So Nick, thanks for joining me.
As you know, I've been talking about how companies create impact,
how they drive impact.
And I've suggested that they do this in three ways at the highest level;
they do this through their practices,
through their products and services,
and through their philanthropy.
And in talking about the practices I've emphasized a few different kinds of practices.
So they may be about who they hire,
and how they treat their employees,
it may be through their operations,
it may be through their supply chain and it could actually be through their investments.
So, what I'm hoping you'll do is
talk with me about some of the companies you know that are making impact,
and I'll throw in some of my own examples,
and we'll give our viewers some examples of what this actually looks like in practice.
So, when we go to employment,
we were going to talk about Starbucks first.
So maybe not a company that everybody thinks is a high impact company but I think we can
argue that there they are creating social impact through their employment practices.
So talk with me about Starbucks.
Sure. So Starbucks is interesting because actually given that they are a coffee company,
you could think about their supply chain and the materials they're using,
and the manufacturing, and everything in that regard.
And they do. They thought a lot about that.
Absolutely. Absolutely. But Starbucks really
considers themselves a people driven business.
So that is of course customers and customer service,
and your experience in the coffee, the cafe.
But really, what they also are focused on are their employees.
I think they call them partners.
Yes. Or associates? I don't remember.
I can't remember exactly, but their employees,
the baristas, the people behind the counter who are serving you their coffee.
And they have a variety of things so sometimes they focus on their hiring.
They may have a veterans focused strategy where they're
going above and beyond to try to hire veterans returning from service.
But they've also recently done a program called
the Opportunity Youth Fair where they've identified this
sort of at risk group of 16 to 24 year olds,
who you can literally go to this fair,
and as a 16 to 24 year old person,
maybe you were unemployed,
maybe you've been down on your luck.
Whatever it might be, maybe you're undereducated, who knows.
Maybe dropped out of high school.
Never quite made it to college or dropped out of college.
Exactly. You can walk in to this career fair.
You can get coaching,
mentoring, some resume help.
But you can also walk away from the fair itself with a job.
Right.
So there are actually employers there who are ready to give you a job.
And Starbucks is one of those employers and it is one of the organizers of this event.
So that's sort of an interesting take on what they are doing on that.
But also within the company,
they're focused on their own employees and what's happening
behind the scenes and behind the cafe.
So they have something called the College Achievement Plan,
and the Pathway to Admissions,
where they've actually partnered with Arizona State University and their online program.
So one of the things that Starbucks really found out
was a lot of their employees do have aspirations to go to college.
Maybe they don't want to be a barista for their entire career,
but it's a great entry point for them.
But also, that a lot of their employees
had started college but hadn't finished their bachelor's degree.
And so what they've done is they partnered with Arizona State University to
allow a tuition benefit so people can finish their degrees.
They already are college worthy and able to get in.
But also coach employees who may not have already applied to university,
to help them get in and then succeed all the way through their four years.
Right. So I love this example for a few different reasons and I think
it illustrates some points that I talk
about as I think about how companies create impact.
One of them is, this is
a very broad impact in terms of given how many people Starbucks employs.
So this is a program.
Their programs can touch a lot of people.
The other thing that I think is important to me as I think about impact is,
when I think about Starbucks offering college tuition to its employees.
In my book that's impact.
If this were a downtown law firm in New York City, Philadelphia,
Washington D.C. wherever in the world,
offering college completion to its employees or maybe to its employees children,
I'd say, "That's nice."
A nice perk.
A nice perk. I don't think that's impact.
So it sort of gets to me to a distinction about who are you serving and the connection I
make in thinking about
impact that I emphasize when I think about the sustainable development goals.
And can we make a direct link from Starbucks,
and college, and veteran programs to sustainable development goals?
Maybe not direct, but I do see some linkage.
Sure.
So the other company I wanted to talk about,
and this is a company you've heard me talk about, Greyston Bakery.
So Greyston Bakery is a bakery
that makes the brownies that are in Ben and Jerry's ice cream.
They also make brownies you can buy directly in grocery stores.
They have this terrific saying,
I mentioned this in my earlier module,
"We don't hire people to bake brownies.
We bake brownies to hire people."
So their impact is really all about their hiring,
and it's about a practice they call open hiring.
So what this actually means for Greyston
is if you want a job in their bakery you sign up,
you sign your name on a list.
I think there are three questions.
What's your name?
Can you stand on your feet for 12 hours?
Can you lift 50 lbs? That's it.
And when they have openings they will invite people into their apprenticeship program.
They'll take a group of people who have signed
their names on the list into their apprenticeship program and they say,
"Let us introduce you to the work, we'll train you."
No questions asked, no interview, no resume.
Nothing. It's just, can you do the work?
And over a period of three, six, eight,
10 months they determine who's in and who can do the work,
and then they hire those folks.
So what this means is they are hiring people who are high school,
or who have dropped out of high school,
who may have drug convictions,
may have other criminal convictions,
maybe coming off of welfare,
maybe homeless, may not be able to really speak English,
and they have this very motivated and talented group
of employees who are working in their bakery.
One of the things I like about this model, I mean,
this is actually a really good employment practice.
So, we know from a wealth of research
that past performance is the best predictor of future performance.
Seeing people actually do the job is how you know if they can do the job.
And after three, six,
eight months of this kind of work they really know.
So I think kind of different examples,
Starbucks and Greyston Bakery,
but interesting examples of employment practices as impact.
Katherine KleinEdward H. Bowman Professor of Management
Christopher GeczyAdjunct Professor of Finance
