Olympus: Corporate Citizenship Policy for global business

Olym­pus Europe is in charge of Europe, the Mid­dle East and Africa (EMEA). Up to now, the com­pa­ny has pur­sued a very diverse and his­tor­i­cal­ly grown engage­ment, which has var­ied from coun­try to country.

Olym­pus Europe’s goal was to focus its engage­ment through­out the EMEA region on top­ics and approach­es that fit well with the com­pa­ny’s core competencies.

This com­mon frame­work should facil­i­tate the work of the indi­vid­ual coun­tries by pro­vid­ing ori­en­ta­tion and enabling mutu­al sup­port. Olym­pus also want­ed to increase the social impact of its engage­ment by focus­ing on its core busi­ness. At the end there should be a guide­line for the selec­tion and imple­men­ta­tion of social projects.

Project part­ner: Olym­pus Europa SE & Co. KG 

We first ana­lyzed the social engage­ment of Olym­pus Europe to date and cat­e­gorised it thematically:

• What were the objectives?
• How many projects and resources exist in the dif­fer­ent categories?
• What impact has been achieved so far?

Sub­se­quent­ly, man­age­ment and rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the indi­vid­ual coun­tries were involved in inter­nal stake­hold­er dia­logues to incor­po­rate their expe­ri­ences and per­spec­tives for future engage­ment: Why should Olym­pus get engaged? Which soci­etal change is Olym­pus striv­ing for? And what can Olym­pus con­tribute to soci­ety in particular?

The results of the analy­sis and stake­hold­er dia­logues were then dis­cussed in a work­shop with the Olym­pus Europe man­agers and coun­try rep­re­sen­ta­tives. In this work­shop the par­tic­i­pants devel­oped a frame­work for the future engage­ment of Olym­pus Europe.

This frame­work defined the the­mat­ic pri­or­i­ties of the engage­ment and con­tained spe­cif­ic cri­te­ria on which social projects should be aligned in the future. The impor­tance was not to devel­op the future engage­ment from scratch, but rather on the basis of exist­ing, effec­tive projects also tak­ing into account the exper­tise of the stake­hold­ers.. Social needs and entre­pre­neur­ial per­spec­tives also played an essen­tial role in defin­ing focal points and criteria.

After the work­shop, Olym­pus Europe devel­oped a Cor­po­rate Cit­i­zen­ship Pol­i­cy for the entire EMEA region with our support.

Olym­pus Europe has now gained clar­i­ty as to the areas in which they want to and can make a con­tri­bu­tion to soci­ety. This engage­ment is embod­ied in a Cor­po­rate Cit­i­zen­ship Pol­i­cy that applies across all coun­tries in the entire EMEA region. Thus, there are clear and uni­fied rules on how pro­ce­dures for a project selec­tion are car­ried out and which cri­te­ria must be tak­en into account when plan­ning and imple­ment­ing projects.

“The coop­er­a­tion was based on trust and char­ac­ter­ized by high con­sult­ing com­pe­tence as well as a com­mon pas­sion for the topic”.

Juliane Hüppe, EMEA Head of HR Peo­ple & Orga­ni­za­tion & CSR