Acknowledging the reality of the current climate crisis, forward-looking corporations are adopting business strategies to make their organizations more resilient to its far-reaching consequences. Climate change can directly impact employee well-being, service delivery location decisions, and other critical business operations. Read on to gain a better understanding of its short- and long-term impacts and what to consider.
“Jakarta is sinking,” screamed headlines as Indonesia announced moving its capital 2,000 kilometers northeast to Nusantara, on the island of Borneo. The move that could cost Indonesia upwards of $30 billion is driven by concerns of Jakarta’s submergence by 2050. Jakarta could be the first of many cities to be adversely impacted by climate change.
The debate on climate change has moved from whether it is real to when will it impact us. Climate change has become inescapable. The discussion on climate change featured primarily in social media, conferences, academia, and educational institutes have moved to boardrooms. Corporates are increasingly concerned about the short- and long-term impact climate change can have on their businesses.
Facing pressure from employees, customers, and investors to act on climate change, corporations are increasingly forced to acknowledge climate change’s economic, physical, and operational impact on their business and human capital.
Hotter summers, colder winters, and an increasing frequency of extreme weather events like storms, hurricanes, and floods are all signs of the climate crisis. According to multiple studies, the earth’s surface temperature has seen the highest increase in the last 40 years, with 10 of the warmest years occurring post-2005. Scientists worldwide have reported record ice cap melting and glacier retreats.
The exponential increase in extreme weather events and natural disasters should be a more pressing concern. In 2020 and 2021, the world has seen a spike in natural disasters in the last few years, with a five-fold increase over 50 years. Climate change has led to warmer temperatures, leading to more frequent heatwaves and droughts. Sea levels have been rising steadily, coupled with frequent coastal region flooding.
Corporations are now acknowledging that climate change can have a significant impact on business functions. Extreme weather events in recent years have disrupted business operations and resulted in the loss of human life, physical assets, and infrastructure.
Companies are trying to think beyond the short-term consequences already being felt and understand the long-term effects of climate change on international business strategies. In addition to business disruptions, climate change can have implications on employees’ mental and physical well-being and, in extreme cases, loss of life. In most companies, especially the global services industry, human capital is the most critical asset. Climate change can significantly impact business operations due to lower productivity, loss of work hours, and possible higher attrition rates.
As companies acknowledge climate change’s direct and indirect business impacts, the more forward-thinking companies have started adopting plans to make themselves more resilient to climate change and its consequences. Although this is just the beginning, a lot more needs to be done in terms of workforce and location strategies.
Most companies are still more focused on the short-term, like building climate-resilient buildings and reinforcing existing infrastructure to make it more resilient to the impacts of climate change. Location strategy is a long-term decision with significant investment and sunk costs. Once a company decides to start delivery operations from a particular location, it is an irreversible long-term decision due to the high capital and labor investment.
Companies will have to consider the impact of climate change on future location strategy decision making, which traditionally includes talent, cost arbitrage, and conventional operating and business environment parameters. Climate change impacts different regions, locations, and geographies differently. Although two locations might be neighboring coastal cities, the impact of climate change could differ depending on the landscape.
Hence, it is paramount for companies to understand the effects of climate change on the particular location they are accessing and the degree of its impact. The holistic, long-term assessment should consider historical and predicted climate patterns, government mitigation measures and their effectiveness, and geographic factors.
In our recent viewpoint, Impact of Climate Change on Delivery Location Sustainability, we cover climate change’s impact on significant delivery locations around the world, across multiple parameters including rising temperatures, heatwaves, floods, hurricanes, storms, and rising sea levels with qualitative insights on select sites. The report provides a high-level view on short-term and long-term risk management measures to mitigate the effects of climate change on companies and employees.
To discuss further, please reach out to [email protected] or [email protected].
Also, don’t miss our webinar, 5 Success-driving Actions: How to Unlock Untapped, Affordable Talent, exploring key talent strategies in various geographies.
The boom in hiring for engineering and IT skills has been met with a global imbalance between the demand and available supply of these needed skills. To navigate the talent shortage challenge, businesses are revamping their strategies and putting a greater focus on initiatives like inclusivity to find talent. Targeting marginalized and excluded groups and even exploring new geographies provides businesses with the opportunity to uncover and acquire new tech talent.
Join this LinkedIn Live session to learn:
Organizations that have a diversified workforce and prioritize providing opportunities to all will ultimately contribute to building a stable global economy. While gender equity and inclusion have improved over the last decades, many challenges remain, including discrimination/bias, underrepresentation in leadership levels, and lack of access to education and employment opportunities. Impact sourcing is a business imperative that will not only help companies reach new talent pools but also offer opportunities to marginalized communities and populations, especially women.
Impact sourcing is a business practice in which companies intentionally prioritize service providers that hire and provide career development opportunities to people who otherwise have limited prospects for employment.
Companies are implementing impact sourcing models to elevate excluded groups and improve gender equality through opportunities such as training and employment in various regions, especially where educational and career opportunities are not readily available to all. By including impact sourcing initiatives, organizations can begin to embed gender-responsive and ethical procurement practices into their business models, and, ultimately, affect social-economic improvements, such as decreased poverty and increased employment rates.
A response by the approximately US$215 billion1 global services industry to address social exclusion, impact sourcing is not a new concept but can make a significant impact. Considering that third-party services is one of the largest corporate sourcing/procurement spend categories, with companies often spending 5% of revenue on services partners, the practice has the potential to not just open up new talent pools, but also provide equal opportunities.
According to S&P Global data, the percentage of women in the total workforce in developed and emerging markets has averaged around 35% over the past five years and has been exacerbated by the global pandemic. The proportion of women decreases progressively up the corporate ladder. However, in developed markets, the percentage of women in senior management is even lower than the number of women within boards of directors.
By investing in impact sourcing, companies can combat unequal treatment of women in the workforce with specific impact sourcing strategy goals. For instance, they can focus on closing the gender gap at the base of the issue rather than reporting on diversity indicators at the top, such as the number of women on boards or the percentage of women’s ownership. This is part of a growing movement to broaden supplier diversity to gender-responsive procurement, spearheaded by UN Women[1].
Impact sourcing is one of the most credible and powerful ways to accomplish some of the 17 UN SDGs. As a result, it bolsters gender-responsive procurement, which is defined as the selection of services, goods, and civil works that consider their impact on gender equality and women’s empowerment.
Impact sourcing naturally aligns with UN SDGs in the following ways:
 |
Goal 1 – No Poverty: Impact sourcing helps provide employment opportunities to marginalized groups, contributing to reduced income distribution gaps and eradicating poverty |
 |
Goal 4 – Quality Education: The innovation in impact sourcing includes training, accommodation, recognition of unique talents, and career counseling for youth who may not have access to higher education |
 |
Goal 5 – Gender Equality: Putting women at the center of economies will fundamentally drive more sustainable outcomes since individuals who identify as women are increasingly becoming part of the core workforce. Organizations can become more inclusive towards women by having a rigorous impact sourcing strategy |
 |
Goal 8 – Decent Work and Economic Growth: Employment is at the core of impact sourcing, helping organizations offer good jobs to marginalized individuals |
 |
Goal 10 – Reduced Inequalities: Growing inequality is one of the biggest roadblocks in achieving social progress and global stability. Impact sourcing can contribute towards inclusion and equal opportunities within and among countries |
With lower attrition rates and higher corresponding levels of employee engagement, which results in lower costs and higher productivity over time, impact sourcing also provides a diversified talent pool to companies.
Impact sourcing encourages companies to help underserved populations, like women, move out of poverty and transform their lives and provide for their families. Corporations can engage in inclusive hiring practices that promote equal opportunity, diversity, skill development, and equal treatment for women. A responsible hiring mechanism by organizations can effectively contribute towards increasing employment opportunities and career development for this socially impacted and vulnerable segment of society, creating meaningful change in the world and taking an impactful step in the fulfillment of the UN SDGs.
Additionally, as the LGBTQ+ community enters the workforce, organizations may expand the definition of “gender” to become more inclusive in their impact sourcing decisions.
Established as a US-based for-profit sales and marketing organization in 1994, Televerde provides on-the-job training to more than 200,000 current and formerly incarcerated women in the US. As a purpose-driven company, Televerde helps these women reintegrate back into their communities.
Televerde has a global workforce of more than 600 employees, 70 percent of whom sit behind prison walls, and about 60 percent of its staff is comprised of incarcerated women. In addition to being paid fair market hourly wages, they receive training for the required skills and can also achieve certifications in sales and marketing, while earning college credits for completing company-sponsored training programs.
Not only does the Televerde business model help these women, but it has enabled the company to generate more than US$8 billion in revenue for its clients.
In 2020, Televerde formed its non-profit unit Televerde Foundation to further empower incarcerated women and serve as a driving force to fulfill Televerde’s mission to change the lives of 10,000 disempowered people by 2030.
A global impact sourcing specialist, iMerit was founded in 2012 in rural India to bring a diverse talent pool from underserved backgrounds into the digital workforce. Today, 52 percent of its workforce is female, and, interestingly, the company was founded by Radha Basu, a technology pioneer who rose through the ranks when very few women did. By embedding purpose objectives into its business model, the for-profit impact sourcing firm has raised US$23.5 million in funding since July 2021.
Today, iMerit employs more than 4,000 data enrichment and annotation experts in Bhutan, India, and the US. It launched one of its first all-women centers in Metiabruz, West Bengal, a region where women have traditionally lacked professional career opportunities.
A for-profit training-data company, Sama focuses on annotating data for artificial intelligence algorithms. As one of the pioneers in the impact sourcing space, it aims to reduce poverty, empower women, and mitigate climate change. The company combines its technology platform and worker training programs to increase economic opportunity for those in underserved communities.
Sama, a certified B Corporation, operates global delivery centers in Kenya and Uganda and was named one of the “Best for the World” for workers in 2021.
By 2019, Sama had helped over 50,000 people move out of poverty. Its impact was particularly strong for women during the COVID-19 pandemic, when Sama was able to create a remote working model, allowing them to continue working despite lockdown orders.
An India-based certified woman-owned business and impact sourcing company, FiveS Digital has a workforce of over 1,500 employees at seven delivery centers in India, with a presence in Europe and North America. It started as a pure-play BPO company in 2009 and has entered the digital technology services domain over the years.
FiveS Digital collaborates with several non-profit organizations and supports young professionals’ upskilling needs, especially women from Tier-2 or Tier-3 cities and rural areas. With diversity and inclusivity as one of its key focus areas, it invests in opportunities and leadership roles for women. As a result of its continued commitment and focus, it was recently certified as a Women’s Business Enterprise (WBE) by the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC), the largest third-party certifier of women-owned and operated businesses.
An increasingly used type of gender-responsive procurement, impact sourcing helps organizations discover initiatives to improve gender inclusion at all levels by partnering with leading impact sourcing specialists like FiveS, Sama, iMerit, and Televerde, as well as mainstream providers.
Enterprises can make a difference by partnering with service providers that employ groups experiencing exclusion, whether as an HR practice or by subcontracting to impact sourcing specialists. As businesses increasingly reach into untapped geographies for hidden talent, they will help build a stable global economy and promote inclusivity – a true win-win scenario.
Discover more about the benefits of inclusivity in the LinkedIn Live event, Why Inclusivity is Essential in Building Your Tech Talent Workforce.
[1] https://www.unwomen.org/en/about-us/procurement/gender-responsive-procurement
Impact sourcing is a socially responsible way to find untapped, affordable talent while promoting inclusivity and allowing organizations to reap substantial business benefits, including:
Watch this webinar as our experts reveal key findings from our recent Impact Sourcing Specialist State of the Market report. We shed light on how impact sourcing is helping enterprises and service providers mitigate challenges such as high attrition and talent costs and shortages, while supporting the welfare of communities.
Our experts explore:
Who should attend?
Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives seem to be on the minds of nearly every organization. Today’s environmental and social challenges are immense. How can we aid in improving the lives of all individuals and our planet so the generations after us can thrive, all while creating growth in the economy for the present? We won’t answer these questions overnight, but it’s easier than imagined for organizations to dive in and start setting up ESG goals. To learn why and how to get involved in this growing movement, read on.
The three facets, E S and G, do not necessarily go hand in hand; however, initiating one often affects another. Ultimately, all three move organizations in the same direction – bringing about change for the greater good.
When broken down, environmental, social, and governance elements have very separate definitions, yet they still intertwine and bolster each other. The E and the S, environmental and social, target inclusion, conservation, diversity, sustainability, labor practices, carbon mitigation, etc., and serve as those larger goals that organizations aim to reach. The G, governance, is where these goals and initiatives get hashed out, planned, and budgeted for, and where the reporting, tracking, and monitoring are performed. If an organization has strong governance systems, its environmental and social priorities may be structured with a very distinct idea of what the objectives, strategy, and results will be.
When an organization wants to be environmentally sustainable and/or socially responsible, it may incur upfront costs that impact profitability. But with forward-looking strategies, such as a cost-benefit analysis, organizations can plan and budget, so the benefits outweigh the costs. The long-term payoffs can include improving diversity and current workplace labor practices by meeting ESG mandates or making a cost difference for the business.
Achieving stronger and more impactful environmental and social results means that governance is staying ahead of the pace of change, whether regulatory, risk-related, or business opportunities. Organizations need to keep their eye on what’s coming to be ahead of the curve.
For example, the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has recently proposed new transparency rules for organizations to incorporate diversity throughout the business as well as the board. They must also disclose whether they have reached certain diversity targets. Similarly, a recent regulation change in the US arrived when the Securities and Exchange Commission approved a proposal, the Board Diversity Rule, by Nasdaq requiring organizations to report on the diversity within their board. The purpose of the Board Diversity Rule is to promote greater diversity among the boards of directors of Nasdaq-listed companies and provide stakeholders with consistent board diversity disclosure.
Mitigating climate change risk is another area organizations are focusing on in business continuity plans. One method is having an alternative delivery strategy where work can easily be transferred from an area impacted by natural disasters to another site. This model of having smaller centers in more locations can benefit workers in rural communities by reducing migration from villages to cities and have a positive environment impact by lowering carbon emissions from vehicles with less commuting.
Governance systems that can stay current or ahead of these kinds of changes can better prepare and strategize for changes that could affect their organization in the future and make adjustments now rather than later, mitigating future roadblocks.
Most companies can easily present a business case for the vast majority of ESG initiatives. In addition to keeping pace with regulatory changes, organizations can also realize many benefits by carrying out environmental and social programs. Here are some examples of how different industries are making a difference:
Global Services
Currently, with the “Great Resignation” and talent shortage, many organizations are turning to impact sourcing as a solution to provide an affordable, untapped talent pool. Impact sourcing can bring an organization qualified workers with skill sets aligned to match client needs, engaged employees providing lower attrition rates, and opportunities to fulfill corporate social responsibility and diversity objectives. At a bare minimum level, organizations need to begin designing talent strategies that incorporate diversity and pay equity into their workplace ecosystem if they want to attract and retain talent.
Healthcare
Another business case that is catching steam in the healthcare world is decentralized clinical trials (DCT)s, where data is collected from a patient through sensors or remote monitoring devices, eliminating the need to visit a medical site. A huge benefit from DCTs is the reduction of trial costs and timelines, attracting a more diverse patient population. DCTs are also easily accessible to patients who have mobility issues, and can reach a global audience, increasing inclusivity and diversity.
Technology
The tech industry also is doing its part to help by exploring ways to mitigate the impact software development is having on our carbon footprint. All major tech companies have made ambitious commitments to be carbon neutral or negative as the world attempts to confront the critical climate change dilemma and are competitively differentiating themselves through green computing strategies. This feat can be achieved through high-performance coding standards, self-adaptable solutions, and code reusability. Even blockchain protocols are joining the green IT bandwagon by exploring different mining models. Learn more on this topic in our recent green software development blog.
Going forward, to start making a real impact, more organizations need to address challenges and set goals to better our societies and the environment. If we want to see change, now’s the time to dive in.
To learn more about ESG and how to get involved, watch our webinars, ESG in Services: What Sourcing Teams Must Know to Do More and Digital for Good: Shape Your Sustainability Journey.
For more information on how to implement ESG initiatives, reach out to [email protected].
Access the on-demand webinar, which was delivered live on December 7, 2021.
While environmental, social, and governance (ESG) objectives have been important to sourcing teams for years, most efforts have focused on the materials supply chain or smaller, less strategic suppliers. Savvy sourcing teams have realized that’s no longer enough and are focusing on ways to navigate their ESG objectives with large, strategic service providers.
In this webinar, our analysts will share current ESG trends in the global services industry and provide guidance on how to use your services spend to better reach your organization’s diversity and sustainability goals.
What questions will our experts answer?
Who should attend?
While not new concepts to the services industry, the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the number of boardroom discussions on diverse hiring practices, especially with the ongoing talent shortage. Having a diverse workforce can provide numerous benefits, making it the way forward for the Business Process Services (BPS) industry. To learn more about why your organization should pay attention to supplier diversity, Impact Sourcing (IS), and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I), read on.
Diversity is an important conversation happening right now because hiring individuals with diverse backgrounds and thoughts can result in greater innovation and more creativity. Bringing together different perspectives influenced by varied life experiences can enhance the creation, function, and delivery of products and services. Along with this richness in thinking come tangible financial benefits beyond lower operational costs. Thus, impact sourcing is impactful sourcing – for the bottom line too!
According to Everest Group research, hiring IS workers and having a diverse workforce can provide the following benefits:
| Tangible benefits | Intangible benefits |
| Lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) – TCO for IS workers is 3-10% less compared to traditional workers because of lower attrition costs | Greater Employee Engagement – Having an involved and motivated workforce generates long-term savings as companies spend less time recruiting and training |
| Operational performance – IS workers have a track record of meeting target Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) | Competitive advantage – Being viewed as a socially-responsible employer can help companies win business and attract employees |
| Multilingual/vernacular language services delivery – Diversity and impact sourcing help companies access a large pool of skilled, high-potential yet under-utilized talent | Fulfillment of corporate social responsibility and diversity objectives – Companies can contribute towards their CSR goals by employing IS and diverse workers |
| Lower attrition – Attrition among IS workers is significantly lower than traditional workers | Direct and indirect positive community impact – Five to six family members or related individuals benefit from every IS worker hired |
We’re seeing the Great Resignation and a talent war play out in the services industry. As companies reassess their talent and hiring strategies and working models for the future of work, they’re thinking about previously untapped talent in rural areas and tier-3 and -4 towns and cities. These locations have gained attractiveness due to the pandemic-induced mainstream prevalence of hybrid and remote working, ubiquitous high-speed internet, and infrastructure availability for a work-from-anywhere setup.
Hiring from diverse communities is a win-win for all, especially now. At the same time, establishing and practicing norms and values of inclusion and equity among employees will help foster more engaged and productive employees, lowering attrition and associated new-hire training costs.
Growing numbers of providers are making this area a priority. Since diversity has been around for a long time, large BPO firms such as Startek, Sutherland, and Teleperformance, among others, have been focusing on diversity for its direct and indirect benefits. Smaller providers also are leveraging diversity and impact sourcing as the cornerstone of their talent strategies. Some examples include:
Supplier diversity:
Impact sourcing specialists:
DE&I:
Impact sourcing is making a meaningful difference for people with limited employment opportunities. One example is Teleperformance, which hired more than 70,000 IS workers last year alone and employs 40,000-plus workers without secondary school education at their offices across the globe.
Teleperformance started hiring IS workers in South Africa in 2013-14, primarily for domestic delivery, and has consistently found these individuals achieve the same performance levels as traditional workers, according to an Everest Group study conducted with Teleperformance in 2016. Encouraged by these positive experiences, the company worked with a training academy to train and hire IS workers specifically for its international BPO operations.
Our interviews with other market participants indicate that even companies that do not measure the performance of IS workers have reported lower attrition among IS workers, and there are multiple instances of these talented workers growing their roles to senior and managerial positions.
Customers want to interact with organizations that have employees who look like them, and people also want to work for companies that care about their communities. While diversity and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) present challenges such as inadequate data disclosures, “greenwashing,” and difficulty in calculating estimated Return on Investment (RoI), they can be a vital part of a company’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) policy. They are thus becoming increasingly important as an enterprise procurement requirement.
We believe that good social practices should be embedded within work rather than be a separate undertaking. Diversity is not just beneficial for companies commercially but also reaps huge non-tangible benefits in terms of improving brand image, increasing employee retention, and generating goodwill – making it the way forward for the services industry.
To learn more about impact sourcing, read this related blog. If you are interested in discussing these topics, reach out to [email protected] or [email protected].
©2023 Everest Global, Inc. Privacy Notice Terms of Use Do Not Sell My Information
"*" indicates required fields
