Educating on the SDGs: TEL FOR GOOD is CSR at Work
With heavy support from Global Headquarters and the Executive Team, Tokyo Electron (TEL) creates and maintains its own Corporate Social Responsibility programs and strategies within the TEL FOR GOOD brand. Following each year, the directors of each of TEL FOR GOOD’s seven regions are asked to submit their social contribution strategies, initiatives, and successes for evaluation.
Following the fiscal year, the social contribution and improvement efforts of each region are presented alongside one another to global TEL leadership. Each TEL FOR GOOD region is given the opportunity to show the impact their employees and CSR strategy has had throughout the year; the most innovative and impactful region receiving the CSR at Work award from Tokyo Electron’s CEO.
At the end of 2018, the TEL FOR GOOD team in the U.S. submitted their efforts, excited to see how leadership would respond to some new initiatives that were taking place with the United States employees. With the implementation of the YourCause platform in April, TEL U.S. had been able to expand the bandwidth of their team’s efficiencies in communication, management, and strategy improvements. Along with these administrative perks, the U.S. team was able to set their programs and campaigns apart from the other regions by providing ad-hoc reporting. With detailed data and metrics, the TEL U.S. team was able to supply increasing employee engagement numbers while making program-changing decisions with accurate and fact-based reports.
Flexibility at Work
One of the program-changing decisions that have improved TEL U.S. employee engagement and involvement is the adoption of year-round giving to nonprofit organizations. Originally, because of administration and verification hurdles, employees were only able to donate during a campaign to organizations designated by TEL. With the new-found flexibility and payroll deductions made easily through the platform, TEL U.S. employees have been able to become more engaged. Additionally, access to local community organizations has encouraged employees to become involved in causes they feel more passionate about and allowed engagement in more personal avenues.
By the generosity of TEL U.S., each employee is allowed a donation match up to $1,000 per year. In its first year, TEL U.S. has given more than $50,000 in matching donations and made a full impact total of over $117,000.
The SDGs at Work
What had truly set TEL U.S. apart from the other CSR initiatives presented to leadership was their dedication and alignment to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These are 17 urgent call-to-actions made in global partnership to end worldwide poverty and deprivations by the year 2030. As a member of the United Nations Global Compact, TEL strives to maintain a sustainable management platform by complying and addressing the key focus areas of human rights, labor, environment, health and safety, and ethics and corruption prevention. By selecting these eight SDGs as the building blocks of the corporation’s core values, TEL has provided a roadmap for success in future CSR initiatives and strategy.
Not only did the TEL U.S. team apply these eight core SDGs to their CSR strategy, but they continued to utilize and educate their employees on all 17 of the United Nations SDGs. Within the YourCause platform, TEL U.S. employees are able to learn about and engage with different SDGs. If they discover one that they are passionate about, they can search for that specific Goal to find organizations that align with that SDG. Best of all, if an employee wants to get involved with one of TEL’s core values, but doesn’t know where to start, they can see all organizations that align with the SDGs in TEL’s focus.
Closing out 2018, our friends leading the charge at TEL U.S. had the incredible opportunity to show off amazing milestones set by their corporate social responsibility program. Not only did they have an outstanding year growing their employee engagement statistics, implementing new technology with the YourCause platform and winning the company-wide CSR at Work Award, but they were also able to highlight the importance of the United Nation SDGs and help bring us one step closer to achieving those goals by 2030.
