All Briefs

Are you using technology effectively to engage employees in community programs? A partnership between Georgia Power and Purposity is showing how disruptive technology can be used to boost the long-held practice of community engagement.

During the last month, The Conference Board ESG Center released five pieces of research that cover corporate board practices among Russell 3000 and S&P 500 companies, business media perspectives on the director’s job description, the idea of extending ethical business principles to digitalization, how ESG raters miss rating governance and how standardized social outcomes can measure the impact of societal investments.

Apple supplier Foxconn’s initiative to produce high-end iPhones in India opens new doors for Apple to use India as an export hub, including to the U.S., and also gives Apple better access to one of the world’s fastest-growing economies—and mobile phone markets. Indian consumers have felt very optimistic economically, and technology is a popular category for spending disposable income, as data from the Conference Board Global Consumer Confidence Index shows.

One year after activist shareholders won 65 board seats in a record-breaking first quarter on the way to 160 for all of 2018, corporate directors continue to lose seats at a pretty good clip in 2019. And institutional investors are leading the way.

Is a lack of benchmarking capabilities hampering you from pursuing continuous improvement and innovation in your social impact measurement? With a corporate culture that values data and benchmarking, The Allstate Foundation was lacking a data-driven social impact measurement framework that aggregated metrics across its entire portfolio. The Impact Genome Project helped the organization update its metrics and devise an outcomes-based social impact measurement and reporting strategy.

Are you encouraging your communications team to showcase their effectiveness? Keeping a team motivated—to do their best work and to continuously improve—is a real leadership challenge. Kami Spangenberg, Vice President, Corporate Communications, RTI International, suggests giving your team the opportunity to highlight the business impact of their work to senior leaders through targeted annual reports.

This Q&A with Ralph Ward discusses the job of the corporate director from his perspective as a business media and corporate governance executive. He gives his views on such topics as who owns tone at the top and directors’ ideal characteristics.

Employee motivation is more a function of what you do rather than what you say. Your behavior and actions can have a cascading effect on the organization as you lead with your behaviors and show your priorities through your actions.

This Q&A with Jeff Cunningham discusses the job of the corporate director from his perspective as a business media and corporate governance executive. He touches upon topics such as transparency of information discussed in board meetings and the importance of diversity in the boardroom.