Impactful corporate citizenship starts with these 5 principles

Article 8/11/2024 Read time: 1 min

By Faith Taylor, Senior Vice President, Global Citizenship and Sustainability at Kyndryl

Kyndryl published its second annual Corporate Citizenship Report in September. In it, we shared the progress made as a purpose-driven company toward achieving ambitious goals for building a sustainability practice, supporting our people and communities, and upholding ethical governance.

For a global enterprise of more than 80,000 people serving customers in more than 60 countries, compiling and completing this report is no small feat — certainly not for a company that is only three years old. When Kyndryl launched in 2021, we needed to build a holistic and impactful corporate citizenship program from the ground up. We also needed to create a culture that fuels our business success and our efforts to effect positive change.

We aspired to be a leader in this space. So we committed to clearly defining our goals and path to achievement, embracing a willingness to expand our vision as new opportunities emerged. We quickly achieved important milestones because of our foundational commitment to deliver profits and progress with purpose, and thanks to our people — from the Board to our leadership and many associates — who coordinated our program and worked together to execute our goals.

In reflecting on all the hard work that made our report possible, five guiding principles played an outsized role in bringing it to fruition.

Connecting purpose with action

Corporate citizenship runs through our company’s DNA, but our collective success depends on individuals feeling empowered and supported. We took steps early to establish our new culture, The Kyndryl Way.

We translated our commitment to power progress into action by focusing on the drivers within our control — our values and performance.

In the case of our values, we embraced an empathetic approach because our global impact starts with how we care for our employees and engage with our communities. We were restless in achieving our goals because every second counts when it comes to contributing to a more inclusive and sustainable future. And we devoted ourselves to collaboration because working together is crucial to our success.

However, a company’s values are empty phrases without accountability, so we tracked and measured our actions in line with top global standards to communicate our performance transparently. We detailed our ambitious targets in our first Corporate Citizenship Report and shared our measurable progress in our second.

Embracing far-reaching collaboration

We knew we needed all the help we could get as we developed our plans to tackle our emissions baseline, modernize legacy systems, strengthen our people-centric culture and practice good governance. With the full commitment of our CEO and senior leadership from the start, we worked to ensure our environmental, social and trust priorities — and our vision of success — were shared companywide.

At each step, we empowered teams across our company to collaborate. By fostering a culture that welcomed ideas, we applied knowledge from unconventional areas of expertise — from logistics to finance — to identify gaps and opportunities to improve our program.

Our collaboration also included external partnerships. We worked with a diverse group of partners — from leading technology companies to industry coalitions that promote responsible operations — to achieve our Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) goals and deliver the end-to-end services that help customers achieve their own.

Trading perfection for progress

Companies can feel stuck as they consider how to proceed in their sustainability transformations, and they may struggle to see how their actions will address immediate needs to inspire and empower their workforce, improve their governance or contribute to solving global challenges like climate change.

But there’s one certainty: We won’t see progress with inaction.

In the spirit of transparency, our corporate citizenship transformation depended on refusing to let perfection stand in the way of progress. Rather than lose momentum in moments when, inevitably, not everything went precisely to plan, we adapted as we encountered obstacles. Because our program was aligned with and built to use industry best practices, we could quickly move forward and continue progressing. As our fast-paced, challenging and rewarding journey unfolded, we evolved.

We also gave employees opportunities to succeed and encouraged them to learn from failure, believing that progress happens when teams feel fully supported by their organization. Even when they make mistakes, it is crucial to learn from them and grow, and most importantly, turn the lessons learned into actions.

Making the right choices

Building a solid corporate citizenship program doesn’t require endless resources. What’s most important is narrowing your focus to where you can make the most significant impact. As companies look to cut their emissions, for example, they may find that most emissions result from a handful of suppliers. The same is true for addressing the climate crisis: Globally, 80% of carbon emissions can be linked to just over 50 entities.

We traded out thousands of potential priorities for those most aligned with our values and the ones — backed by data — that would help us make the most significant difference.

We found that simplifying our human capital technology and processes unlocked more opportunities to empower our people. We also rapidly scaled and deployed an AI Governance framework because we made it a top focus, aligned with our commitment to helping our workforce and customers responsibly apply and benefit from AI innovation.

A few targeted changes can make a far greater impact than many small ones.

Sharing success

As we hit important milestones in our ESG transformation, we shared what we learned within our company and with others.

A spirit of generosity can be infectious: It’s essential to helping individuals understand their role in affecting large-scale change and encouraging involvement. We also shared our wins, which was vital to furthering our momentum.

We know this work is continuous — it has to be if we’re going to achieve our goals. Success depends on turning platitudes and promises into action. However, the first step in any sustainability journey is among the most important: deciding it’s time to transform.

Our inaugural global Readiness Report shows transformation is top-of-mind for thousands of senior decision-makers. Yet one in two leaders say meeting their ESG goals is challenging for their technology modernization efforts.

As businesses navigate their own journeys, they can continue to learn from our experience. Working together will be critical to solving the global societal and climate challenges that stand in the way of a brighter future.