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“The big thing we’re focused on now is really taking this far beyond the task force down to every employee so that everybody knows how they can make a difference, both formally with their performance objectives and ensuring those link up to supporting one of our CSR strategies.”
operate in, according to Consler. “It all comes down to engagement — engaging individual employees, engaging leaders, really making the objectives clear and enlisting people’s help in the difference that we can make.”
In a company of this size, people’s actions can produce meaningful impacts. “We don’t want people to feel, ‘Oh, this is an added bur- den, I have to save the planet...’ It’s just nice to feel like you’re part of something bigger and it’s more than just a job,” she says.
Despite lofty ideals, Safeway is still a busi- ness that needs to remain profitable. “This is a broader way of thinking about our business
Christy Consler, vice president of leadership, development and sustainability
Geoff White, group vice president for produce and floral
Steve Burnham, vice president of produce
and reverberate off each other, and therefore cannot be tackled randomly. All must be addressed congruently when conducting cost/benefit analyses to best determine where and how to invest money and resources for maximum benefits. More specifically, sustain- ability initiatives need to take into account the entire lifecycle of the product and its broader impacts on society.
Safeway’s sophisticated top-down approach also shares a strong bottom-up com- ponent. “The big thing we’re focused on now is really taking this far beyond the task force down to every employee so that everybody knows how they can make a difference, both formally with their performance objectives and ensuring those link up to supporting one of our CSR strategies,” says Consler. But then also personally, how they can contribute, how the simple things that they do every day make a difference at home and at work, she adds.
To drive the overall strategy, Safeway is asking leaders to set business performance objectives and direct their teams to do the same. The company also wants to create a dynamic environment on the ground, where employees can have a voice in the process. Initially, says Consler, “We had the employees from across the company come up with a list, and compiled over 300 different separate ini- tiatives of things currently being worked on or in development and ready to be implemented. We started with the bottom up and then took an inventory, asking how these naturally group together, and out of that is how we developed the strategy platforms.”
The next challenge is keeping the process fluid. “Already, people can share their ideas with the store managers and district managers and that bubbles up to division presidents who can share them with us,” Consler continues. “But we’re also looking to formalize it more and have actual CSR champions in each of the stores, districts and divisions so people know that their ideas were evaluated.” Safeway is working on putting a more official path in place, a structure across each of the 10 divisions, with regular conference calls to share Best Practices and disseminate them more quickly.
— CHRISTY CONSLER
The company has a number of employee network groups, and the Green Team is one of the newest. There is a Green Team at the cor- porate level, but also out in the divisions, and some of the divisions have started to form green teams or committees, according to Con- sler. She points to Vons in Southern California, which has a very active group doing impres- sive work to become more sustainable inter- nally and through community involvement in projects ranging from recycling to breast can- cer awareness and fundraising drives. Safeway discovered it could really engage the hearts and minds of employees in ways it hadn’t before, she explained.
The produce team has jumped into the pro- gram full force, and finds it empowering. “Although we have a company-wide task force, each business unit is taking it upon itself to educate ourselves on sustainability as it relates to our area of expertise,” says Burnham. “What it really boils down to are the people. The people that make up this department that have a passion for this, that spend the time educating themselves and that help counsel us. We have a volunteer task force within produce committed to nothing but sustainability, which meets every month. It does not matter if you’re an analyst or if you’re a vice president...you’re all welcome to be part of this task force because no one has a bad idea. Then we take those ideas and become further educated and try to drill down to the facts.”
Buying In To The Big Picture
Mandating new sustainability directives within a company, and further down the sup- ply chain, wavers a fine line between a wel- comed opportunity and an unwelcomed bur- den. Linking the whole CSR and HR function with sustainability is a unique proposition, a concept other companies may want to emu- late. You can have the best strategy in the world, but it will fall woefully short if you don’t have people who care about it, under- stand it and embrace it.
Employees need to know that what they do makes a difference, not only to the company’s results, but to the community and the world we
22 PRODUCE BUSINESS • MAY 2010