2012 marks the 20th anniversary of Timberland’s Path of Service™ program, which gives employees paid time off to serve in their communities. What’s in store for Timberland this year? Tens of thousands of hours spent giving back to our communities, invitations to consumers and business partners to join us in service, and celebrations of our community service impacts. In other words, business as usual.
As we look ahead to how we’ll continue to make a difference, we’re also taking time to reflect on the journey that brought the Path of Service™ program into its current form. Twenty years ago, the idea of giving employees paid time off to perform community service was unconventional. For many executives, giving back to the community signifies corporate philanthropy. For Timberland, it means sharing our most valuable resource—our employees’ time—to engage and improve communities by building trails, planting trees, creating community gardens and transforming playgrounds.
The inception of service as a core business value began with an introduction from City Year—an education-focused nonprofit that unites young people for a year of full-time service. In 1989, City Year Co-Founders Alan Khazei and Michael Brown approached Timberland with a request for fifty pairs of boots. We granted the request, but Khazei and Brown weren’t finished with us. They invited Timberland to learn more through service and planned Timberland’s first corporate service day. Jeff Swartz, Timberland’s former CEO, was inspired. Never one to back down from a challenge, Swartz introduced the benefit of 16 paid community service hours per year for all employees.
Jackie Mitchell of Timberland’s Human Resources department was there when the idea blossomed and remembers it well: “Jeff, perched high on a fork lift, shared his passion, vision, and dreams for employees to serve in their community and ‘how the private sector can and must be a partner with the public sector to ensure the health of our community.’” On September 18, 1992, our Path of Service™ program was officially born. According to Mitchell, the idea “became a reality when Jeff and a group of employees left work and joined City Year to paint a youth home called Odyssey House in Hampton, New Hampshire.”
Timberland’s community service program has grown from offering up to 16 paid community service hours in 1992, to up to 40 paid hours in 1995—which continues today. Now, Timberland organizes two annual global service events—Earth Day and Serv-a-palooza—to provide company-sponsored opportunities for employees use their hours. Employees are also invited to serve independently or in small groups at projects of their choosing. Additionally, Timberland sponsors a service sabbatical program that grants employees up to six months of paid leave to provide transformational capacity building service to nonprofit organizations.
But it doesn’t end with us. Our service has grown beyond our corporate walls, and our projects now include Timberland vendors, distributors, supplier factories, consumers, community members, and friends and family. As of 2012, Timberland has performed more than 800,000 hours of service around the world. “We’re a relatively small company with a big impact,” notes Atlanta McIlwraith, Timberland’s senior manager of community engagement. “Last year, 40 percent of the volunteers at Timberland-sponsored service events worldwide were business partners, and we hope to increase that percentage in 2012.”
To celebrate the program’s 20th anniversary, we’re gearing up for a special celebration at our fall Serv-a-palooza event, and our Global Stewards are helping us maximize engagement around the globe. For example, our Taiwan and Hong Kong offices are inviting consumers to serve at various Timberland-sponsored service events throughout the year. Consumers in Taiwan who serve 24 hours at Timberland events in 2012 will receive a free Timberland® T-shirt, and those who serve 40 hours will get a free pair of Earthkeepers® boots.
What’s more is that VF, Timberland’s new parent company, stands behind our commitment to service. According to Patty Pierce, Vice President of Human Resources for VF’s Outdoor Coalition (of which Timberland is a part), “VF recognizes that service is a critical element of Timberland’s culture. We joined Timberland in service at last year’s Serv-a-palooza and saw the benefits service brings to the work environment, the community, and to the business. We were inspired and decided to expand our own service commitment. VF’s Outdoor Coalition and VF’s Action Sports Coalition are excited to expand their community service and will now join Timberland in having two Coalition-wide service days each year, Earth Day in April and a second day in September.”
As we reflect on what we’ve accomplished in 20 years, we’re proud to say we’re just getting started. We’re excited that more consumers and partners than ever before will be joining us this year in creating positive change around the world.
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As a values-driven company, Timberland is always looking for ways to walk the walk as we talk the talk around our Earthkeepers philosophy. Of course, it’s not always easy. When it comes to community service, we often face questions from employees about how to take time out of the office to serve while staying on top of their job duties and growing the business.
That’s the task at hand for Rob Rizzotti, Director of National Accounts for Timberland’s U.S. Field Sales Team, a group of fifty-plus field-based sales reps. In this role as a Global Steward, Rob works to inform, inspire and engage the team by sharing our CSR programs and values. Chief among these values is giving back as we serve in our communities. But how do you convince a team of highly career-driven sales reps who are scattered around the country to shift gears and get out to serve?
At a December 2011 sales conference, backed by senior sales leadership, Rizzotti presented Timberland’s four CSR pillars (climate, product, factories and service), to the North America sales team. Much like Timberland’s senior management team, who supports and champions responsible business practices, Rizzotti sees service as an integral part of the sales team’s strategy for success.
“It’s not just who we are—it’s also good for business. Service strengthens relationships with retailers and business partners in a way that taking them out to lunch doesn’t,” Rizzotti says. “You see a different side of people when you’re rolling up your sleeves and working for a common cause.”
Rizzotti recognizes that the sales team has unique opportunities to engage customers, whether they’re large national retailers or small independent retailers. On a local level, service can be as simple as joining with a Timberland® retail store to gather canned goods for a food drive. For larger retailers, service reps can partner to serve charitable organizations that the account already knows, or create a new initiative. Rizzotti has also found websites like VolunteerMatch.org helpful for identifying local, established service opportunities for sales reps across the country.
Timberland’s North America sales team’s service initiatives aren’t a new idea, but an expansion of what’s been happening for years. For the past five years, Account Executive Jim Bohmer has organized a service event with Camp Cheerful, an Ohio-based camp for children and adults with disabilities. At Camp Cheerful, Timberland volunteers work side-by-side with members from our Lucky account. Lucky brings up to fifteen of their own employees, who grow as a team and grow in service with their Timberland partners.
Alongside camp volunteers, the team assists children in therapeutic horseback riding program and distributes donated boots. Rizzotti notes that this kind of engagement with accounts and partners “goes deeper than just having a good dinner—it humanizes our relationship.”
Timberland’s sales teams have also been serving in groups with their accounts for years—and even inspiring Shoe Carnival, a key Timberland account, to begin its own tradition of service. Every September 11th, a Timberland sales team serves at a school in the Bronx, commemorating the same day in 2001 when they first served at a school in that community before knowing the historic events that would unfold. In 2012, Rizzotti’s New York sales team plans to serve on Earth Day with partners from Macy’s, Nautica, North Face and Paragon Sports.
Rizzotti staunchly believes relationships are the core of the business. “I know in my heart and I’ve seen it firsthand, that when you’re serving with an account, planting flowers and trees and working with kids side-by-side, it makes a huge difference in building trust and a deeper relationship,” he says. “As a sales rep, when you do something like this, it shows what you’re made of—that you’re a person with a heart, you want to give back, and you want your business to honor that as well.”
At Timberland, we’re optimistic that this type of interaction will continue to create different conversations and new partnership opportunities – and that’s simply good business.
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Ever since Timberland was founded in 1973, giving back to the communities we inhabit has been a huge part of who we are. Our Path of Service™ program offers full-time employees up to 40 hours of paid time a year to serve their local communities, and we organize two annual global service events, Earth Day in the spring and Serv-a-palooza in autumn, to help employees use their hours.
While Earth Day marks an important opportunity to improve the great outdoors that is the core of Timberland’s business, Serv-a-palooza is an even more meaningful service event for the company. It is a time when all Timberland employees around the world put the company’s values in action by dedicating a day to serving their local communities.
“Serv-a-palooza is unique to Timberland,” explains Atlanta McIlwraith, Timberland’s Senior Manager of Community Engagement. “Fall is an important season for our business, and Serv-a-palooza lets us take a day at this time of year to celebrate our heritage and become grounded as a community.” The event allows employees who might not otherwise ever get to know each other work side by side. “On that day, it doesn’t matter what your title is—everyone’s the same,” she says. “When you’re volunteering together on site, it breaks down boundaries and builds a community. It’s a real source of pride to employees and something everyone enjoys.”
What made this year’s event especially poignant is that it marked a turning point in the history of Timberland. In June 2011, the acquisition of Timberland by VF Corporation was announced, signaling the end of three generations of family leadership.
Historically, Timberland’s evolution has been framed by the theme of “Boot, Brand, Belief.” “Boot” is represented by founder Nathan Swartz, who created the company’s iconic waterproof leather boot. His son Sidney Swartz built the Timberland “Brand,” expanding the company internationally and adding product lines such as apparel, women’s and children’s footwear, and accessories such as backpacks and watches. And it was Sidney’s son Jeffrey Swartz who formalized the company’s “Belief” in social justice, environmental sustainability and corporate social responsibility.
In celebration of these three “B”s, the activities at this year’s Serv-a-palooza event at corporate headquarters in Stratham, New Hampshire, were organized around this theme:
BOOT: Touched by the suffering of families in Joplin, Missouri, which was devastated by tornados, volunteers framed four houses for Habitat for Humanity in Timberland’s front parking lot—two for families from Joplin and two for families in need in Kansas City.
BRAND: Volunteers participated in projects designed to make a meaningful contribution to the town of Newmarket, New Hampshire—the birthplace of the Timberland brand. These included creating a new outdoor community gathering and performance space, building an outdoor classroom at a local elementary school and improving the high school grounds, enhancing local little league fields and refurbishing historic local buildings.
BELIEF: Several activities embodied belief including greening the campus of a community center for local nonprofits, transforming the meeting space for local disabled veterans, preparing forest trails for the harsh New England winter, and knitting blankets for the families for whom the Habitat for Humanity homes were being framed.
In all, 566 volunteers participated in the September 7-8, 2011, event in Stratham, of whom 427 were Timberland employees (the remainder were family, business associates, and friends). These figures included many leaders of VF Corporation—a key milestone as Timberland begins to integrate into the VF Family of brands.
“Their involvement was important as we’re transitioning,” says McIlwraith. “People were wondering ‘what now’? To have VF and some of their outdoor brands participate in our annual day of service symbolized their commitment to understanding and experiencing something that is uniquely Timberland.”
It was important to the VF team, as well. A couple of weeks before the event, VF announced that the Path of Service™ program would remain intact after the transition. Steve Rendle, vice president of VF Corporation and group president for the company’s Outdoor & Action Sports coalition, was so inspired by the experience, he announced to Timberland employees at the end of the day that VF outdoor brands would participate with Timberland in serving in their communities for Earth Day 2012.
“The crowd went wild, and when he tried to quiet them down, the reaction grew louder,” McIlwraith reports. “It was a very powerful moment and reminder of the power of service. We’re thrilled to have the support of our new owners.”
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The Global Stewards are a team of passionate individuals within our company who volunteer above and beyond their regular job responsibilities to serve as ambassadors of CSR to their local countries and offices.
