Co-authored by Luxy Thuraisingam and Brian Tippens

Today marks the release of the 2022 Cisco Purpose Report, an extensive document detailing the progress of all our environmental, social, and governance (ESG) Initiatives this past year. If you haven't had a chance to read it or check out Cisco's ESG Hub, we invite you to when you have a chance.

Powering an Inclusive Future for All

Since announcing our purpose to Power an Inclusive Future for All in 2020, Cisco has made significant progress towards this goal. It isn't just something we say-it's something we live and breathe every day. From the initial Corporate Social Responsibility framework that we've been reporting on since 2005, to our Actions that were launched in 2020, Cisco has continuously worked towards fulfilling our purpose through our technology, actions, and intentions every day.

Our next step in living our purpose through our people is to make an even greater impact by bringing together the tools, capabilities, and experiences, with our trusted partners around the world. By empowering our partners and helping them get behind ESG actions that are important to them, their employees, and their communities, we exponentially Power an Inclusive Future for All.

An Industry First: Introducing Partnering for Purpose

And that is why at last month's Partner Summit, we announced Partnering for Purpose.

The Partnering for Purpose initiative makes it easy for partners to leverage the work Cisco and our partners are already doing to positively impact communities and the planet. Joining together in support of a specific cause is nothing new, and over those decades of working together we've listened to and learned from our partners. Partnering for Purpose simply formalizes the work we and our partners have already been doing and provides a single, orchestrated platform to make this work easier, more accessible, and even more impactful.

While one of our major goals with Partnering for Purpose is to work even closer with our partners to Power an Inclusive Future for all, we also want to help them with their own ESG efforts. We believe that Partnering for Purpose will help our partners extend trust and affinity with their customers and communities, demonstrate competitive differentiation through their ESG actions, and develop greater employee engagement and goodwill.

"The Partnering for Purpose initiative is one that we actually believe in strongly, especially as a diverse firm. We believe that ESG is a differentiator."  -Emmanuel Ola-Dake, Molaprise, Cisco African American Cisco Partner Community (AACPC) Member

Orchestrated through a digital platform, partners can explore and engage in different themes that are important to their organization. There's a range of activities: from digital inclusion, employee experience and economic empowerment to addressing climate change and environmental stewardship, critical human needs and crisis response.

Doing Good Is Good for Business

Make no mistake, while initiatives such as Partnering for Purpose can certainly be labeled as "feel-good" initiatives, there is also the inescapable fact that doing good is simply good for business.

"We've been living in a time of false choices, where it seemed like you had to choose between what was good for the world or good for business, but that's no longer the case."    -Fran Katsoudas, Chief People, Policy and Purpose Officer, Cisco

Recent studies show that people want more business engagement, and that leading with their authentic purpose can be a differentiator:

• 86% of employees are more likely to work for a company that demonstrates commitment to the issues they care about
• 66% of customers would consider a company's purpose when making purchase decisions
• 87% of institutional investors consider ESG factors when making investment decisions or plan to within the next year

Let's Own Our Purpose, Together

While Cisco has made incredible strides in our mission to Power an Inclusive Future for All, we want to invite our partners to join us and also further their ESG goals. So many of the amazing projects and initiatives we've been involved with would not have been possible without the work, knowledge, and passion of our partners.

Because when we're all partnering for purpose, everybody wins.

Partners: Visit Partnering for Purpose in SalesConnect 

Check out the Cisco ESG Reporting Hub

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