by Avery Yale Kamila
It all began in 1992 with the haunting words of a 13-year-old boy. He was living at Odyssey House, a home where teenagers get intensive therapy to help overcome traumatic home lives and criminal behaviors. Jeffery Swartz, the CEO of Timberland, was there as a volunteer, working with the young man to freshen up the home’s paint.
The boy asked Swartz about his job, and Swartz, the grandson of the company’s founder, explained his busy day as best he could. Then Swartz asked a question, a question he calls “one of the dumber questions I ever asked in my life.”
“I asked him what he did,” Swartz says. The boy’s answer: “I try to get well.” It was this simple yet revealing statement that would set Timberland on a mission to strengthen both its brand and the social fabric of the communities in which it operates.
“It was a pretty powerful moment for me,” Swartz recalls. “I came back and sat at my desk and thought that there was really something here. This is just too powerful to contain.”
So Swartz became head cheerleader in a campaign to share Timberland’s greatest assets – its employees – with those in need of help. He credits a youth service group, Boston-based City Year, for putting him there that day, paintbrush in hand.
In 1991, the group came to Timberland to ask for a donation of work boots. Timberland was happy to oblige. The following year they showed up again, lobbying for more boots. Yet, tucked in their briefcases they had a bigger proposal: a Timberland-sponsored day of service for employees. After some initial discussion, City Year sold Swartz on the idea, and Odyssey House was chosen as the beneficiary.
“A group of employees, including Jeff Swartz, came over to help paint the center in Hampton,” says Odyssey House CEO, Jim Kanak. It was here that Swartz met the inspirational boy.
Kanak says the most important aspect of Odyssey House’s relationship with Timberland (which continues to this day) is the one-on-one interactions between the volunteers and the children. “What they really do is serve as positive role models for our kids.”
The beginnings of a volunteer revolution
Swartz decided to start his new program by doing more than sponsoring an occasional day of service. Rather, he wanted a program that each employee could tailor to fit their schedule and interests. The idea he devised: offer all workers 16 hours of paid time off to volunteer. A few years later, this was increased to 32 hours and finally a full 40.
Unlike at other companies, where employees are encouraged to attend walk-a-thons on Saturdays and feed the homeless after work on Wednesdays, Timberland employees volunteer during work hours. This basic premise may be the most powerful aspect of the whole program. Celina Adams in Timberland’s social enterprise department explains, “nights and weekends should be spent with family.”
Such a structure eliminates a common complaint many employees level against corporate volunteer initiatives – that they further squeeze already constricted home lives. And these days, with 50 and 60-hour work weeks all too common, few people are looking for more commitments.
Still, the program met with some initial resistance — managers who weren’t fully supportive and employees who were reluctant to do volunteer work on company time. But now, according to Adams, “95 percent of employees use some portion of the benefit.”
While Adams stresses that the volunteer programs are not mandatory, she says, “we’ve come to expect that people embrace similar values.” She adds that they’re still working to convince every employee to record all of the community service hours they perform. (Some employees feel funny about being paid for work they previously did for free.) Even so, Timberland’s workforce racked up 270,000 hours of volunteer time in 2003.
In addition to the self-directed week of community service, Timberland offers a variety of opportunities for employees to help others during the work week. One day each year they close up corporate headquarters in Stratham, New Hampshire to host Serv-A-Palooza.
With its youth-oriented name, this event brings together employees, customers, vendors, and nonprofit agencies in numerous service projects around the globe. Last year, volunteer teams worked in 22 countries, giving a total of 31,000 hours of time, which is roughly equivalent to three and a half years of community service.
For die-hard volunteers, the company offers a new program called the service sabbatical. Lauren Wool was one of the first selected to serve. For six months last year, she worked full-time for the United Way of the Greater Seacoast. She was responsible for training the leaders of 100 programs at 80 recipient agencies how to measure the outcomes and effectiveness of their work. No small task.
But the United Way didn’t have to pay her a penny for her high-level change management skills. Instead, Timberland continued to pay her salary, as if she were still at corporate headquarters, helping to source and produce the company’s apparel line.
“I was looking for a good project for a sabbatical ever since Timberland launched the program two years ago,” says Wool, who has worked at Timberland for 10 years and is currently a senior project manager. She carefully crafted her application, saying “sabbatical projects need to meet the three-way criteria of being beneficial for the agency, for Timberland, and for me.”
Timberland conducts a competitive review for these coveted sabbatical spots. Each employee’s application is judged based on how well the service project will build the capacity of the nonprofit organization. The proposal also must show how this increased effectiveness will be sustained once the volunteer has returned to Timberland
Adams says Timberland’s collection of volunteer program, called the Path of Service, began with two objectives: to transform the company’s culture and to transform civic culture in America. The goals are certainly lofty, but the high-energy Timberland team is dedicated to achieving them.
An untapped source of value
In the forward to the recently published book, The Sustainable Company, Steve Percy, the former chairman and CEO of BP Americas writes: “If corporate efforts are born of self-interest, they are more real and sustainable and less susceptible to the business cycle.”
The book, which is written by Chris Laszlo, a consultant at the U.S. firm Sustainable Value Partners, argues the companies who will survive and thrive in our rapidly changing business world will be the ones who are able to create value for both shareholders and stakeholders. Timberland’s volunteer program is an excellent example of this new stakeholder approach to value creation.
A formal measurement system to track the impact of the volunteer program has yet to be put in place at Timberland. However, the annual employee survey provides a glimpse of how this stakeholder group views the program.
In the 2002 survey, the latest year for which results are available, 79 percent of employees agree with the statement: “Timberland’s commitment to community is genuine and not a public relations vehicle.” The survey, which is administered by a third party, also reveals that 89 percent of employees say community service is valuable to them, while 50 percent report that Timberland’s volunteer programs influenced their decision to work for the company.
Adams predicts that the latter number will increase in future years as more new hires join the company and people retire who started their career with Timberland before the volunteer program was in place. Managers, who at first were skeptical of the community service benefit and expressed concerns about lost work t
ime, have come to realize the program can help them do their jobs.
“What we’re finding, more and more,” says Adams. “Is that management has found volunteerism builds employee skills and helps with team building. A lot of it has to do with connections among people you work with day to day. We’ve been together in circumstances where we’ve felt like we’ve made a difference.”
Building these valuable bonds among co-workers is something other companies often pay big bucks to create with human resource consultants and wilderness programs. However, Timberland’s program does have costs. When you factor in wages, lost time on the production floor, and lost sales, the costs of Serv-A-Palooza alone are estimated to be about $2 million. Adams says, “Ultimately that investment yields a benefit of other dividends.”
Timberland’s management, in addition to appreciating these dividends, has also come to realize that loaning out employees is doable. “Our department didn’t shut down because I wasn’t there,” says Wool, when speaking about her sabbatical. “It didn’t hurt the business to be generous. It definitely helps in community perception of the company. I really felt like an ambassador for Timberland. I told every person I met what I was doing and who was sponsoring me.”
Dave Sherman, who founded Sustainable Value Partners with Chris Laszlo, says his firm advises clients to pursue charitable activities that reflect the company’s core competencies and strategic focus. “When you help the whole region to become more competitive, it helps you as well, ” he says. “You get an extra synergy out of that.” He goes on to say that aligning philanthropic and volunteer efforts with the company’s mission is common sense.
“Only those companies who are successful and profitable will be around to continue their volunteer efforts in the future, ” he says. He explains that charitable programs which are not tied to the strategic focus of the company will be cut during lean years.
He praises Timberland’s Cold Feet, Warm Shoes program as a prime example of charitable giving that can help build the brand. Begun by footwear maker Genesco (the owner of such brands as Johnston & Murphy and Journeys), the program brings quality shoes and customer service to homeless residents of the inner city. According to Sherman, the inner city market is often underserved and can be a valuable source of customers and brand loyalty.
Swartz agrees with Sherman’s logic. “There has to be a connection to what the company is all about,” he says, “or the partnerships are meaningless.”
Spreading the word
Timberland – which was built from a single waterproof boot in 1955 to a publicly traded company with 5,400 employees and 2002 revenues of $1.2 billion – has had a commitment to values and ethics from the beginning. Founder, Nathan Swartz, sought to create a business based on humanity, humility, integrity, and excellence. Today these principles live on in Timberland’s motto of “doing well while doing good.”
Alongside its volunteer initiatives, Timberland has carved out a role as an industry leader when it comes to progressive environmental policies. Terry Kellogg, director of environmental affairs, says he has three bold, overarching goals for the company. They are: to be toxin-free, to be carbon neutral, and to use 100 percent renewable resources.
“We know our customers care,” says Kellogg, “and we think they’re going to care more down the road.” He then rattles off an impressive list of activities the company is undertaking to reduce its environmental footprint These include reducing packaging and solvent use, boosting the use of organic cotton, buying renewable energy tags, and building green.
Soon these policies will radiate throughout the supply chain. “We’re putting in place systems to measure the comprehensive environmental performance of our suppliers,” he says. “This environmental scorecard will be used along with lead time and quality scores to direct our future buying decisions.”
The first category of suppliers to be subjected to these eco-audits were the tanneries. While some fared better than others, all had room for improvement. On a follow-up tour of the facilities, Kellogg says, “I was quite pleased to see how much progress had been made.”
When Timberland’s tanneries and other suppliers become greener, it has a ripple effect throughout the industry. As Kellogg puts it, “these are places that supply leather to many other companies.”
Reaching beyond the corporate walls is also part of the volunteer program’s strategy A new website, timberlandserve.com, helps connect customers and other concerned individuals with service opportunities in their neighborhoods. An even larger undertaking is the Community Builders Tour.
Under the banner of “Pull on your boots and make a difference,” Timberland launched this community service road show in the fall of 2003. Starting with a survey of a particular community’s needs, Timberland brings together a coalition of community leaders, local residents, and retailers to renovate parks, build community gardens, or refurbish playgrounds.
At each stop on the tour, Timberland constructs a Service Square, which features live entertainment, information about local nonprofits, and a showcase of new Timberland products.
“The goal of the Community Builders Tour,” says Swartz, “is really to celebrate the power of collaboration, the power of service, and the power of community, and to create lasting, positive change. We launched the Community Builders Tour in six communities in New York and Baltimore this past fall, and it was a huge success. We’re looking forward to expanding the tour to multiple communities across the country in 2004.”
Adams says, “We’re starting to measure if this translates into more sales or better placement for our products.” The answer will surely get the attention of shareholders, industry observers, and competitors.
Even though its programs are significant, Timberland’s goal of transforming civic culture is probably too big a feat to be achieved by one business alone. Reaching out to other companies, with initiatives like the Community Builders Tour, is an excellent way for Timberland to get other executives excited about volunteerism as a way to strengthen community while producing more engaged employees and a reputation as a company that cares. Should other companies adopt similar policies, it is more likely that Timberland will achieve its goal.
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Avery Yale Kamila is a health and environmental writer.
FROM Ethical Corporation Magazine, a SustainableBusiness.com Content Partner
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