Canon: authenticity key to engaging employees in corporate responsibility

Talk of sustainability is everywhere, as it should be. It plays a major part in the decisions people make in their personal lives and in their careers.

Today’s candidates want to know, what are you doing about the social and environmental issues they care about? How does your organisation empower employees to do their best work? Does your corporate culture reflect, embrace, and respect diversity and inclusion?

Offering a competitive salary is not enough for employers to stand out in a market full of vacancies.

Millennials and Gen Z, in particular, want to work for companies that use their influence and resources for the greater good of people and the planet.

Candidates have corporate responsibility on their minds

At Canon, we’ve noticed an increase in questions about our corporate responsibility (CSR) efforts during the recruitment process.

It’s clear they want to work for a company that recognises its responsibility to help solve our pressing social, environmental and economic problems — and one that follows through with commitments.

As an organisation that has long lived by our corporate philosophy, ‘Kyosei’, we welcome and appreciate questions about corporate responsibility. Kyosei conveys our commitment to living and working together for the common good — it underpins everything we do and the decisions we make.

Building trust with authenticity, accountability, transparency

For us, it’s not enough to claim we care about social, environmental, and economic issues. If we want employees and candidates to believe us and believe in us, we have to prove it over and over again by taking action, embracing accountability, and being transparent.

As part of this approach, we publish a sustainability report every year, where we openly share our goals, how we’re measuring up against them, and what we need to prioritise moving forward.

We also conduct a comprehensive assessment of our materiality issues every three to five years to ensure we’re focusing our resources in areas that are going to make the biggest difference to our customers, employees, stakeholders, and society more broadly.

These are valuable resources for employees and candidates who are more interested in initiatives that truly make a difference than financial contributions towards a cause.

For example, we gift every employee a native tree on their first work anniversary — planted in our Canon forest in the Daintree National Park — to support Rainforest Rescue’s reforestation efforts. Likewise, for National Tree Day, employees have the choice to plant their native tree in their own backyard or in the Canon forest.

Making people feel like they’re part of the solution

In our experience, authentic engagement with employees and partners requires deep listening.

Every person has a lifetime’s worth of experiences, perspectives, and knowledge they can bring to the table. When we listen to one another and put our minds together, we can make a much bigger difference.

A great example is when our employees spoke up about wanting to do more to support victims of domestic violence. Their advocacy led to Canon’s offices becoming collection points for Escabags — bags filled with first-night essentials and important information for people escaping domestic violence.

We also listened to our First Nations photography community to truly understand their experiences and needs. We got valuable insights on how we can work better with First Nations people. We’re using those valuable learnings to shape our 2022-2023 Reconciliation Action Plan.

More generally, we’ve observed an increase in the sense of ownership employees feel towards our corporate responsibility initiatives. They want to be champions of change — we really admire that about them.

Our teams regularly take part in OzHarvest’s Cooking for a Cause to prepare meals for people in need, and in Eat My Lunch in New Zealand to make school lunches for underprivileged kids, along with many other causes.

Empowering employees, wherever they are

Corporate responsibility isn’t just about supporting external causes. We’re also committed to the satisfaction, happiness, and wellbeing of our employees and internal stakeholders.

What we heard loud and clear from our employees is that they love flexible working. This has always been a part of Canon’s employee value proposition — it’s not something we adopted during the pandemic.

But what we did do when the crisis arrived is launch a hybrid-working trial to see what worked well and what could be improved. The challenge was making sure employees could get the flexibility they wanted, while preserving our culture of collaboration.

Even before COVID-19, we had invested in tools, including Phoenix (our intranet platform) and HR Connect (our HR platform), to create a digital workplace that brings together employees across Canon’s diverse businesses, allowing them to work collaboratively from anywhere.

However, as a hybrid organisation, our offices will always have a vital role to play — it's just that they’re viewed in a different way.

For example, I used to schedule my meetings for days when I was in the office, so I could do them face-to-face. Based on what I learned, I now take the opposite approach and have meetings when I’m working remotely.

This gives me more time in the office for those special human moments that cannot be scheduled, like having a laugh at the coffee machine or stopping by a colleague’s desk for a social visit.

The physical workplace also enables moments of serendipity that can be valuable to a business.

For example, you might bump into a colleague from another team and get a fresh perspective on an idea. Maybe you grab lunch with some co-workers and learn about untapped opportunities. Or perhaps a team member is having trouble with a task and you offer them tips on how to do it.

We know these moments contribute to productivity, wellbeing, connection and job satisfaction.

Moving forward, going further

Our most recent engagement survey showed that 92 per cent of Canon Australia’s employees are proud to work for the company, and ‘people and community’ was called out as one of the top three things we do well.

It’s great to know we’re on the right track and that what we’re doing is working. But we also know there’s no finish line on the road towards sustainability. It’s a journey of continuous improvement that we’re going on together with our employees.

Rochelle Uys is the general manager – human resources for Canon Australia

Canon’s Sustainability Report can be found here