Motorola Solutions is a global leader in mission-critical communications and analytics. The conglomerate’s technologies in land mobile radio mission-critical communications, video security and analytics and command centre software, bolstered by managed and support services, make communities safer and help businesses stay productive and secure. It serves more than 100,000 public safety and commercial customers in over 100 countries, providing “purpose-built” solutions designed for their needs. It has a rich heritage of innovation focusing on advancing global safety for more than 90 years.
This company’s strategy is to generate value through the integration of each technology into its ecosystem, uniting voice, software, video and analytics to interoperate. Examples of such interplay include sharing video feeds from a school to a police command centre and officers’ devices in the field to improve situational awareness, uploading field reports or crime scene photos directly into an agency’s evidence system to save administration time, and connecting teams across networks to ensure messages are easily shared and teams can work as one. Across all three technologies, they offer cloud-based solutions, cybersecurity services and managed and support services.
1. Approach to CSR at Motorola Solutions
Their approach to Corporate Social Responsibility is guided by three principles: operate ethically, protect the environment and help foster public safety and thriving communities. Their latest CSR Report demonstrates the organisation’s global commitment to Corporate Social Responsibility and highlights key areas of progress from the year.
As a result of this approach, in the year 2020, Motorola Solutions found recognition in the Disability Equality Index (DEI) list of Best Places to Work, Forbes America’s Best Employers for Diversity, Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index and was deemed “Supporter of the Year” from Code Platoon, an organization that transforms veterans and military spouses into software developers through immersive coding bootcamps.
2. Motorola Solutions Foundation
The Motorola Solutions Foundation acts as the charitable and CSR arm of Motorola Solutions and focuses on giving back to the communities where employees live and work through strategic grants, employee volunteerism, disaster relief and other community investment initiatives. The Foundation, which has donated $100 million over the past 10 years, aims to partner with organizations that are creating safer cities and equitable, thriving communities, and prioritizes support for underrepresented populations, including people of colour and women.
The Foundation focuses its giving on three key areas: first responder programming, technology and engineering education and programmes that blend the two. In addition, the Foundation aims to partner with organizations that align to their values of accountability, innovation, impact, diversity and inclusion. The Foundation is one of the many ways in which the company lives out its purpose to help people be their best in the moments that matter.
3. COVID-19 Response
3. 1. Measures by Motorola Solutions Foundation
Motorola Solutions and the Motorola Solutions Foundation committed more than $2 million in cash and in-kind donations to support first responders and health care professionals. Additionally, they awarded total cash donations that reached $13.5 million in 2020 – and directed a portion of these funds to support those on the front line of the pandemic, as well as aid teachers and students in underserved communities with virtual learning.
In response to local needs due to the impact of COVID-19, employees around the globe responded by taking action in what they have historically not labeled ‘traditional volunteerism’. They tracked over 2,000 hours of ‘Acts of Service’ – ways employees took action in their local community to support neighbours in need (shopping for vulnerable populations, conducting wellness checks or assisting with daily tasks of elderly neighbours), picking up trash in local parks and beaches, sewing face masks for frontline workers, or donating meals to first responders.
The Foundation pivoted volunteer programmes to virtual platforms to assist relief efforts in local communities – mentoring students online, hosting mobile blood drives and making protective face shields and masks for local hospitals. The Foundation hosted its first-ever Virtual Volunteer Week to help employees continue their community engagement with volunteer initiatives from home, contributing more than 1,000 volunteer hours.
3.2. Innovations for the pandemic
A number of mobile applications were created to help frontline health care workers, including a field registration app that registers patients, records the status of a health check and assists with monitoring and outreach for individuals testing positive for COVID-19.
Other innovations include:
– Contact tracing combining access control and Avigilon Appearance Search software to determine if an individual testing positive had entered a facility and to alert anyone present around the same time.
– No-face-mask-detection utilizing embedded video analytics capabilities in existing security cameras to detect face mask usage, ensuring appropriate social distance and sending alerts for non-compliance to allow our customers to quickly react and respond.
– Occupancy counting measuring net total occupancy in a facility using entry- and exit-point cameras, enabling customers to more effectively manage site traffic and capacity.
– Thermal Elevated Temperature Detection screening for indications of elevated body temperature, helping to keep employees and customers safe in the workplace.
4. Responsible Technology
Since many technologies today can progress faster than legislation and regulatory frameworks, the team at Motorola Solutions continuously works to ensure that the global innovations remain aligned with their purpose and ethics, and take into account broader implications for how their technologies can be used by our customers and the communities. They design controls into products that allow customers to enforce compliance with regulations and usage policies.
4.1. MTAC
In 2020, they formed the Motorola Solutions Technology Advisory Committee (MTAC), a multidisciplinary internal group commissioned by the management executive committee that serves as a “technical conscience” for the company. MTAC helps to ensure technological advancements remain aligned with their purpose and ethics, and are informed by the broader implications to customers, the communities served and society at large.
MTAC is composed of a diverse group of senior leaders, with representation from Products & Systems Integration, Video Security & Analytics, Software Enterprise, CTO & Strategy, Government Affairs, Legal, Compliance, Cybersecurity, Sales and Communications.
MTAC’s objectives are guided by the following six principles:
1) Advocate responsible stewardship of innovation to protect privacy, secure data and ensure technology advancements align with our company’s purpose and ethics.
2) Serve as an objective expert advisory group by conducting risk assessments about proposed technology developments, reporting findings and recommendations and documenting guidance for future technological advancement.
3) Establish policy statements that guide the responsible development, deployment and usage of new technologies which contribute to public and enterprise operational management and safety.
4) Report on the committee’s evaluations, findings and recommendations to inform leadership and assure continuous alignment with corporate strategy.
5) Engage cross-discipline external experts to leverage outside-in insights, experience and counsel.
6) Inform external positioning and advocacy with regulators, investors, policy makers and customers.
In 2021, MTAC continues to focus on evaluating the company’s responsible use of technology while expanding employee engagement efforts. Additionally, the committee is developing new materials that will outline best practices and considerations for emerging technologies.
4.2. Advancing Responsibly and Ethically
Additionally, to bring diversity of thought to the use and application of complex technologies like machine learning where there are concerns related to fairness and equity, their CSR has established a cross-collaborative employee-led advisory group to leverage perspectives from employees from underrepresented groups. This advisory group has provided unique insights that will enable the CSR team to build community trust, ensure social responsibility and address cultural considerations for their products and services.
For example, their AI-powered solutions continue to grow and expand, so they leverage this group to review and provide input to influence products, positioning and messaging. They are also demonstrating a responsibility to have inclusive terminology in technical documents. They continue to benchmark and crowd-source across employees a comprehensive list of non-inclusive technical terminology (e.g. “whitelist/blacklist” or “grandfathered” or gendered terms) along with recommended acceptable alternatives. They have communicated this across the business to stop future propagation of these terms and retroactively correct legacy issues.
5. Disaster Relief
For more than 90 years, Motorola Solutions has been working with public safety agencies to offer the technologies, critical support and resources to help communities prepare for and quickly recover from disasters. The company’s purpose-built, mission-critical ecosystem provides a fully integrated end-to-end suite of solutions including voice, command centre software and video and analytics, as well as managed and support services that span emergency awareness, emergency operations, network monitoring, system engineering and field services. Following large-scale events, they mobilize at a moment’s notice to help public safety agencies rapidly establish communications and regain control.
They proactively monitor emerging storms through their centralized Network Operations Center, and response teams are activated the moment an emergency is detected to help customers prepare. On-the-ground teams provide mission-critical technology required to meet the response. The support continues during an event and in its aftermath, as teams work with customers to determine the impact on communication sites and to coordinate repairs.
5.1. Natural disasters
2020 was a year of many large-scale natural disasters, including wildfires, hurricanes and snowstorms. In total, the 2020 hurricane season produced 30 named storms, including six major hurricanes. Intense wildfires burned across the world from California, Washington and Oregon to the Amazon rainforest to Australia, Russia and Indonesia. Severe winter weather impacted power in parts of Mexico and Texas and the East Coast experienced some of the biggest snowstorms in years. Motorola Solutions teams were there to support customers in the moments they needed it most. Additionally, employees also play a vital role in disaster relief, from donating funds to the tireless efforts of our emergency response team, who work on the front line to ensure first responders stay connected.
5.2. Hurricane Laura
The deadly and destructive Category 4 hurricane made landfall in Cameron, Louisiana on August 27. The Disaster Relief team deployed shortly after the storm made landfall with five tractor trailers that included a fuel tanker, back-up generators and a site on wheels. Their teams stayed on the ground for several days to help customers assess the damage, fix any issues and help clean up the mess left behind.
5.3. Australian Bushfires
In 2019 and 2020, Australia saw one of its most challenging bush fire seasons in decades, with more than 20 million acres burned across the country’s six states and two territories, and thousands of homes destroyed or damaged. As first responders worked tirelessly to contain the fires, Motorola Solutions employees in Australia worked beside them to ensure the continuous and reliable operation of communications networks, equipment and support services – charging batteries, programming radios, coordinating generator deployments and monitoring their networks to ensure maximum system availability, capacity and coverage for first responders.
Additionally, as fires and high winds damaged power lines, the team in Australia provided backup generators to ensure mission-critical communications services were maintained and worked closely with state emergency centers to deploy spare, mobile infrastructure to ensure mission-critical communications access wasn’t disrupted.
6. Annual Grants Programme
The Motorola Solutions Foundation believes that providing opportunity amongst underserved communities helps to advance creativity, drive productivity and inspire new ways of thinking. The Foundation has a long-standing commitment to supporting programmes that benefit underrepresented populations, including women, people of colour, people with disabilities, the LGBTQ community, veterans and others. To that end, the majority of the Foundation’s 2020 grant funding directly benefited people of colour.
The Foundation supported programmes from the Society of Women Engineers, the National Association of Women of Law Enforcement Executives, the National Society of Black Engineers, the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement and many other organizations that introduce, educate and inspire underrepresented groups within technology and engineering education and first responder programming. For instance, the Foundation awarded over $200,000 to organizations like the Society of Women Engineers and the National Society of Black Engineers to provide educational scholarships to women and students of colour pursuing engineering degrees.
7. Employee Programmes
In 2020, Motorola Solutions employees found creative ways to give back safely, virtually and in their local communities. During the company’s Global Months of Service in September and October, a virtual volunteerism challenge was introduced in which the Foundation awarded volunteer grants based on the number of activities employees completed. This resulted in nearly $135,000 in donations to nonprofit organizations and 14,000 volunteer hours logged – 3 times the number of hours logged during the challenge in 2019.
Employees were also incredibly generous with their charitable donations, entering a record number for Foundation matching, which resulted in nearly $1 million in matching gifts to nonprofits and schools across the United States through the ‘Donations for Donors’ programme.
8. Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
Motorola Solutions took up the year 2020 to strengthen Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) efforts. The rigorous journey involved formally assessing the conglomerate’s global current state, both from a qualitative and quantitative perspective. Additionally, they hired a chief diversity officer to help develop a defined, global DEI strategy. This strategy outlines the company’s vision and roadmap to strategically embed DEI into business operations, philanthropic activities and suppliers, and ensure accountability to make meaningful progress and drive long-term, sustainable change.
8.1. DEI efforts
To build on the work they’ve done thus far, the company added an unconscious bias curriculum and engaged with a third party to conduct an enterprise-wide DEI assessment, surveying more than 4,200 employees to better understand their experiences related to diversity, equity and inclusion. They also conducted workforce demographic analyses to better understand the demographic composition of the workforce at all levels, as well as trends with hires, promotions and attrition. As a result, they began enhancing our hiring and performance management processes; identifying corporate-wide DEI training; creating action plans to address the findings from employee digital focus group surveys; ensuring our supply chain partners share their DEI philosophies; guiding Foundation grants to underserved groups and equally important, prioritizing diversity considerations in the design, testing, marketing, sales and communications of their products and solutions.
All of these efforts in 2020 became the foundation of the DEI Strategic Framework which was launched in early 2021 and included a robust global DEI training programme as well as the incorporation of “Inclusive” as one of six Motorola Solutions’ core values. Chairman and CEO Greg Brown signed the “CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion” pledge on behalf of Motorola Solutions – a pledge for the world’s leading companies to take bold action and drive progress for inclusion and equality in the workplace and society.
8.2. Campus Days at Motorola Solutions
Over the last few years, the CSR team has introduced programmes targeted to make the company more inclusive. Their gender transition policy fosters open, thoughtful and respectful conversation across the company. They also introduced paid parental leave and paid family illness leave, and in 2020, they continued to provide a financial wellness benefit programme for employees in the U.S. Both of these programmes recognize the value of supporting the well-being of a multigenerational diverse workforce.
Campus Days at Motorola Solutions is an initiative that was designed in 2019 to help the company in its mission to continue to focus on diversity and inclusion while at the same time building its brand and bringing awareness to the important work they do. Students from seven different colleges and various organizations, including the National Society of Black Engineers and the Society of Women Engineers, were invited to learn more about the company and its culture. Participants were introduced to business council members, senior leaders and campus recruiters.
Campus Days at Motorola Solutions is a great way to build a diverse pipeline of talent for current and future roles while also establishing new relationships with university organizations, fostering the potential for future collaboration and talent pipeline building. Due to the impact of COVID-19, the 2020 Campus Days at Motorola Solutions was conducted virtually. This format allowed the company to expand its reach, inviting students from across the U.S. to participate, including many from historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) such as Norfolk State University, Jackson State University and North Carolina A&T University. By conducting virtual Campus Days, they were able to host more than 100 students from various backgrounds.
8.3.Partnerships
In 2020, the firm became a career partner with The Posse Foundation and Posse Scholars. The Posse Foundation is a college access and youth leadership development programme that connects students to full-tuition leadership scholarships. As a career partner with Posse, they will have access to a pool of over 2,000 diverse, talented applicants for summer internships and full-time employment. A career partnership between Motorola Solutions and The Posse Foundation represents a powerful collaboration between two organizations that are committed to workforce leadership and diversity.
In 2020, the company formed new and maintained existing partnerships with HBCU Connect (Historically Black Colleges and Universities Student and Alumni Network), the National Society of Black Engineers and the Society of Women Engineers. They continued partnerships with Getting Hired, an employment site for individuals and veterans with disabilities, Pathforward, which is a nonprofit organization that helps restart careers after time spent focused on family caregiving with mid-career internships known as returnships, and HirePurpose, an employment site and programme helping transitioning service members, veterans and military spouses find careers.
In 2021, they continue to invest in programmes that help foster an inclusion mindset, such as development programmes for high potential women leaders and an unconscious bias curriculum offered through LinkedIn Learning to their global workforce.
8.4. Business councils
Business councils are voluntary, employee-led groups that help this company drive DEI by spearheading opportunities for employees to shape their careers, network across functions, create positive culture change and assist with recruitment and retention. Each council is guided by the leadership of a member of the management executive committee.
The business councils are provided approximately $125,000 funding at the beginning of each calendar year to support various efforts, including leadership training, cultural awareness and education programmes, diversity recruitment outreach, and community volunteer activities that involve all the employees globally. Despite working remotely, Motorolans found many occasions to come together virtually in 2020. In fact, event participation increased as accessibility became easier than ever before. As a result of the efforts of these business councils, more than 150 events were hosted across the globe in 2020 with thousands of employees participating.
9. Gender Diversity
Motorola Solutions Foundation supports STEM programming, particularly technology and engineering, that reaches women.
9.1. Women in STEM
With the leadership of the CEO’s office, the company’s HR organization and the employee-led Women’s Business Council, the Foundation continues to strengthen its collaborative partnership to promote women pursuing STEM through its engagement with the Society of Women Engineers. In 2020, a group of more than 300 of the company’s women leaders virtually attended the Society of Women Engineers’ annual conference, the world’s largest conference for women in STEM career fields. The event provided a platform for female engineers to connect with like-minded peers, share innovative ideas, make connections for career advancement and recruit top female talent.
Additionally, the Foundation awarded $175,000 to the Society of Women Engineers. $100,000 was allocated toward scholarships benefiting women pursuing engineering degrees and $75,000 was allocated toward programmes supporting engineering education for high school women.
9.2. Programmes and missions
The “Diverse Leaders’ Perspectives” speaker series enables employees to hear directly from leaders outside the company, fostering innovative and creative thinking. The event for employees is structured as a fireside chat between Chairman and CEO Greg Brown and an influential guest speaker.
The Bonfire mission is to ignite the power of women to rewrite the rules of the modern workforce. Participants will gain more clarity around their leadership purpose and focus on achieving greater impact in their organization.
The Leading Women Executives programme augments leadership skills of high-potential women and partners with sponsor companies to enhance talent, fortify succession plans and increase advancement of women. Participants experience a collaborative and immersive process with an integrated focus on critical leadership skills with a research-based curriculum.
In conclusion
With employees located around the globe, Motorola Solutions seeks to benefit the communities where it operates by awarding various grants, placing an emphasis on volunteering, engaging in community partnerships and fostering innovation. A culture of inclusion and equity enables the diverse workforce to pioneer innovative products and solutions to contribute to the collective success of customers and society at large.
Disclaimer: This report largely contains extracts from the Motorola Solutions 2020 Corporate Responsibility Report
