In a couple of days’ time, I’ll be joining over 600 CEOs across Australia and sleeping outside for a night at the St Vincent de Paul CEO Sleepout, an event designed to raise money and consciousness around the issue of homelessness in Australia.

Surprisingly, even in such a prosperous country as Australia, there are over 100,000 homeless people, the majority of them women and children. 

Money raised in the CEO Sleepout helps Vinnies provide not only food and shelter but also critical social services and job skills that help folks get back on their feet.

I slept rough for Vinnies last year and raised over $8,000 from over 75 contributors, and have set myself a goal to surpass $12,000 in 2010. 

Thanks to the generous support of many I am already over $9,500 as of today, so I’m getting close to my goal. 

Of course I am soon to leave Australia for another position with the company in New York, so this will be my last CEO Sleepout here in Sydney.

I am pleased and proud that representing WK Asia Pac and CCH Australia at the Vinnies CEO Sleepout will be one of my last official acts in my role here.

If you’d like to learn more about the CEO Sleepout, and Vinnies, you can go to http://www.ceosleepout.org.au.

If you’d like to contribute, type lampert where it says “Search CEOs” and have your credit card handy. 

Every little bit helps!

If you have already contributed, thank you so much for your support. 

Your contribution will make a huge difference to those less fortunate.

 Thanks again for everyone’s support.

Best,
- Dave

David A Lampert
Chief Executive Officer
Wolters Kluwer Asia Pacific

Accurate. Authoritative. Relevant. At CCH, we say we are but how do we know if this is really true?

Simple - ask our customers!

Since 2006, CCH has surveyed customers across the Asia Pacific region in order to find out what they think about our products and associated services, as well as their perception of CCH in general. By regularly surveying our customers, we aim to develop and deliver high quality products and services which best meet our customers’ needs.

Customers are invited via email to complete an online survey where they firstly rate a chosen CCH product type on a range of factors, including accuracy, ease of use and relevance. They are then asked to rate this product type on overall quality, price and value for money.

Next, our customers are asked about how likely they would be to continue to use our products, recommend them to a colleague and how much they trust and rely on the products. A customer’s likelihood to recommend a product to a colleague tells us two key things: how loyal they are to us as a brand and how enthusiastic they are about our products and services. For example, a customer who said they would be “highly likely” to refer a CCH product to a colleague would also be likely to continue to buy our products for themselves. Understanding these responses ultimately allows us to see our products and services as our customers see them – an extremely valuable insight indeed. 

The results from this survey are shared through our Executive Group and management teams who use this information to better understand what customers think of us. Over the past three years of conducting this survey, we have been able to look at trends in customers’ opinions and use these to identify areas where we can plan strategies to improve in the future.

To thank our customers for taking the time to complete this survey, we donate $5.00 to a charity of their choice. This year, our customers could choose to make a donation to World Vision, Médecins Sans Frontières or the World Wildlife Fund. We raised over $3,300.00 for these three charities – so a big thank you is in order to all of our customers who took the time to complete this survey!

The occasion was the annual volunteer day for Father Chris Riley’s Youth Off The Streets charity which helps homeless and disadvantaged young people.

Staff painted woodwork on the verandas of residences at YOTS’ New Pathways farm, in the breezy Southern Highlands about 20 km south of Berrima. Editors said the work was exhausting but rewarding and well-suited to people focused on quality and with a keen eye for detail!

New Pathways is a residential treatment program for teenage boys aged from 12 to 18 years who have behavioural problems. Often they come from a home environment involving serious deprivation and abuse. A boy may be at New Pathways from one to three years, depending on the capacity for learning and progress.

YOTS volunteer organiser Emily Gray says this is the only program of its kind in Australia. Without it, these boys might be thrown instead into the prison system.

CCH’s relationship with YOTS goes back more than a decade. In that time, dozens of staff have given up a day to help repair and maintain some of the many locations where YOTS does its valuable work. The company treats the day as an ordinary work day for volunteers.

CCH helps YOTS in other ways too, including with free online subscriptions to some of our finance, HR and legal titles.

Special thanks goes to the organisers of this year’s volunteer day - Kate Graham at CCH and Emily Gray, the YOTS volunteer coordinator - and CEO Dave for his wholehearted support, morally, financially and with a paintbrush.

Find out more about YOTS on their website www.youthoffthestreets.com.au.

- CCH Community Investment Program

Editor Ed Carr makes his mark