbach goes on to point out, Katrina would have probably not been as devastating if government, organizations, and individuals had addressed all of the above points. For example, wetlands had been drastically reduced over the past several decades which resulted in less water retention. A situation which could have been prevented if organization helped to address this as opposed to leaving it up to government and environmentalists.

In Saint John New Brunswick there is a plan to build a new sports complex in an area which has marshlands and the area tends to flood very easily. Part of the proposal needs to include an on-site reservoir which will have the capacity to retain all the rain water run off for a couple of days. This reservoir will slowly empty into the cities rainwater runoff. Their plan is to build a green space, a park with a lake. If all organizations did something like this, flooding could be reduced, which would help with environmental, social, culture and economic issues.

References:

Werbach, Adam. (2009). Strategy for Sustainability: A Business Manifesto. Boston: Harvard Business Press. ISBN: 978-1-4221-7770-9

Improving Employee Performance with Benifits

Do benefits impact performance? 

The main point of benefits is “to improve the quality of the work lives and personal lives of employees” (Belcourt, Singh, Bohlander, & Snell, 2014, p. 390). Benefits such as paid vacation, medical, dental, sick leave, etc. all play a part in contributing to people’s lives. These, of course, are the basics which allow employees to know how these types of expenses will be covered, this alone can remove a great deal of stress as items such as medical, prescriptions, dental are expenses often unexpected, especially medical if living in a country without universal healthcare. With so many companies looking for ways to cut expenses, benefits are often an easy target, and if the employees feel the benefits could be cut, or even linked to performance, this could push them to put in more effort on the job.

In an unionized environment, benefits often put everyone on an even playing field regardless of benefits. However, in an un-unionized workplace, benefits such as pay increases and time off are items which could be offered for performance, which would help definitely help drive employees to work harder.

In a survey showing “lifestyle/family care benefits impact employee performance” (Filangieri, 2015), one of the questions ask how family-related benefits affected performance, “35% think a lack of benefits related to family assistance has negatively impacted their work performance. This rises to 41% of those with children.” (Filangieri, 2015). The survey also lists the top benefits which would help improve performance, these five are;

·       Backup child care

·       Discounted care/reimbursement for care

·       Help hiring a housekeeper

·       Help finding reliable child care

·       Long-term or tailored senior-care planning

Why are companies moving away from defined benefit plans?

As mentioned above, benefits are an easy target when companies need to make cut backs. Benefits are becoming more expensive, whether its time off, childcare, medical, etc. and paying for the same benefits clear across the board for all employees regardless if they are used can not only cost but do very little to improve performance. By allowing employees to pick and choose their own benefits can be a win/win for everyone. The employee gets what they need and/or would use while the employer receives a reduction in the cost of insurance, as well as increased performance as the employee in receive the benefits catered to them.

References

Belcourt, M., Singh, P., Bohlander, G., and Snell, S. (2014). Managing Human Resources. Toronto, ON, Nelson education.

Filangieri, R. (2015, September 22). Survey shows lifestyle/family care benefits impact employee performance. Retrieved from BCG Advisors: http://www.bcgadvisors.com/survey-shows-lifestylefamily-care-benefits-impact-employee-performance/