De Baak in discussion with Achmea on the topic of sustainability

Michiel Res, program director, interviews Erwin Heeneman, innovation manager at Achmea.

What is your view on sustainable operations? Is it a necessity or a luxury for companies?
To secure your company’s reputation in the long term, you have no choice but to operate sustainably. Incidentally, Achmea uses the term CSR. CSR means that we use the available resources in a sustainable manner. The “C” in CSR stands for “Corporate”, which means that our business must be economically sustainable in the long term. In other words, our business must be self-reliant. Sustainability is also a trigger for innovation: if there is scarcity, it makes sense to devise innovative solutions. This is how you turn a problem into an opportunity.

Can you give another example of social innovation at Achmea?
Our commitment to voluntary care. You can be a voluntary care provider the moment that someone around you suddenly needs care. According to the Netherlands Institute for Social Research (SCP), 2.4 million people in the Netherlands are voluntary care providers. Voluntary care providers are often unfamiliar with the many facilities available to them. For example, voluntary care providers are entitled to tax breaks, free parking permits and temporary replacement at work. Voluntary care has a positive effect on patients and reduces the costs of care. We want to develop a digital platform so that voluntary care providers will not have to keep reinventing the wheel. The gains of this initiative are undeniable and the business case is sustainable. The only problem is that classical solutions imply that the costs are for the initiators and the benefits are for (the many) receivers. This raises the question of whether you want to go ahead with it. It calls for a different way of thinking, a broader look at your own organization and at society. The benefits that can be obtained are financial as well as social. You cannot multiply unless you can divide, so you would need to find a suitable formula.

You often see that organizations only have a small team that is concerned with sustainability, the so-called greenwash. How do you incorporate sustainability in the genes of Achmea?
Our higher management members, for example, participate in a group training program of almost one year that we refer to as The Challenge. Each Challenger group addresses social issues such as functional illiteracy, diabetes, homeless youth, voluntary care, and safety and youth. Meanwhile, you as an individual manager can formulate your own learning questions and start working from there. The Challenge is also an opportunity to reflect on what you really want and what really motivates you. If you want to be more in touch with your environment, it is important to be in touch with yourself. This will make it much easier for you to use your potential. In other words, it teaches you to use your own resources in a sustainable manner.

One final question: how do you achieve sustainable innovation?
I would prefer to formulate that question differently: how do you allow people to reach their full potential? We believe we can achieve this by connecting people and by having them share their knowledge. Ask your people to what extent they use their capacities and how much untapped potential they have. Then give them the opportunity to use this potential. This will increase the level of employee involvement and that’s where the real power of innovation lies. As a result, employees will navigate much more on their emotional and moral compass, and this is a prerequisite for sustainable innovation.

More inspiration on the topic of sustainability can be found at Meet The World ’09, Taking Global Responsibility, an international conference held on January 9, 2009 at De Baak Management Centrum VNO-NCW.