Look up from your desk. How many computer terminals can you see? One of your own desk, probably, with dozens more in adjacent offices. Hard to imagine, then, a workplace without PCs. Just 15 years ago, the IBM PC did not exist. Thirty years ago mainframe computers were a novelty. This transformation of the world as we knew it is caused by companies like IBM. And now, with the coming together of information technology and telecommunications, we can see an even more dramatic revolution underway.
For some companies, corporate social responsibility need only involve making a modest community contribution, as part of society. For a company like IBM, the concern must be the consequences of the wholesale transformation wrought upon society by its products and services. Who risks loosing out? What can be done? Will marginal groups become even more marginalised, a permanently excluded underclass?
Programme rationale
So IBM’s long association with corporate social responsibility goes beyond the usual arguments that the community is an important stakeholder in the business and the company has a responsibility, even a duty, to use its assets to make a difference. Its community programme explicitly aims to achieve big things: “to use IBM’s people and technology in strategic solutions to systemic problems”. This means tackling the underlying issues, not offering sticking plaster solutions. It means thinking globally, not parochially. It means achieving step changes, not incremental amelioration. And all this when the whole industry is in constant flux and IBM itself has reported losses although it is now back into profit.
In the UK, its total annual community contribution is valued at ?1.1 million, around half in cash, the rest a mixture of time, equipment and services. This contribution has recently been sustained at a stable level despite the difficulties in the business. However it is substantially down on the peak at the end of the 1980s, when the contribution exceeded ?4 million. World-wide, the community contribution peaked at 6148 million in 1990, but even the current level of 665 million (694 million if donated equipment was valued at market prices not cost) keeps IBM among top three or four global corporate donors.
The four main strands of IBM’s UK programme are:
– education and training;
– reduction of social disadvantage;
– volunteering, particularly employee community involvement;
– voluntary sector management training.
Today the predominant common theme running through the programme is combating social disadvantage through information technology. Traditionally, however, IBM has been best known for its emphasis on employee involvement.
Employee involvement
Many in the voluntary sector remember the informal ‘ten per cent’ guideline whereby IBM staff can take up to one tenth of the working week, subject to business demands, on not-for-profit public service. This still exists, but today “business demands” are proving rather more pressing than before: there are 9,500 full time employees now in the UK (13,700 if part-timers, temps and those on short term contracts are included) compared to 18,500 at the end of the eighties.
Back in 1972, some ten years before Business in the Community got going, IBM’s then public affairs director, John Hargreaves, set up Action Resource Centre. This charity pioneered the promotion and brokerage of business secondment to community groups, along with other forms of employee involvement, until merging with BITC last year. Indeed an IBM secondee, Ann Skey, was the founding director and IBM guaranteed the lease on its initial premises.
Employee involvement is still important: in 1995 the company was the winner of the Employees in the Community Awards for its overall programme. An example is the Making a Difference Team Challenge, a two year programme in which some 400 staff in 32 teams undertook community assignments. IBM offered each team a grant of up to ?500, at a total cost of ?15,000, and those involved in fundraising raised ?100,000.
Other employee activity includes support for school governors, of which there are some 250, with training such as a course for chairs of governing bodies and an electronic mail forum. An informal fund for small cash donations exists, not formal pound-for-pound matching, and staff know that they can use facilities such as meeting rooms or photocopying, for their community activity.
Information technology
The shift of emphasis, bringing in a stronger information technology theme, is typified by IBM Volbase. This is essentially a database on Lotus Notes which lists and matches employees and retirees who have time and skills to volunteer with suitable opportunities in the voluntary sector. The software also manages the whole process, issuing letters and to-do lists. Currently being piloted in five IBM locations, working with BITC, local volunteer bureaux and others, the intention is to offer it wider.
Another example, one that demonstrates the new approach to community involvement, is the IBM Community Connections Awards scheme. Rather than simply respond to ad hoc appeals received, in 1995 IBM created a fund and invited applications for innovative ideas to harness information technology to combat disadvantage, with clear criteria and a closing date deadline. On offer was hardware and software, and training and expertise from IBM staff. The importance of IT to charities is shown by the 1,200 applications received. Thirteen projects were eventually chosen for a total resource package of ?300,000 in 1996. Examples of projects are:
a training project for young people at risk from drug abuse in employment skills in graphic design in Liverpool;
linking offices of Opportunities for People with Disabilities and giving access to databases of employment opportunities, including electronic communication with disabled people.
By focusing on a limited number of projects, with detailed business plans, evaluation becomes possible, with clear outputs, a set of objectives and pre-set measurement indicators.
Another example is the Schools Online programme. IBM is one of 12 companies working with the Department of Trade and Industry in a ?600,000 project helping schools explore the benefits of Internet. IBM is sponsoring five of its linked schools in Hampshire to take part.
Flagship projects
In addition to those mentioned above, a notable project is The Computability Centre, now an independent national charity but given free accommodation at IBM’s Warwick offices and core funded in early years. This offers expertise to disabled people in use of computers, with a helpline, assessments and training. Indeed the use of IT in helping people to overcome a disability is a long-standing and on-going theme.
Another long term theme is support to the voluntary sector ‘infrastructure’, to increase its capacity to do its job. Since 1986, IBM has run Creative Management courses for managers, with over 1,000 from 500 voluntary organisations now benefiting. These courses run for two and a half days with a one day follow up six months later.
Organisation
In the UK a core team of two at the centre manage the programme, with a network of contacts in other locations. One distinctive feature is IBM’s use of an external advisory panel. This meets three times a year, looking at general strategy and specific projects, and currently includes Foster Murphy of the Abbeyfield Society, a housing charity, and Ann Abraham of the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux.
Europe
Increasingly community involvement is not seen as a purely national or local issue. Rather, the twin themes of technology and social exclusion are being applied internationally. Partly this is a recognition of the global impact of the information revolution, partly it is a consequence of an internal reorganisation. In contrast to the previous national focus, IBM is now grouped by business function, such as banking, retail, public sector, etc, in four large ‘regions’: North America, Central/South America, Asia and Europe, Middle East and Africa. Consequently, support services like corporate affairs are organised by region and common policies applied across national boundaries.
In Europe, a review of policy in early 1996 identified unemployment and lack of appropriate skills as two critical issues affecting social exclusion. More than 18 million people are registered unemployed in the EU and some estimates say one in three adults lack basic standards of literacy and numeracy. The skills required for new jobs are higher than those being lost. The introduction of information technology is the driving force behind much down-sizing. All this risks creating a group in society permanently excluded.
For IBM, the question is how the use of IT can achieve a step change in efforts to tackle the issue. Ideas include assessing skills, training, perhaps distance learning and specially tailored packages, and matching individuals to opportunities. To help decide and to consider the role of the company, in June 1996 IBM held a seminar in Salzburg, Austria, for some 50 participants from government, the voluntary sector, the European Commission and academics, along with company staff. Conference proceedings are being published and IBM will be inviting applications from across the continent, along the lines of the UK Community Connections Award: a package of equipment and IBM skills, with projects chosen against tight criteria.
This initiative builds on a history of activity in Europe; examples include:
in Denmark, information technology in schools;
in France, a project to refurbish IT equipment by unemployed people for use by voluntary organisations;
in Germany, help with computer modelling to rebuild damaged historic buildings;
in Spain, a project with the Spanish Red Cross for adult training using PCs;
in Sweden, a CD Rom about AIDS education for medical students.
Wider corporate responsibility
Beyond the narrow issue of community involvement, IBM has made a particular effort to address environmental issues. It now publishes an annual statement on environmental impact, reporting performance to stakeholders. IBM has funded a chair in environmental change at Oxford University. Internally 150 Green Team volunteers encourage recycling and other initiatives in their own workplaces, while the ISO 14001 standard in environmental management has been won at the Greenock manufacturing location.
Challenges
The most obvious challenges for the IBM programme are internal – and common with many other companies: how to achieve more on evaluation, going beyond valuing the inputs to quantify what the programme achieves, its outputs, both for the community and for the company. Another common challenge is getting the business units more involved, when the company is organised into product and service specialisms across national boundaries, and middle managers are held to account internationally on financial indicators.
Externally, the question is whether the voluntary sector across Europe can cope with the exigencies of a competitive approach to funding along the lines of the Community Connections Awards in the UK. Without the benefit of ten years worth of creative management skills courses, for example, is the ‘infrastructure’ strong enough to sustain a pan-European policy? In some countries, certainly; in others certainly not. This challenge goes beyond IBM to all companies which are moving to a European rather than strictly national approach to community involvement: be prepared to invest in the capability of your voluntary partners. Without that they may not be of much help in rescuing people from the social consequences of the business revolution.
FactFile
IBM UK
Year ended 31 December 1995
Chairman and Chief Executive: Barrie Morgans
Main business: research, development, manufacturing and marketing of computers and information technology equipment, systems and services
Turnover: ?4.6 billion
Profit before tax: ?215 million
Employees: 9,500 permanent, 13,700 total
FT Top 500 ranking: not applicable
Charitable donations: ?700,000
Total community contribution: ?1.1 million
Percentages of profit: 0.5%
Memberships: BITC, Per Cent Club, ABSA, Business in the Arts
Corporate Citizenship Briefing, issue no: 30 – October, 1996