Companies that practice conscious capitalism benefit from putting their employees first. The Container Store, REI and Joie de Vivre have shown this to be true, even as the lagging economy has pushed other companies to downsize. At The Container Store, employees are prioritized over customers and shareholders. It’s a core company principle that influences all business decisions. Full-time employees earn an average [...]
Can Microsoft count social good among its top products? It’s a hard question to answer (for starters, defining and measuring social good is tough) but a fair question to ask in the context of Microsoft’s employee culture of social involvement. Last year, employee giving and company matched funds totaled nearly $90 million. Volunteer time is [...]
There seems to be a problem. Â An influential group of global CEOs list brand, trust and reputation as their “primary considerations for acting on sustainability.” Â Motivators like revenue growth and cost reduction, consumer demand, employee engagement and retention and personal motivation lagged significantly behind. Many CEOs seem to have reversed cause and effect. Brand trust [...]
The principle of the following story is so simple and effective that it’s a wonder we ever conjured up advertising to sell our wares. Take your largest and most expensive asset, your employees, and use it to build your business. During an interview last week with enlightened entrepreneur Chip Conley he mentioned that his company, [...]
When Chip Conley applied his interpretation of Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to his hospitality company Joie de Vivre, he tripled its size when most of his competitors were going bankrupt in the post-9/11, Travelocity-frenzy years. Click the player to listen to my 20-minute conversation with Chip or right-click and save for the MP3. [Audio clip: view [...]
Start small and focus your efforts on your mission. Â You’ve probably heard this at some point, but it’s hard to do. Â How do you know if your perception of focus is, well, out of focus? Â Your employees can be the best reflection of reality. “If your employees or people connected to your company can’t tell [...]
Part of building a successful business is being able to let other people tell you how to do it better. Â Companies that set up mechanisms to learn from their employees, particularly those at the base of the company who do automated work and aren’t brought into weekly meetings to voice their say, see economic gain [...]
It takes more than one action to empower your employees. Â As simple (and obvious!) as that sounds, it’s what struck me the most while writing yesterday’s post on enabling your employees. Â Maybe a better way to structure the post would be to highlight tactics by company since each of the companies I included–King Arthur’s Flour, [...]
Employees are the crux of your company.  Successful leaders have known this for years. Take away my people and leave the factories, and soon there will be grass growing on the factory floors, but take away my factories and leave my people, and soon we will have bigger and better factories.  –Andrew Carnegie When you enfranchise your [...]
I'm Olivia Khalili. I created Cause Capitalism to show you how to grow your business by incorporating a social mission. 
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