Bucher + Suter
As a Cisco-dedicated partner, Bucher + Suter deploys, manages, and develops solutions for Cisco Contact Center and the Webex ecosystem. Our goal is to ensure that our clients exceed their own customers' service and CX demands.
Bucher + Suter committed to join the Pledge 1% movement in June this year. As a Salesforce ISV partner, many of us at Bucher + Suter has been exposed to Pledge 1% through our close partnership with Salesforce. Ultimately, getting backing from Bucher + Suter management was a simple case of demonstrating that:
• Tying together the activities that we’re already committed to, to an internal program would help us do more, more efficiently.
• And that the slight cultural changes that a corporate social responsibility program comes with would have significant benefits to our employees, our external relationships, and in time the business in general.
The one significant change, apart from more actively recording our charitable donations, and seeking out organizations who could do with our help, was to give our employees 2 days of Volunteer Time Off (VTO) per year. Again, forgetting the good we could do for organizations during those ~400 days of volunteer time and simply taking into account the benefits for our employees was a pretty easy sell. With management buy-in, we set off to formalize the program.
Forming
After an inspirational initiation call with Lindsey from Pledge 1%, we started sprinting. We created a task force of 8 and set short, medium, and long-term goals, and like that, the Bucher + Suter PLUS Program was born.
In the course of 9 months (running up to March 2023), our objectives (some completed, some in progress, some around the corner) for the program include:
• Branding the program and getting a group of people who could push it forward in a way that would bring about meaningful results.
• Making internal and external announcements to hold the task force accountable for driving advancements.
• Running small experiments like small batch VTO opportunities and making timely or event-bound donations on behalf of our customers and partners.
• Measuring the program’s success through the formation of KPIs.
• Active outreach and the search for more non-profit partners.
• Company-wide initiatives.
Small successes in the first 4 months
• In May, we officially launched the PLUS program at Cisco Live – one of our most important events of the year. As part of PLUS, we committed to cutting down on low-value (<$5) giveaways and instead donate to charities on behalf of our booth visitors. We combined some high-value prizes (from YETIs to AirPod Pros) with poker-style donation chips to be used as play tokens for our claw machine (like the one in Toy Story). If people didn’t win the high-value prizes, they still got to feel like they’d contributed something as we’d be donating to a charity on their behalf. We fundamentally believe that people want to give back. And we think they want to give back more than they want a pen or a branded plastic luggage tag. The positive message and the fun combined to give us our greatest-ever footfall at Cisco Live. It was, from all angles, a roaring success.
• In August, our marketing team, based out of Switzerland, departed on the company’s first official VTO day and headed into the rural mountains to help a Swiss farming family in need. It was back-breaking work, but they reported a sense of accomplishment and team bonding far beyond what they’d experienced in more leisurely team activities.
• As I write this (November 18, 2022), members of our Bensheim-office team, based out of Germany, are helping a local youth organization with repairs to an adventure park. The participants are smiling from ear to ear. The benefits of such activities are so multi-faceted that it guarantees our future commitment to PLUS and Pledge 1%.
• In December, our US teams will be getting together during their holiday get-together to provide hearing screenings with a charity in Nashville, Tennessee.
All of our non-day-to-day activities are now analyzed through a lens of giving back. Where can we do more? What can we do differently to ensure we’re meeting our CSR commitments? Whether charitable donations, volunteer time at team get-togethers, or encouraging our partner ecosystem to introduce us to non-profits who could benefit from our IP and services, the shift in mindset happened relatively quickly where it needed to.
These are small steps, and there’s still a lot to do, but we have a path; we’re excited to be part of the movement and look forward to making a difference.
