Why Go Paperless?

Did you know the White House is going paperless?  In fact, The White House recently released the nation’s first paperless budget.   And the good news?  The Office of Management and Budget estimates that this year’s 2,200-page paperless budget will save 20 tons of paper (about 480 trees).   If the government can go paperless, then you can too!

 As discovered in our business sustainability consulting, most business leaders identify cost savings as the driver towards moving towards a paperless office.  Granted, reduced consumption and eliminating storage space does save money.  However, the added bonuses of increased productivity and the availability to work remotely make moving to a paperless office appealing. In fact, it’s the triple bonus of reducing environmental impacts that makes going paperless the winner.

 If you aren’t sure about the benefits of paperless for your business, ask yourself,
How does your company manage the influx of emails, reports, and information from social media sites?  Did you know that approximately 90% of electronic content coming into an organization is unstructured data and about 80% of that is unmanaged.  Well, considering that about 30% of a worker’s time is spent searching for a document or recreating it, paperless document management systems become an appealing alternative.

 Building a sustainable business and going paperless doesn’t have to be hard.  Shared in our eco friendly training are some of the benefits you can expect by going paperless: 

•    increase productivity
•    eliminate storage space
•    reduce expenses
•    create the ability to work remotely
•    enhance customer service
•    increased security
•    better disaster recovery protection
•    reduces your environmental impact
•    improve your competitiveness in the industry

 Looking for resources?  Check out: A Guide for SME’s: How and Why to go Paperless or The Paperless Office.

Posted via web from 3BL Media, CSR News, and Emily

Overcoming Barriers to Healthcare for Immigrant Women in Toronto

Language, culture and long working days make it difficult for many immigrant women to access mainstream healthcare.  A health clinic on wheels with culturally diverse staff members delivers care right to their workplaces in downtown Toronto. 

The Immigrant Women’s Health Centre – overcoming invisible barriers.  Finding new ways to provide access to vulnerable populations is just one of many stories celebrated in Beyond Barriers: Photographs from the frontlines of health, on display at the Canadian Public Health Association’s Centenary conference.

Click here to learn more about the Immigrant Women’s Health Centre.

Join us at the reception which will feature remarks from leading frontline health practitioners and will be held on: 

Monday, June 14, 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.

Sheraton Centre Toronto – Vide Foyer, 123 Queen Street W. Toronto M5H 2M9

PLEASE NOTE: A limited number of invitations are available for members of the public to view the exhibit and attend a special reception taking place at the Canadian Public Health Association Centenary Conference. Be sure to RSVP to frontlinehealth@grantstream.com for an opportunity to attend this special event.

For more information about the exhibit.

The exhibit is presented by AstraZeneca Canada’s Frontline Health Program, which supports the work of the dedicated health professionals who serve Canada’s most vulnerable populations.

For more information about Frontline Health, please visit www.frontlinehealth.ca.

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Posted via web from 3BL Media, CSR News, and Emily

Is Sustainability Risk the Next Supply Chain Value Opportunity?

Work over the past few decades by academia, professional consulting firms and solution providers has primarily focused on providing businesses with cost savings incentives to invest resources in the supply chain. Popular practices such as Lean, TPS, Total-System-Value, Just-In-Time, and Six Sigma have been used to create efficiencies and reduced total supply chain costs.  While these practices provide great insight into cost reduction, our professional consulting believes the next generation of supply chain management will include integrating sustainability concepts into traditional practices to evaluate risk and create value. 

According to many leading business consulting firms, it is often practical to consider risk categories as a starting point for an initial value assessment of a supply chain.  Recognizing and understanding risk opens the door to implement measure to improve performance.  As we move into the discussion of applied sustainability concepts in the supply chain, this line of thinking becomes even more relevant.  The questions becomes: what process, best practices and tools will we be talking about in the future that address supply chain sustainability risks such as:

•    Globalization has extended the once arm’s length supply to sources from around the world, in many cases decreasing process control.

•    Proposed regulatory measures imposed by government entities, is raising awareness of carbon emissions and other waste streams.

•    Increasing eco awareness and shifting expectations among consumers is creating market risk for many traditional businesses.

•    Supply side capacity constraints on sustainable supply could make it more difficult to meet demand requirements.

Within our sustainability consulting practice, we considers risk along with other categorization methodologies, including spend classification and functional categorization, as a means of identifying sustainable value in the supply chain.  We believe successful implementation of any sustainable supply chain process requires visibility, engagement, and alignment with all process stakeholders. 

Posted via web from 3BL Media, CSR News, and Emily

Paul Klein’s Blog: What Makes Your Company Authentic?

Here’s an equation for authenticity: privately-owned + small scale + friendly employees + consistency of quality products or services = meaningful relationships with customers, a high level of trust, and the perception of being the real deal. In simple terms, small, local businesses have many things to worry about but being seen as authentic isn’t one of them. On the other hand, large public corporations have a real challenge in this area – especially today when the public’s trust in big business is in free-fall.  If I was running a large corporation today, I look really hard at small businesses in the same category to find out what makes them so trustworthy in the minds of their employees and customers and what I could do to emulate them.

While Starbucks has done a remarkably good job of maintaining its DNA in spite of its scale, there’s a coffee shop near our office called the Dark Horse Espresso Bar that’s a “third place” for people in our downtown neighborhood to talk, work, read, and hang out that’s second to none.  Lot’s to learn here.  There’s a regional airline called Porter that has brought back dependability, enjoyment, and romance to flying. These are qualities that have all but disappeared from the big airlines.  As Porter scales up, will they be able to maintain the magic that makes them so special today?  Interestingly, corporate responsibility doesn’t come into the equation for authenticity or the two examples above.  One of the few large corporations that has been able to maintain its authenticity in spite of its size is Ben & Jerry’s. Perhaps the fact that corporate social responsibility was always a defining characteristic of its brand has helped it maintain its authenticity despite the company now being a division of Unilever.

I’d welcome your feedback on other large corporations where CSR is making a contribution to their authenticity quotient.

More on this topic (What’s this?)

Schama: Are the Guillotines Being Sharpened? (naked capitalism, 5/22/10)

Yet Another Reason Not to Trust the Big Commercial Investment Firms (the Underground Investor, 6/3/10)

Read more on Being, Its, Trust at Wikinvest

Posted via web from 3BL Media, CSR News, and Emily

A Smaller World of Leaner Greener Supply

Led by efforts by the like of Wal-Mart, many businesses are now beginning to reevaluate their traditional supply chain measures in an attempt to define the criteria that will move their organization up the business sustainability scale.  These organizations are focusing on integrating sustainability concepts directly into their purchasing processes to not only improve supply chain performance but to establish their next-generation supply chain management.

As we move forward into a new age of expanded eco awareness, the business practices of the past continue to evolve to meet shifting global expectations of the future.  This forward business sustainability progress can already be seen in the continuously evolving supply chain.  Consumer expectations are effecting the front-end while legislative pressures from all sides are creating process changes. This is all leading to a ‘leaner’ and ‘greener’ strategic sustainable supply chain.

The key to capitalizing on the forward momentum involves more that simply jumping on board.  Companies who take the wheel to set direction for their supply chain are a step ahead of the competition.  Taking a look at several traditional supply chain management activities, the key is to integrate a sustainability mindset consistently trough every process step. 

•    Supplier Qualification – ability to evaluate a supplier’s capability to meet desired financial conditions, technical specifications, quality standards, delivery requirements, and customer service levels

•    Supplier Management and Development – ability to evaluate and develop a supplier’s capabilities of providing and maintaining quality services by utilizing supplier certification processes, development programs, and continuous improvement initiatives.

•    Supplier Performance Management – ability to create and utilize processes and tools to define, analyze and monitor supplier effectiveness.

By developing the ability to create sustainability alignment and measure the performance of key supplier relationships, businesses are realizing additional value from their evolved supply chain efforts.  These leading edge organizations are developing supply chain business sustainability strategies with indicators of future success.

Whether a company is just becoming familiar with the concept of business sustainability or is a sustainability leader in the industry, there are sustainable supply chain improvements that can increase eco awareness and drive sustainable change.   Determining the criteria that will move an organization on the business sustainability scale has become the focus of the next generation of supply chain management.

Posted via web from 3BL Media, CSR News, and Emily