Transcriber: Akinori Oyama Reviewer: Capa Girl
How are you guys doing... so far, huh?
SAP, pretty big company.
We have 200,000 customers and that's a lot.
If you download your favorite song or if you get on a plane,
or if you plug in your PC and get some electricity from utility,
most likely we've had to do with that.
So, I thought reinventing capitalism is a fabulous title for me to talk.
Because right now what SAP does so brilliantly is to manage all the stuff
it has managed for 40 years.
Money, people, assets, production plans, and all the good things.
But in this day and age, certainly there is something new.
We need to start managing energy, water, air, toxic material, all those things
as well as we used and as we are managing,
finances, people, and the other things.
So, my challenge as a sustainability guy
at the world largest enterprise software company is,
"How do I take 60,000 people with me on the journey?"
So, let's do a little rewind.
It's 2009 and I've just been announced as the head of sustainability and I had a blast.
We changed the company purpose into "helping the world run better."
We acquired Clear Standards and TechniData to accelerate our move into the software.
We created environmental policy.
We set the target to reduce our emissions by the year 2020 to the level of 2000,
which is about cutting it in half from where we were.
I had a blast.
Things were easy.
We set the policy, for example, that made it more complicated
for people to get onto a plane and do a internal meeting.
In 2009, you remember the crisis that came very handy.
We saved 90 million doing so.
We reduced our emissions by 15 percent.
I thought this job is easy.
Then came 2010.
Economy kicks back in.
And while I thought everything had changed, nothing had changed.
Because I couldn't look fast enough
we're all over the airlines flying around so that we can take grandma to Hawaii
from all the frequent flyer miles we get throughout the year.
That's what's happening.
And I was confused between compliance and innovation.
Because if you put out rules you create compliance,
and people try to find ways to go about them.
If you engage them properly, then you can hope for innovation.
Trust me, as a software company, that's what you want to do.
So, how did we get people to engage in this topic?
So, in 2011, we went for four steps.
These are my time-tested employee engagement strategies
that I wanna share with you today.
First of all, I am trying, as you remember, to get to have these 15,000 developers
and 60,000 people at the company to think about
how can they take sustainability and make it part of the software
they write everyday.
The software that manages airports, utilities, production plans and so forth.
Number one: you create awareness and transparency.
So, we send out quick questionnaire.
Half of our employees returned it.
We now know pretty much exactly how do people get to work.
Why that?
Because cars are one third of our emissions,
but also cars are right next to the beer
that's where they have the spot in the heart of German developers.
(Laughter) It is very important thing, big deal.
And in Germany, we have 15,000 company cars.
You know what?
When they pay a flat fee every month, they get fuel from the company.
They can drive as much as they want.
Now, get those people to car pool.
That was the trick. That was what we tried to do.
So, step number one, awareness and transparencies.
Sending out the survey. Creating a dashboard.
Everyone can see.
You can drill down by function, by region.
Setting a target of trying to get 10 percent of our folks into car pools.
We also made it more tangible.
Because every day the people at SAP when they go and drive to work,
they commute from Earth to the Moon,
back to Earth,
and back to the Moon every day together.
And I heard a person laugh over here.
In the United States, we collectively every day commute from the Sun
all the way to Neptune, every day.
That's the entire solar system since we've kicked out Pluto.
(Laughter)
Ok?
So, you create awareness.
Then, you need tools and processes. That's number two.
'Cause people say, "Yeah, that's cool, but how do I do it?"
So, we ran a little bit of an ideation contest.
We have a big institution at SAP. It is called the Demo Jam.
Developer kick off Demo Jam.
That's where the cool guys get on stage
to show something they have done which they think is amazing.
So, they put this out and they win the demo jam with a car pooling app.
That's doing a lot of fabulous things I am not going to talk about today
'cause this is about engagement.
'Cause the most important thing was once we had the software
and we had the awareness,
it all comes down to fear, greed, and aspiration.
Those are the things that make people move
and I differ slightly from Einstein who said it's fear, greed, and stupidity.
But, fear, greed, and aspiration. So, here is the thing.
That's my test that I go through if I try to get people to do something.
Number one, is anybody afraid of driving to work alone?
No.
Very few people who work at SAP cannot afford to drive alone to work.
So, greed doesn't work either.
So, it must be aspiration.
How do you grab them?
First of all, you say, don't you feel stupid sitting in a congested highway
when the car pool lane is open.
(Laughter)
We can actually take the money we save from the car pool
and donate it on your behalf to a charitable cause.
You can car pool for a cause.
Ok?
We can get you a reserved parking spot
-- now that's something I would've loved to have today.
Yeah?
Ok.
So, you need to really understand getting the emotions of your folks
and that's how you actually promote the activity.
The tag line was not "Save the money some money."
It wasn't "Save the Earth."
It was "Make new friends, know the gossip."
(Laughter)
That's why people car pool in a company
and it is a matching exercise between people who have never met before.
Now, we had a tremendous start and then it kind of slowed down.
And, I was missing the key element to success.
And, that was the CEO.
So, number four, it's leadership role models.
The CEO started to use the car pooling app.
And you can imagine the excitement of the potential
that you are being picked up by the CEO of a 60,000 people company,
sit with this person in a one-on-one on the back in the car
having a conversation about whatever.
So, people asked themselves, "What should I wear, what should I say?"
What did he say? What did I say?"
We had blogs and lots of conversations inside, steering the moment.
Awarness and transparency, step number one.
Number two, tools and processes.
Number three, getting them incentives.
And those don't need to be financial incentives --
think about the parking. And have leadership participation.
That's key.
That's how we've changed and how we've gotten people to engage.
And, today, we did 20,000 car pools,
we created 1500 person days of car pooling.
And, we got a little closer to people understanding there is an impact
between the software you use and the way how you treat this planet.
Thank you, folks.
(Applause)