The Good Corporate Citizen

Ellen Moore is a model ‘good corporate citizen’ – a blend of admirable individual, corporate and community values. The importance she attaches to a sense of community involvement is evident when she describes the personal values she brings to her corporate role as CEO of the Chubb Insurance Company of Canada. Not surprisingly, her response to a melange of issues and concerns plaguing the corporate and consumer community is presented in terms of an organization-wide endeavor, not a solo venture. Moore has spent 27 years with Chubb, and she often subsumes her personal achievements under the rubric of her insurance company’s successful relationship with the community it serves.

“My career has given me the opportunity to be involved with a company that supports the things I believe in, and the ability to be involved in other things that are important to me,” Moore says. “Community outreach really helps because although you are working really hard for your company, it’s not all you want to be known for – you want to be able to give back.”

On Mar. 22, 2006, McGill University bestowed upon Moore the McGill Management Achievement Award, recognizing her contribution to the “Canadian economy and way of life through corporate success and community involvement.” But a modest Moore directs praise away from her individual accomplishment and instead credits Chubb’s tradition of charitable accomplishments as the keystone for this honorable recognition. She expresses pride about Chubb’s reputation as a good corporate citizen and its longstanding support of charities such as the United Way. However, Chubb is not alone in its claim to being socially responsible. “Aside from the banking industry, the insurance executive group is the second-largest industry that comes together to support charitable work,” Moore observes. The problem, she notes, is the industry is not telling this positive side of the insurance story.

CHARITY WORK CREATES CONFIDENCE

Media-perpetuated blather of financial grandeur and greed is ringing in the ears of many consumers, Moore believes, accentuating the significance of McGill’s award. McGill’s students are very aware and verbal in support of good business ethics and corporate governance, Moore said. She was clearly impressed these “leaders of tomorrow” recognized Chubb as a shining corporate example.

Moore joined Chubb Canada in January 2004. She arrived from her native U.S. land in time to watch concerns about scandalous lawsuits and misconduct in the U.S. flowing across the border and into Canada’s insurance industry. “There have been a lot of issues emerging in business in general and the global insurance environment,” she says. “These brought an opportunity to really self-regulate and quickly come to terms with transparency and disclosure.”

Alongside most Canadian insurers, Chubb embraced the need to enhance public trust and consumer confidence, and eradicate consumer misconception, Moore says. “We (insurers) have let some of the profit, which has only recently emerged, take up too much press,” she notes. “There needs to be more balanced discussion about insurance in the media; insurers must tell the charity side of the story.”

Community involvement bolsters consumer confidence; in turn, a relationship of trust emerges between the insured and insurer, enhancing communication and facilitating discussion. “Consumer confidence allows us to have a different conversation with (consumers) as to how insurance works,” Moore says. “Consumers have to understand some of the rate making so they know what determines price – especially because tremendous swings in the cycle, in which pricing spikes, does not garner confidence.”

In order to ensure continued consumer confidence, insurers must make it clear profit is to be neither feared nor condemned. Only financially solvent insurers will be in a position to aid consumers when needed. For Moore, consumer confidence and profit coalesce.

However, Moore notes, “insurance provides a product that people are not necessarily keenly interested in.” This presents a challenge that community involvement can help to resolve.

MORE WITH MOORE

Already recognized for its charitable deeds, Chubb became even more well-rounded when Moore came onboard. Rather than treating charitable works as an opportunity to make headlines with cheque presentations, Moore bulked up the program by encouraging Chubb employees to donate time, not just money. Moore’s believes the success of a company’s charitable endeavors is based largely on the energy and enthusiasm of staff; and members of the staff are only as strong as the company makes them. “In order to get dedication and commitment from staff, we have to provide them with the ability to enjoy what they are doing; that’s where community outreach comes in,” Moore says. “They (employees) like the idea that it is not just about money but also personal investment.”

The company, she explains, spends an entire week promoting the charities in which its employees are interested. This year, Chubb experienced record levels of participation that culminated in a donation of $150,000 towards an array of charities in consumer and employee communities.

In order to enhance its sponsorship value, Moore placed all the charities sponsored by each of Chubb’s four nationwide branches under one umbrella. Introduced in November 2004, the consolidated program, dubbed CARE (Charity Works Action Resources and Employees), is “a broad base of charitable work … focusing on activity and resources,” Moore says. Each of Chubb’s Canadian branches has an interoffice “Care Fair,” at which representatives from each charity in the area provide information about their organization.

Unlike the quotidian charitable works in which many business organizations engage, CARE brings personal time into the equation. In the CARE program, employees in good standing who wish to volunteer their time but have a work schedule conflict can volunteer a maximum of 15 hours of annual work time towards their charity of choice.

A work in progress, CARE will see some changes by 2007, Moore says. For example, employees devoting personal time toward volunteer work may be given more than the 15-hour cap of work time to contribute to their charitable work. Also, rather than focusing solely on individual employee activities, CARE will allow for the addition of more team activities. Already a group of Chubb staff has built a countrywide initiative for the CIBC ‘Race For the Cure.’

“Our employees are responding to the program with great partnership and tremendous team building,” Moore says. The success of CARE is a good sign for Moore, who has contemplated during her entire career an answer to the question: “How do you get people excited about being in the insurance business?” Thanks to programs like CARE, which connect insurance workers with the communities they serve, Moore is no longer worried about how to recruit people into the industry or about employees going AWOL.

SUCCESSION PLANNING

Just last year, Chubb Canada introduced a senior management-sponsored advisory council. Reporting to Moore, the council ensures the voice of junior management is heard, thus facilitating an opportunity to foster high-level management. “It is a vehicle that helps fuel the succession plan and gives the senior leadership visibility to others in more junior management positions,” Moore explains.

As part of her succession planning, which she evaluates twice annually, Moore recognizes the need to assess the workplace and ensure employee satisfaction. For example, employees are saying they want better access to information regarding the timing and evaluation process surrounding succession. Currently, only those in Chubb’s sights for succession receive a detailed development plan. “We’ve refined the process [and] put a little more substance behind some of the more junior people that are on the list, to make sure they are ready,” Moore says. “Retaining the most tale
nted people available to us will give us a competitive advantage in the market place.”

Moore herself is proof that the succession plan works. “At junior times in my own career, Chubb offered excellent promotional opportunities,” Moore recalls of her early days at Chubb, which began with a management training program and progressed into a number of underwriting assignments. A clear candidate for succession, Chubb positioned Moore to help open an office and manage branches in both Connecticut and Washington – and finally to manage the Canadian operations as CEO. Here in Canada, Moore continues to dovetail her work experience with her life ambitions by participating on the:

* board of governors for Junior Achievement of Canada, a nonprofit organization that provides business programs to prepare students for the workforce;

* board of the Insurance Bureau of Canada; and

* board of the nonprofit theatre company CanStage.

“To be able to work for a company that embodies and supports what you personally believe in is important to me,” Moore says. “A lot of us don’t get that opportunity.”