Page 255 - The New Gold Standard

Sustainability and Stewardship
and participation by employees throughout the company, in-
cluding active committees at the local level. Becky Gill, area di-
rector of quality and member of her hotel’s guidance team,
reflects on her involvement in planning community interac-
tions: “Each year we meet to look at our partnership efforts.
We have goals to drive regular volunteer participation from
across the hotel with our community partner, the Atlanta Food
Bank. During our planning process, we realized that our success
depended on every hotel division taking ownership of its partic-
ipation in food bank activities. As such, the teams in these de-
partments have structured opportunities to go to the food bank
and strengthen their overall group function through the shared
volunteer activity. We have also arranged regularly scheduled
participation times so any of our Ladies and Gentlemen can at-
tend.” Whether at the corporate or property level, the social
responsibility program is not left to chance. These leaders un-
derstand that the success of corporate social responsibility is
achieved by enacting the same strategic and operational prac-
tices necessary for a business’s overall profitability.

STRIKING GOLD

D Have you clearly defined a systematic approach to corpo-
rate social responsibility with specified themes for giving?
D How does your social responsibility program align with your
goals for community support, employee recruitment, and
customer relationship management?
D What measures do you have in place to assess the impact of
your social giving?

C Giving Serves All D

By their nature, social giving programs are designed to enrich
the lives of individuals who are often not the identified customer

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