Good for the Planet, Good for Business

Ingrid Van Den Hoogen

Q: How does Sun define corporate social responsibility? What does it encompass?

Van Den Hoogen: We believe that what's good for the planet is also good for business. For us, corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a strategy that integrates with business objectives to create positive social change, minimize environmental impact, and generate business value. It involves an ongoing commitment to behave ethically and contribute to economic development while improving the quality of life of our workforce, the community, and society at large. Our CSR strategy centers around three key pillars — innovate, act, and share.

With regard to innovation, we want to make sure that the products and technologies we create are innovative and provide solutions to aid in areas like energy efficiency and sustainability. In the "act" area, we work to ensure we're socially responsible, so we measure things like carbon footprint, output of our buildings, activities in our supply chain, and we make those metrics transparent to the world.

With regard to sharing, we've always been based on the principles of sharing and openness. We take the best practices we've learned and share them with communities around the world, customers, and partners in vehicles such as our 2007 Corporate Social Responsibility Report.

Q: What are the components of a comprehensive CSR effort?

Van Den Hoogen: Metrics are critical. There are many ways in which you can measure your responsibility. You can look at your products, technology, or services. Are they energy efficient? Do you share technology with communities around the world? How do you interact with your supply chain? What goals do you set for employees? What is your culture around ethics and integrity?

For most companies, customers and partners are the #1 constituents, so you can include them in your metrics and work to improve upon them. Almost anything can be measured. Once you have metrics in place, make sure those goals are made transparent to all of your stakeholders so that you are held accountable.

Q: How is CSR different from philanthropy?

Van Den Hoogen: Philanthropy is a strategy of giving away money, products, or technology to people or organizations that need it. CSR is about how your company conducts business with all of its various stakeholders. The two are complementary but quite different.

Q: How does a company ensure that CSR is more than PR?

Van Den Hoogen: CSR is something you live within your company. We make that transparent by publishing results that speak for themselves. No company has perfect CSR metrics, but you can make sure that people are aware of the efforts you have in place. I think we were first in the market to publish our building lighting and datacenter energy usage and open source those results to tell others how they can cut down on usage. We work to ensure that customers, shareholders, and employees are aware of the actions being taken to ensure that the company is more socially responsible.

Q: To what extent do investors care about a company's CSR?

Van Den Hoogen: Investors care a lot, so there is business value associated with being socially responsible. There are mutual funds based on CSR indices. In the last year, top investment firms looked at CSR metrics to see how active companies were and assigned risks based on that. If you don't have a CSR program in place, investors may be less likely to invest. We've all seen examples of consumer companies who've experienced damaged brands due to lowered standards of conduct somewhere in the supply chain. Whether the issues being addressed are environmental, social, or other, chances are that if you're addressing these factors, your bottom line will benefit.

Q: How does a company ensure that partners and companies in its supply chain adhere to the same standards?

Van Den Hoogen: Companies that are socially responsible want to align with other companies that are socially responsible. If any one link in your supply chain is weak with regard to CSR, the whole chain is weak. Sun has a code of conduct, our contract manufacturers adhere to industry standards, and we are building our systems so that we can measure up and down the complete supply chain. Everybody in the supply chain is responsible for the output of a company.

It's also important to remember that you are likely part of someone else's supply chain. We're all both consumers and suppliers, and there are many companies out there today who will simply not buy from you if you don't have published CSR metrics, regardless of how good your products are.

Many companies want to see that you are transparent, open, and accountable, so there is a risk of being cut out of your own supply chain if you don't have a CSR report. That underscores why CSR is about your bottom line. If it's good for the planet, it's good for business. Here is some data we learned about our top 50 Solaris customers:

• 80% are undertaking efforts to reduce energy consumption or greenhouse gas production
• 72% publicly disclose greenhouse gas emissions
• 70% publish annual CSR reports
• 62% have greenhouse gas or energy-reduction targets

Thus, it behooves executives to know what their top customers are doing and what they care about.

Q: Does company size matter when it comes to instituting a CSR program?

Van Den Hoogen: Whether your company has one person or more than 100,000 people, there are actions you can take toward social responsibility. All companies have a responsibility to measure the impact their business is having on the world. Any size company can ask itself how it needs to innovate, act, or share.

Q: Sun talks lot about transparency. How does that relate to social responsibility?

Van Den Hoogen: Sun has fully embraced transparency as part of its culture. Our CEO Jonathan Schwartz is probably the #1 CEO blogger. We want to make sure that everything we do can be measured and shared. From 4000 employee blogs to articles we publish at conferences, we make information available so that people can see what we're thinking at any point in time. So while these aren't specific corporate social responsibility metrics, they help us be better corporate citizens by being transparent to shareholders, customers, and employees.

While all of your audiences are critical, employees are especially important because CSR requires all hands on deck. Most employees value working for a company that has high integrity, and return rates of employees who have left will verify that.

Also, by publishing CSR metrics in your report, employees can see that nothing is hidden — everything is out in the open. Customers say that they work with us because they see that we are not just publishing numbers, but that we are living this transparency and openness as part of our brand.

About Ingrid Van Den Hoogen
Sun Sr. Vice President, Brand, Global Communications and Integrated Marketing Ingrid Van Den Hoogen has led Sun through a unique brand transformation that positions Sun as a leader in the Participation Age for the next decade. Prior to leading Sun's corporate branding efforts, she led software strategic marketing where she incubated Project Orion (the Java Enterprise System) and led the effort to energize the Java brand, which resulted in a new consumer touchpoint for Sun, java.com, and a new Java developer community site, java.net. Ingrid joined Sun in 1987.