A measured response

Corporate Responsibility (CR) has never been the most accountable of beasts. To begin with, there isn’t even general agreement around its purpose – some say it’s there to encourage good corporate citizenship, others clearly see it as a profit driver – so any universal measurements are a pretty big ask.

Also, some elements of CR laugh in the face of standard metrics. Anyone like to suggest a robust measure for organisational ethics? No, us neither.

One day in October 2012, Eugenio Pirri, Vice President of People and Organisational Development at Dorchester Collection, was called into the office of his CEO, Christopher Cowdray. At the meeting, Pirri was given responsibility for the CR remit. Cowdray was pulling it out of Marketing and planting it firmly on the HR agenda.

Pirri, whose background includes a stint in Finance, is an aficionado of measurability. To him, CR seemed a bit too vague. ‘It just seemed to be about sending people out to clean the Thames occasionally’, he said.

If Pirri and this CR thing were ever going to get on, CR was going to have to shape up and satisfy Pirri’s liking for commercial relevance and hard, fast numbers.

Passion for engagement

Pirri is a man of the moment. He’s recently been named HR Director of the Year and, with his team, has collected a long list of HR awards. (Only last month, the team added to their haul with the IIP ‘Company of the Year’ gong at the Employee Engagement Awards.)

And Dorchester Collection is not a boutique operation. It employs around 3,500 people (employees are, interestingly, referred to as ‘internal guests’) in a portfolio of iconic properties such as the Beverly Hills Hotel, Hotel Bel-Air, Le Meurice and, of course, the Dorchester itself.

Pirri’s main passion is engagement, which he used as a lens to invent an approach to his new CR remit. ‘I had to find a way to get corporate responsibility to speak to my engagement side’, he says.

He began by penning what, in other organisations, would be referred to as a policy document. ‘I call it my CR vision. I don’t like the word policy, or the idea of policy. In fact, I’ve reduced the number of policies in the whole of the organisation to just eleven. That’s it.’

Massaging figures

This vision involved substantial localised activity. This was pretty much an easy decision to make, given the substantial differences between properties.

‘Our property near Ascot, Coworth Park, has been renovated to a very high environmental spec’, says Pirri. ‘So we can’t expect them to improve their sustainability results by, say, 10% year on year.’

‘But they do have a large number of gardeners and spa workers, and we can push them to do more and more wonderful work in their community.’

Coworth Park works extensively with the Ascot District Day Centre, giving its residents treats such as hand massages. The park’s gardeners are also frequently to be found tidying the gardens of the hotel’s elderly neighbours.

Each hotel throughout the estate has dedicated CR champions, a steering group and networks from different departments and levels. Pirri is keen to point out how CR is not a top-down initiative.

The Beverly Hills Hotel has an initiative called Think PINK (PINK being an acronym for ‘Project in Natural Kindness’, as well as famously being the colour of the ‘Pink Palace’ itself).

Last year the initiative engaged over 300 staff and clocked up 2284 community hours. ‘It’s run by four employees, not managers’, Pirri emphasises.

‘Everything has a financial outcome’

So what about those measurements? In 2012, Pirri introduced quarterly CR audits, with each property required to self-assess performance against five agreed CR categories.

All these categories – Ethics, Environment, People, Procurement and Supply Chain, and Community – were given sets of metrics, including ones relating to cost and income. ‘We need to recognise that everything, even CR, has a financial outcome’ insists Pirri.

Naturally, it’s not the easiest thing in the world to measure outputs in all those categories. (‘How ethical is your hotel?’ would be a pretty dud question.) So in many cases, the questions cunningly interrogate the degree to which systems are being implemented, rather than the outcomes themselves.

For example, ‘Does the hotel have a system or program that allows employees to anonymously report ethical behaviour?’ And, ‘Are ethical workshops offered on a regular basis?’.

With data, Pirri can, and does, set targets. And this year the self-assessment part of the deal will be waived, with Pirri and his central team conducting the assessments themselves, taking the opportunity to check on progress and share CR learning around the estate.

‘World-class’ satisfaction figures

But the truly important measurements are found in Dorchester Collection’s Employee Engagement Surveys. There are two annually: one comprehensive survey, and one Pulse check six months later.

Since Pirri took over CR, the metrics around these have risen from an already impressive level to figures that the surveys’ facilitators call ‘world-class’.

For example, the ‘organisational impact’ on CR matters has risen from a rating of 85.9% to 91.3%. Perhaps even more happily for Pirri and his policy of localised action, the ‘personal impact’ figure has edged from 90.2% to a vertiginous 93.9%.

Pirri doesn’t believe these figures prove he’s cracked it. ‘There’s much more to do with CR, of course’, he says. ‘A score does not prove success, but it does prove we’re heading in the right direction.’

But aligning CR with organisational values, structuring it into meaningful work streams and measuring effort and results is a strategy upon which Pirri would happily hang his hat.

But can all CR activity really be measured financially? ‘Maybe there are some financials that you can’t measure’, Pirri admits, smiling. ‘For instance, we partner with 26 schools globally. I haven’t the figures to demonstrate the precise connection between this and profitability, but I do know that my student intake is of a far higher calibre because of the partnerships.’

And even if the statistics aren’t all pure gold, Pirri recommends that HR people lean towards such metrics whenever they have the chance, whatever their sphere of influence.

‘You simply have to behave like the senior individuals from the other disciplines’, he counsels. ‘I don’t mind my employees seeing me as a cheerleader. But as soon as I step into that boardroom, those other directors need to see me as an equal.’

About the author

Andrew Baird

Andrew is the CEO of HRville. He is also Employer Brand Director of Blackbridge Communications, Editorial Director of Professionals in Law and an associate of The Smarty Train. Previously, he was the MD of TCS Advertising.