The Measurement Behind TWC’s CSR

By Heidi Mock, Sr. Director, Analytics & Insights

Search the name of any major company and go to its “About Us” section and you should quickly learn about its “Corporate Social Responsibility.” A good company stands for something beyond its products and services – doing it well, is another topic entirely.

At Time Warner Cable, four central priorities guide us in our efforts to effectively influence or positively impact our customers, employees and our planet: Environment, Philanthropy & Community, Diversity & Inclusion and Governance & Business Practices (taken straight from our website). We can tell you with a factual and credible level of certainly that we ARE doing that well.

Here’s how we know. Our CSR team set goals, defined key metrics for those goals and tracked the numbers. It’s really that simple.

Measuring the impact of an event, campaign or program tells us if it’s working, what we need to fix or adjust, and most importantly, whether we are making an impact. When armed with that kind of information, we use insights to drive strategic planning.

Time Warner Cable spans 29 states providing services to 15 million U.S. households, so our 50,000+ employee population is a good representation of our customer base. How do they feel about our CSR? Are they engaged?

Let’s look at the data.

In 2014, we set a goal to increase employee volunteerism by 10% based on the benchmark previously set in 2013. We defined the metrics that would be the best measurement of this goal: number of volunteer hours and employee participation. Then, a campaign including the launch of the TWC Connects volunteer match site, were put into action.

The year-long effort proved to be successful, yielding 43% increase in employee participation and a whopping 178% increase in employee volunteer hours. By looking at the numbers monthly or more frequently, we can “push the gas pedal” a little harder and measure the impact of our efforts.

This is just one of many examples of how goal setting and tracking helps Time Warner Cable continually showcase its successful CSR program inside and outside the walls of this company.