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How To Create A Social Mission For Your Company

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Optimism in the workplace is hard to find these days. Most young people entering the workforce do not believe in leaders’ impact on society, commitment to improving the world, or even trustworthiness, according to Deloitte’s 2019 Global Millennial Survey.

Yet an increasing number of leaders and entrepreneurs want to prove them wrong by creating mission-driven companies that balance the pursuit of profits with the commitment to a broader purpose. Easier said than done, right? According to Scott Koloms, president of B Corporation, Facilities Management Services (FMS) located in Louisville, Kentucky, the key is to keep it simple and let your values guide your journey.

FMS is the first janitorial company to have received B Corps certification – a seal proving that the company is meeting the highest standards of verified performance including social, environmental, public transparency, and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose.

Koloms says that he didn’t start out with the goal of creating a mission-driven business. His journey started 18 years ago and has been never-ending. And he wants to share the lessons he has learned along the way.

Koloms’ early career goals did not include running a business. He was pursuing a doctorate in literature and rhetoric at Kent State University in preparation for becoming a writer. Meanwhile, back in Shelbyville, Kentucky, Koloms’ father had bought a small janitorial business with a loan from the Small Business Administration (SBA). Tragically, he passed away unexpectedly a short while later leaving the company with a $780,000 long-term debt. At the time the company was bringing in revenues of around $700,000 while losing approximately $100,000 a year.

Feeling frustrated with his academic work, Koloms returned to Kentucky to assume responsibility for the company. He was surprised to walk into a business that was using credit cards for operating capital. Therefore his initial focus was on ensuring that the company was viable. He was not thinking of how to become a mission-driven company. He says, “That definitely happened over time. For the first few years, I had the sense that if I treat people well, including employees, vendors, customers and the people calling every month about the SBA loan payment, the profit and financial stability would follow.”

Eight or nine years later, he took the 15 top-level leaders in the company to a state park in Kentucky for team-building. They discussed how the number of employees in the company had grown to 200 from the 30 who were in place when Scott’s dad died. “We believed that we had succeeded because we truly cared for each other. We didn’t realize it at the time, but we were coming up with our core values.” 

Their next step was to figure out how to bake their values into the DNA of the company. Koloms says, “We wanted to figure out how we could ensure that caring was going to show up in policy and the way we operate as we continued to grow.” This was the first shift towards intentionality. Prior to the retreat, they had just assumed that if they cared for each other, everything else would fall into place. 

Even as they began using their values as a filter for making decisions, they still didn’t have a specific social or environmental purpose. Their social mission came later.

“We moved to thinking hard about how we could care about our employees who are janitors when we couldn’t pay them $50,000 a year. The market wouldn’t bear it.” Nevertheless, they did make a commitment to change this market over the long-haul – a fight they continue today. At the same time, they looked for other ways to demonstrate their concern for front-line workers who were janitors.

They started out by hosting a simple company picnic with karaoke – an event that they now hold yearly. Koloms says that they bus in hundreds of employees from all over the state these days. While the picnic quickly became very popular with their employees and their families, they wanted to do more. They asked themselves how they could demonstrate caring through their behavior.

Early on, this process was very intuitive. “We knew that we wanted to operate with empathy. So we would go into situations with an eye towards trying to understand as opposed to placing blame and punishing.”

Around 2012, Koloms went out to California to investigate meditation and yoga for personal reasons. He says, “While I was out there, I met a couple of folks that ran larger companies in this intentional, conscious way.” He was inspired as he saw that companies could really scale and still hold onto their ideals. “ There was a whole movement around this that I really wasn’t aware of up until that point.” He returned to Kentucky more enlightened and energized to find ways to better support the company’s employees. Neverthelss, he still hadn’t landed on exactly what to do next.

The truly pivotal moment for Koloms was when he met Jay Coen Gilbert, one of the founders of B Labs, the nonprofit that created the B Corporation certification. “While he was talking about an assessment process, I was seeing a roadmap. This certification process forced us to look at things that we hadn’t thought of to become intentional about operating the business the right way.” Two years later, FMS achieved B Corps certification.

To become a B Corps, they needed a clear social mission. Scott says that while they were already functioning as a good company, at this point they converted to becoming mission-driven or a socially conscious business. “We are a janitorial service and one of our biggest problems is turnover. So we decided to set a social mission that would help address this issue.” They determined that their overarching social mission was to provide access and opportunities for their front-line employees and to help the communities where they live to thrive.

Koloms points out that this problem-focused approach makes sense because the concept behind becoming a B Corps is that the execution of a social mission would ultimately lead to the financial and overall health of the organization. Nevertheless, they still had to decide exactly what kind of opportunities might meet their employees’ needs. So they asked them.

Their employees said that they wanted to live healthier lives and would like for their kids to have greater access to opportunities. “Eventually we identified two pillars that fall underneath our overarching social mission. We decided to concentrate on the financial and physical health of our employees.”

Once they determined their focus, they were able to zero in on programming. For example, to address the employees’ interests in health, they partner with a local nonprofit that creates fresh-stop marketplaces. “Together we created a farmer’s market on our campus where our employees can get fresh fruits and vegetables, every payday during the warm months. We subsidize this market so, for $5, our employees get enough fresh fruit and vegetables for a family of four for two weeks.” And they have experts available to discuss nutrition and to teach their employees to cook the produce.

In addition, FMS is still fighting to bring up wages in their market while also providing financial education and assistance for their employees. 

How has this social mission influenced the operation of the company? Koloms says, “We are bidding now with higher wages and lower margins. We believe this will work well for us over time because we will have longer-term customers.”

FMS has become completely transparent. “We sit in front of a customer and show them our costs, our margins and what motivates our people.” Koloms says conducting business this way has changed everything.  

The social mission has led to a decrease in turnover and has had a positive impact on the company’s fortunes. The lower turnover has enabled the company to be much more competitive and a vendor of choice.

While admitting that this journey has not been without stress, Koloms claims that the challenges are what make it worthwhile.

“As entrepreneurs, we often have so many balls in the air that it is hard to balance everything. However the thing that settles me the most is when I'm able to just remember the vision and values.”  

In honor of National Work and Family Month, a time when businesses across the United States are encouraged to promote healthier work arrangements and find ways to better support employees with families, Koloms offers the following advice to others who wish to create companies that balance purpose and profits:

  • Keep it simple. Focus on a challenge that your business is facing and connect your social mission with solving it.
  • Zero in on one thing. You don’t need to tackle every problem.
  •  Form partnerships. As you develop your mission, find people and groups who are already good at what you are trying to do.
  • Understand that the pursuit of a clear social mission doesn’t happen overnight. It is a process.
  • Take some risks and allow yourself to make mistakes and learn.
  • Don’t get too caught up in chasing goals and measuring impact.
  • Trust that if you live your values, you will be ok.

The tensions of balancing the pursuit of profits and social good are never-ending. However Koloms has adopted the mindset that opportunities to solve problems make the work exciting. “After all, entrepreneurs love to dive into challenges and figure them out!” He says that when he brings his attention back to the vision and why he started this business in the first place, he relaxes.

If you believe that you can make a difference in the world through your work, what better place to start than by creating a work environment that provides people with opportunities to thrive. And your company can make a profit at the same time. Just ask Scott Koloms.

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