Jason Goodrick
Adam Chapple
Case Western Reserve University - Weatherhead School of Management
Ron Fry
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Fairmount Santrol has developed a sustained business model for Corporate and Social Responsibility, which over a period of a decade has become a significant part of its corporate culture. The model consists of Family Members who volunteer time to participate on Sustainable Development (SD) teams. The teams are supported at the CEO level with resources that help generate new ideas, make those ideas a reality, and measure the performance of those ideas in relation to people, planet and prosperity. The program is one example of how Fairmount Santrol lives up to its motto of “Do Good. Do Well.”
The innovation was born in 2005 when Fairmount Santrol held its first Appreciative Inquiry (AI) Summit to discover its own internal strengths and amplify them. This started a lasting chain reaction of building on what is already working, strengthening relationships across multiple levels and dreaming of doing more good. The inaugural summit lead to the creation of the first SD Teams at Fairmount Santrol. The SD teams consist of people who “align their hearts” with a cause that most interests them and helps advance the business. Family Members are introduced and given an opportunity to participate, voluntarily, on an SD team from day one at orientation.
The AI process is now repeated and refined on a three-year cycle. The most recent summit in 2014 included approximately 500 Family Members and 60 external stakeholders such as vendors and other critical partners. This process ensures not just one, but many potential innovations are regularly developed at Fairmount Santrol.
The impact of the program is measured in three key goal-setting and metric areas: People, Planet and Prosperity. Each of these critical umbrella topics is subcategorized into key SD material topics, such as: product health and safety, compliance and ethical behavior, employer of choice, community impact, air quality, energy use, product innovation, and product quality. There are 27 material points of interest ranked into three tiers of importance as rated by stakeholders and executives. Thirteen Sustainable Development (SD) teams have been built around these points of interest. Each year the SD teams set bold, high-level goals such as “reach zero waste to landfill for all Fairmount Santrol facilities globally.”
Some of the measurable achievements in the goal-setting and metrics program have included: reduced waste to landfill by 94% over a six-year period, 90% of water used in operations being recycled, 1.5 million consecutive safe working hours and a decrease of 8.25% energy consumption in a single year.
The Director of Sustainable Development at Fairmount Santrol explained the biggest benefit of the SD program “is in revenue per employee and productivity; the productivity is tangible and is a high dollar amount. The number has been researched and although it is not public information, it is significant.”
What is public is the “SD Pays” measurement methodology, where the company measures the impact to “our people, our communities, and the planet and also drives prosperity through cost savings and revenue generation.” The 2015 Fairmount Santrol Corporate and Social Responsibility Report All In states that a $2 million dollar investment in SD projects returned $9.5 million in net SD pays.
Fairmount Santrol is willing to share its SD business model and learning with any industry or even any competitor looking to have a greater impact on the world we live in.
All of the metrics used at Fairmount Santrol show impressive impacts to multiple United Nations Global Goals. Still, there are many projects born from the SD Team process that have immeasurable impact to society and the environment. Examples of the intangibles are initiatives like building wildlife habitats on active mine sites complete with bat boxes and butterfly homes or bettering a Family Member’s family quality of life via education unrelated to the core mission of Fairmount Santrol, yet still supported by the company because “all education helps with employee development.”
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Beau Daane, Director of Sustainable Development
