Twelve SAP employees have completed a month-long assignment where they worked with four social enterprises in the Philippines to assist with their pressing business needs and share best practices.
This short-term assignment is part of the SAP Social Sabbatical, a unique program for top SAP talent across the world to contribute their time and expertise to helping entrepreneurs and small businesses solve business challenges.
The program?s implementing partner is PYXERA Global, a non-profit organization based in Washington D.C.
The 12 SAP employees from different countries leveraged their expertise in areas such as strategy, marketing, IT, HR, finance, and consulting and guided the four social enterprises in the Philippines on issues pertaining to staff skills, capacity building, and operational excellence.
Messy Bessy Cleaners, Solar Energy Foundation, Hapinoy, and Rags2Riches were the four social enterprises in the Philippines that benefited from the SAP Social Sabbatical.
?It has been a great pleasure and privilege for our team to have had the SAP Social Sabbatical team with us for a month. To have a team of outsiders look into our business, and in this case a team of experts map our processes, is extremely beneficial to our growing organization,? said Krie Lopez, founder of Messy Bessy.
The Social Sabbatical selects projects on the basis of their strategic fit with SAP?s Corporate Social Responsibility focus on honing innovative social enterprises and the future workforce.
?The SAP Social Sabbatical was such a great experience for the Hapinoy Team at multiple levels. We were able to get the benefit of world-class talents helping us deeply analyze and strategize our social business model and operations, with very concrete outputs that can really help us catapult even further,? said Mark Ruiz, co-founder and president of Hapinoy.
Every year, participants of the SAP Social Sabbatical Program are given the opportunity to turn SAP?s vision of ?helping the world run better and improving people?s lives? into reality.
They are exposed to emerging market dynamics, diverse teams, and have a number of opportunities to hone their leadership skills. To equip them, SAP offers dedicated sessions on career and personal development as pre-work.
The sessions include three coaching sessions per participant to help them reflect on skill development and learning in a structured fashion. The employees also develop action plans on integrating their learnings during the Social Sabbatical assignment back into the SAP work environment.
