Telefónica's volunteering program has enhanced employee commitment and pride by integrating corporate social responsibility with talent development, leading to over 25,000 volunteers contributing nearly 200,000 hours to various social initiatives in 2012. The program emphasizes personal social responsibility and strengthens emotional links between employees and the company, fostering a sense of shared value. Similarly, companies like Coca-Cola and Agbar are implementing diversity and engagement strategies to promote social inclusion and harness employee dedication toward social goals.

1. Social connection in its turn creates or reinforc-es
an emotional link associated with the pride
of being a member of the company’s voluntary
social activity.
Joan Cruz, Director of Territorial Coordination
at the Telefónica Foundation, explains that
Telefónica’s Volunteering Programme in the last
few years improved the employees’ commitment
and pride sentiment by combining two areas
– CSR and talent. Projects developed by the
Foundation on the global scale, especially those in
Latin America, give the company’s employees first-hand
experience, and an opportunity to involve
third parties in this experience by delivering
social values defended by this international
telecommunications company.
Social Values in Action
The framework of the Pro-Child Programme gave rise
to an initiative suggested by the employees themselves
– the Programme of Solidarity Vacations. The
initiative encourages each employee to spend part of
his or her vacations working on projects launched by
the company, thus achieving three key objectives:
1. Address personal social concerns.
2. Become familiar with the company’s solidarity
initiatives.
3. See that the company takes care of people.
Thanks to projects and initiatives of this kind,
Telefónica reported that only in 2012, 25,000
volunteers dedicated almost 200,000 hours to
1,500 initiatives and projects of social support,
cooperation and international development.
Thus employees who felt concerned about specific
problems had an opportunity to take part directly in
resolving these issues.
The result is an emotional link of the Group’s
employees with Telefónica’s brand and its
social action. According to Cruz, this is a way
for professionals to turn into real protagonists
of CSR and, more specifically, the company’s
social action, thus creating a feeling of
contributing to shared value and generating
mutual benefit for the company, the employee
and the society.
Apart from pride and the feeling of membership, the factor that best describes
internal experience with brand today, and determines employees’ satisfaction
with the company is the capacity to feel one’s social role, contribution to the
social value, active participation in the company’s commitment with the society
I46/2014
Internal Experience: Building
Brands from the Employees
Brand
Insights&Trends
This document was prepared by Corporate Excellence – Centre for Reputation Leadership and among other sources contains references
to the statements made by Joan Cruz, Director for Territorial Coordination at the Telefónica Foundation; Isaac Vitini, HR Director at
Coca-Cola Iberia; Ignasi Fainé, CSR Director at Agbar; and Rafael González, Director for Corporate Culture Development at Adif. The
statements were made during Branding Days event held by the Complutense University of Madrid jointly with Interbrand and Corporate
Excellence on March 13 and 14 in Madrid.

2. Insights&Trends
2
Internal Experience: Building Brand from Employees
“The key is to create a feeling of contributing to shared value and generating mutual benefit for the company, the employee and the society”.
Diversity for Innovation
Another key factor in transforming personal commitment into social commitment or relating these two phenomena, is development of the internal level of integration of personal and professional abilities as a result of cultural diversity (in terms of origin, beliefs, languages, etc.), intellectual abilities (combining different kinds of intelligence) and even sexual diversity (in terms of gender representation and orientation).
Coca-Cola developed an Integral Plan to organize its fight against excluding disabled people from labour, and aims to integrate these people by adapting workplaces of these people to their specific conditions. The plan also includes training and coaching programmes delivered by the company’s employees on the voluntary basis to young people at risk of social exclusion as well as unemployed people who have difficulties accessing the labour market.
According to Isaac Vitini, HR Director of Coca-Cola Iberia, in 2012, 130 young people took part in the company’s training programme, which enabled them to incorporate in the labour market through business and cultural projects or upgrade their qualifications by joining academic programmes.
Graph 1: Principal achievements and results of the 2012
* This figure refers to Spain, fourteen Latin American and five European countries in which Fundación Telefónica is present with its activities.
** This item includes operating expenses, communication, rent, depreciation and other.
Source: Annual Report, Fundación Telefónica, p. 11, 2012.
BENEFICIARIES FOR PROFILES
1.542.898
Children and adolescents
716.641
young
12.004
Teachers
30.332
General society
783.921
BENEFICIARY RECEIVED PER SHARE
1.542.898
direct intervention
696.211
training
426.619
knowledge
372.321
General society
47.747
VOLUNTEER
active Volunteers
24.508
Volunteer Initiatives
1.458
Volunteer Hours
188.951
POSITIONING
publications
61
Exhibitions held
26
Forums / Conferences / Events
254
Visits to the web
17.102.000
Followers on social networks
453.700
Views from our YouTube channel
6.266.000
THINK BIG
Number of projects funded
3.726
completed projects
1.853
Youth receiving support from program
4.877
GLOBAL ECONOMIC INVESTMENT 2012
112.974.526 € *
Eradication of child labor
44.022.876 €
Education and learning
19.632.542 €
Art and Digital Culture
12.853.658 €
volunteering
3.754.872 €
Other social action projects
4.267.010 €
Support areas **
28.443.568 €

3. Insights&Trends 3
Internal Experience:
Building Brand
from Employees
“Access of all social groups to labour and diversity of talent and clients today are a source of development and innovation”.
Awareness of the problem of access to water is lacking, especially in developed societies where citizens access water simply by turning the tap. Thanks to Aqualogy, the employees and customers of Agbar, will learn about this important challenge for the entire humanity and understand that the company’s objective is to contribute new knowledge for managing water rather than simply manage infrastructures.
Involvement of professionals in the new Agbar platform is essential if we want to achieve a qualitative change in the perception of the water problem and spread knowledge in order to resolve this problem. That’s why the company created Aqualogy Campus, the so-called corporate University, which provides ongoing training to its employees and external professionals working on the market of water services.
The Culture of Segregation
Up until 1996, Renfe was Spain’s main railroad company which both managed the infrastructure and provided railroad services across the country. Since 1996, infrastructure management and services have been separated by creating GIF (Gestor de Infraestructuras Ferroviarias, Railroad Infrastructure Management Company) which in 2005 was restructured into ADIF (Administrador de Infraestructuras Ferroviarias, Administrator of Railroad Infrastructures). By dividing the group into two companies, its management gave a green light to the liberalization process in the sector.
In 1996 and 2005, some employees were transferred from Renfe to GIF or ADIF, says Rafael González, Director for Corporate Culture Development of this
Vitini believes that if a company and its shareholders reinvest part of their profit into social projects, its employees are more motivated to work in this company and actively help the company to work towards its social goals.
That’s why Coca-Cola joined the Diversity Charter, launched by the Diversity Foundation and the Spanish Government in an attempt to promote equal rights of all social groups to labour and encourage diversity of talent and clients as a source of development and innovation by eliminating all kinds of discrimination.
Brand Built for the Employees
Agbar is a group whose more than 150-years’ management experience of full cycle water services is renowned in many countries, the institutional environment (due to the fact that many of its operating licenses are public concessions) and the technical community, among engineers specializing in different areas of the business related to collection, transportation, purification and distribution of water. However, for citizens in general Agbar is a brand whose recognition is diffused if at all present among its key stakeholders – the customers. At the same time, the issue of access to water and its future scarcity is a concern of the entire society.
Ignasi Fainé, Agbar’s Director for Communication and Corporate Responsibility, says that the company is aware of this challenge and is launching Aqualogy, a programme that implies active participation of the company’s employees in creating and development of the brand idea whose aim is bridging this gap and ensuring that the employees associate themselves with the problem of access to water and its solution.
Graph 2: Managing and Optimizing the Social Engagement of Employees (External)
Source: DachisGroup by Dion Hinchcliffe.
Responsibilities
• Define social policies and practices
• Enlist and guide mass employee participation
• Identify and track employee engagement
• Measure external engagement and results
Goal
• Customer Care
• Product Innovation
• Brand Enthusiast
• Beta Testers
• Pre-Sales Support
Solution leader
Community manager
Social Listening, Analytics & BI
External Community
Social Business Solution Managers
Employees
Remote Offices
Home Office
engagement
value exchange
goal sharing

4. Insights&Trends 4
Internal Experience:
Building Brand
from Employees
company. However, the railroad sector has always been famous for the strong feeling of pride and membership – a natural phenomenon in the sector where whole families work for generations.
That’s why emotional attachment of former Renfe employees was hard to create in GIF, and later ADIF, and their transition was difficult. How could the company resolve this situation and create an integrated organizational culture, where all participants would feel as part of a big new project – introduction of high speed trains in Spain?
“Opening Ways” was the slogan of the campaign that according to González, ADIF launched to this end. The company created an Intranet in the same year when its brand was launched and developed an Adaptation Plan for those employees who arrived from GIF or Renfe.
ADIF took the following steps in order to achieve commitment and bonding with its new employees:
1. Diagnosis: a survey of 1,500 employees in 2006.
2. 2006 – 2010 plan: alignment of the employees with the company’s strategic plan and strengthening of the organisation’s internal cohesion.
3. Reinforcement action 2011 – 2013: development of an information programme with the application called “Start”, trying to integrate the brand into the personal and family environment by means of internal communication.
Conclusion: Consolidation of the Internal Brand
Making progress in the process of building the company’s brand for the employees means staking on personal commitment by using factors related to professional development and satisfaction. However, it also means achieving commitment through social factors by identifying with the company’s social values and direct participation in social action that has an impact on the community and people who are related to this company.

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