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The Maturing of Business Action
A new stage of the business fight against HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria is underway
When the Global Business Coalition was established seven years ago, the landscape of the business fight was dramatically different from today.
Most of business engagement, though not all, was initiated by individual players with on-the ground interests in sub-Saharan Africa. The first companies to engage were almost exclusively from the extractives, energy and manufacturing industries— those whose bottom lines were most affected by the impact of HIV/AIDS among their workforces. At that time, private sector efforts focused almost entirely on workplace policies and programs, with few extensions into the surrounding community. Pharmaceutical companies, whose products and expertise were most needed on the ground, were also active players in this early stage of business action.
Several years ago, the movement for private sector engagement on the epidemic began to gain momentum and attract new players. Companies from around the world began to take action across Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America. Workplace policies themselves were beginning to transform—moving past non-discrimination clauses to encompass total health policies, including the provision of treatment and care to employees, and occasionally, their families.
It was at this time that HIV/AIDS began to be viewed by the private sector as serious threats to economic growth. The definition of corporate social responsibility was deepening and broadening and Coalition members lent their voices to advocate for greater business action and coordination among different sectors.
Businesses from a diverse range of sectors, including financial services, consumer goods, transportation, technology, media and travel and tourism, began flexing their muscle in the fight, leveraging their creativity, innovation, and pivotal core competencies, with expertise in areas such as media and public education; logistics and distribution; and health care management. Learning from its experiences in fighting HIV/AIDS, the private sector also began to expand its efforts into tuberculosis and malaria work.
It was also during this time that companies began to increase collaborative efforts across sectors through public-private partnerships. By working with a diverse array of partners—from small, on-the-ground NGOs to major international agencies like the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria—private sector programs could be brought to scale, leveraging the resources and networks of each partner to maximize impact and save even more lives.
We are now in a new stage in the maturation of business action; a shift that is evident in several developments that are changing the way companies look at and engage these diseases.
Out of the Workplace and Into the Community
The winners of this year’s GBC Awards for Business Excellence underscore one key fact about the state of the private sector fight today: business is no longer acting in isolation. Indeed, one of the most important trends of this year was the use of public-private partnerships as a vehicle for companies to scale up their successful workplace initiatives and expand their reach out to the community. The number of companies involved in such initiatives was large enough for GBC to create a new category to reflect this trend, called expanded community initiatives.
Xstrata Coal South Africa, the winner in this new category has long been engaged in the fight against HIV/AIDS and TB. As its award-winning voluntary counseling and testing (VCT) workplace program matured, the company began to look outward, toward the community in which it worked. Partnering with a diverse array of local, national and international players, the company launched several initiatives to bring programs that had already proved successful in the workplace—including education, VCT services and treatment— to the community. Through outreach workers, the partnership successfully delivers such vital HIV/AIDS and TB services to households throughout the community, reaching the most vulnerable of populations in a region devastated by the epidemic.
Mercedes-Benz S.A., commended in the same category, partnered with small and medium enterprises and the South African government to bring its workplace VCT and treatment program to members of the community who otherwise wouldn’t receive such services. Debswana, a diamond mining company, worked with the government of Botswana to fill critical gaps in the government’s treatment program—leveraging the company’s medical facilities and personnel to get life-saving, government-procured medicines to the people. Another mining company, Rio Tinto, has similarly brought prevention, VCT and home-based care into the surrounding community through strategic partnerships at all levels.
All four of these companies have a long history in the business fight and have had years to develop their highly-successful workplace programs before expanding them into the broader community. But getting to that point requires a number of fundamentals that other businesses are now mastering.
Making Business Programs Work
Robust monitoring and evaluation of business interventions helps companies to continually improve programs and communicate progress to stakeholders. Each of this year’s winning programs contains strong mechanisms for measuring impact, but Exxon Mobil Corporation’s award-winning malaria program is exemplary for its effort to improve monitoring and evaluation by players throughout the global malaria fight. As part of its overarching effort to reform global malaria architecture, the company helped develop a "Global Malaria Scorecard" to track data that would clearly demonstrate the correlation between resources spent and results achieved.
BBC World Service Trust (BBC WST), which won the core competence award this year for its remarkable television and radio programming focusing on HIV/AIDS, illustrates the importance of monitoring and evaluation in media campaigns. By embedding research and learning processes into the development of campaign components— including pre-testing programs and messages with at-risk groups—BBC WST ensured that its content would be culturally relevant and reach its target audience. BRALIRWA S.A., a beverage company based in Rwanda, prioritized the monitoring of its HIV-positive employees’ treatment, leveraging the resources of its parent company, Heineken, to build an electronic database for patient tracking.
While companies have found a host of vehicles for contributions to the global fight, core competencies continue to form the backbone of many business programs. A number of companies with media competencies have been leading the effort to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria— as seen in the award-winning work of BBC WST and GBC’s successful Russian Media Partnership and newly-launched China HIV/AIDS Media Partnership, which bring multiple media companies together with government and civil society players to produce and air public service announcements (PSAs) and awareness-raising programs.
Viacom, the winner of this year’s award for leadership, has been actively engaged in the global fight for two decades, leveraging its diverse media platforms, including those of MTV Networks and BET Networks, to bring HIV/AIDS messages to a young audience worldwide. Commended for its core competence work, Nike utilizes its brand and the star-power of its sports personalities to spread messages about HIV/AIDS. Virtual classrooms developed by Cisneros as part of its commended community philanthropy program have helped to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS among students across Latin America.
But businesses with media skills and resources aren’t the only ones setting trends in core competence work.
Pharmaceutical and medical technology companies are stepping up their efforts to leverage their most valuable competence developing and rolling out life-saving drugs and diagnostics. A number of industry leaders are building partnerships to transfer critical treatment and diagnostic services to the parts of the world that need them most. BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company), this year’s tuberculosis winner, is working to bring its TB diagnostics to poor countries burdened by the epidemic, with a particular focus on those with high rates of HIV/TB co-infections. The global medical technology giant was also commended for its work to strengthen laboratory systems in high-burden areas, which is critical for monitoring the treatment of patients with HIV and TB.
Pfizer Inc’s Global Health Fellows program has leveraged the company’s skilled workforce to strengthen health systems across the developing world. Commended for its work on malaria, Novartis has focused on extending its malaria diagnostic and treatment tools to rural Ethiopia.
Several companies are also utilizing their transportation infrastructure to bring vital resources and tools to hard-to reach areas. Through its partnership with UNICEF, DHL distributed 3.5 million long-lasting insecticide-treated bed nets throughout Kenya over an eight day period, effectively protecting millions of Kenyans from malaria. Dunavant Zambia Ltd., a cotton-merchandiser, leverages its transportation networks in its commended workplace VCT program, reaching remote areas of Zambia with VCT services and HIV/AIDS information.
Internal leadership has long been fundamental to successful interventions, but a recent trend in increasing engagement of senior leaders is emerging. Standard Bank’s bar-setting comprehensive workplace program won not only for the array of services it provides to employees and their families—including health education, VCT, ARV therapy, and benefits for temporary and total incapacity—but also for its efforts to increase management buy-in through its Global Leadership Centre. The Bank’s managers and internal leaders attend trainings at the center, making them active players in the company’s policy and program rollout. Similarly, East African Breweries Limited’s commended workplace program leverages the resources of its parent company, Diageo, to train its senior managers and encourage buy-in internally.
The Changing Landscape
The topography of the business fight against HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria is shifting as new sectors engage, new issues come to the forefront, and new ideas take root.
One trend that most visibly shows this changing landscape is increasing action in the workplace by non-traditional sectors. When the business fight was still in its infancy, the leaders in developing strong HIV/AIDS workplace programs were almost entirely in the extractives, energy and manufacturing industries—those most affected by HIV/AIDS. This year’s honorees represent a broadening spectrum of industries, including Telkom S.A. (telecommunications) and Standard Bank (finance), winners for workplace testing and counseling programs and comprehensive workplace programs, respectively, and Accor (travel and tourism), which was commended for its comprehensive workplace program.
A leading financial services company based in Italy, Intesa Sanpaolo didn’t have a baseline interest in the landlocked nation of Malawi. The company’s winning community philanthropy program there underscores the increasing possibilities for business in non-traditional sectors and locations to engage. By partnering with local NGOs, the company was able to target its €3 million investment without needing a business presence on the ground.
The terrain of partners is also shifting as donor agencies have become increasingly open to collaboration with the private sector in recent years. Many are actively seeking companies that can promote greater accountability and transparency internally and improve monitoring and evaluation of donor-assisted programs. ExxonMobil exemplifies this new kind of partnership. As an advocate for improvement throughout the global malaria prevention and treatment architecture, ExxonMobil has actively worked to help reform donor agencies working on malaria and create new systems for measuring impact. Other large donor agencies are also actively seeking private sector partners for co-investment opportunities.
As business action matures, new issues and focuses will continue to arise. After calls from member companies, GBC added tuberculosis and malaria to its mandate in 2006, and since then has seen growing action on both epidemics. Total Myanmar’s commended TB program is a fine example of an initiative that addresses both HIV/AIDS and TB, while Tibotec’s commended TB collaboration illustrates the importance of public-private partnerships in the drug discovery process.
Companies are increasingly targeting vulnerable populations in their efforts, including several programs addressing youth. Thanda Private Game Reserve’s commended community philanthropy program, Star School, works with South African schools to integrate curricula to build self-esteem and raise awareness around HIV/AIDS. The program strategically targets high school students, who account for up to 25 percent of all new HIV infections in the region. By targeting youth in the suburbs of Luanda, Angola, Total E&P
Angola has educated a group that is relatively unaware of the risks of HIV-infection—a recent study by UNICEF found that 30 percent of Angolan youths had never heard of HIV/AIDS.
Business is also beginning to target another vulnerable population: women and girls. Ten companies’ best practices were recently featured in GBC’s first ever case study publication on business interventions addressing the feminization of HIV/AIDS. Though the winning and commended companies in the new awards category for programs focusing on women and girls represent the best of business engagement, it is telling that many of the winners from other categories have also successfully integrated measures to address women and girls— including programs to address prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV (PMTCT), family planning and domestic abuse.
Through its partnership with the NGO mothers2mothers, Johnson and Johnson, the winner in this new category, has helped to integrate PMTCT into existing healthcare facilities throughout Africa. Levi Strauss & Co.’s commended program illustrates what is possible when an international corporation engages its supply chain, targeting female migrant workers at its factories in China. Sandvik Mining and Construction was also commended for its work to empower women and girls in the community by establishing member-driven Women’s Clubs around its operations in Zambia.
GBC’s Awards for Business Excellence are earned by companies that have demonstrated extraordinary commitments, actions, and results. These companies’ experiences are the perfect lens with which to view the state of business action and the direction of private sector engagement.
The Awards give us the opportunity not only to congratulate the winners, but to learn from them. Business action on HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria has come a long way since the Coalition was founded seven years ago— the private sector fight is maturing. But we are far from the end of the road. To defeat these diseases will require increased action by all players, scaled-up partnerships and fresh ideas and perspectives.
The business fight is continually developing. These winning and commended companies represent the leading edge in that maturation.