Employees

Investing in Our Employees

Our employees define who we are as a company. Each person plays a role in accomplishing ICF’s mission and goals. For that reason, we implement policies and practices that enable us to recruit and retain the best people. Our practices include:

• Total rewards that set us apart—Our total cash compensation programs are competitive for the industry and we have award-winning benefits that have been recognized four years in a row by the CARE Award for family-friendly policies.
• Flexible work environment—ICF offers latitude in the work environment to enable employees to be most productive. More than 15 percent of our employees telework on a regular basis, and from time to time, nearly every employee takes advantage of the program to cover emergencies. Our telecommuting program includes flex-time schedules, laptops, computer support, and the use of hotel offices. ICF is recognized as one of the Best Workplaces for Commuters and by Commuter Connections for offering a wide variety of commuting incentives to encourage the use of public transit, ridesharing, bicycling, and teleworking.
• Competitive recruiting—ICF recruits through professional associations and networks and at leading colleges and universities, including historically black schools. We offer significant referral bonuses to our staff.
• Professional development opportunities—ICF encourages staff to attend training for professional development at no cost to them, with more than 75 courses available in the ICF Learning Institute. Our employee performance management system links employee development plans to courses available in the Learning Institute. ICF received the Helios HR Apollo Award for excellence in employee growth and professional development.
• Equitable work environment—ICF provides an environment where employees from a wide diversity of backgrounds, culture, race, and gender flourish. An example is the number of women at the senior levels of our organization. Thirty-three percent of our executive officers are women as compared to the average of 14.4 percent among Fortune 500 companies (2010 Catalyst Census: Fortune 500 Women Executive Officers and Top Earners).
• Employee engagement—ICF recognizes the importance that our employees are given meaningful work that stretches their skills and broadens their capabilities. Employee responses to the CARE Award survey indicate that our employees are proud to work for ICF and that we provide a friendly, safe, ethical, and fair environment with great benefits, including professional development and schedule flexibility.
• Commitment to staff retention—ICF’s investment in our staff has resulted in a turnover rate that is significantly lower than the industry average: only 11.8, as compared to the average of 18.7 percent among federal contractors of comparable size (HumanR, Inc., 2010 research on retention rates among federal contractors with more than 1,000 employees). High staff retention contributes to ICF’s stability and positions us for long-term growth.

Clients

Serving Our Clients with Integrity

Integrity is fundamental to any relationship—including the relationship of ICF with our clients. To cultivate trust, ICF endeavors to be consistent in our stated values and actions and to serve with excellence. We ask our clients to judge our performance. We elicit their feedback and improve by responding to their comments.

At ICF we care about the issues we’re addressing and want to provide impartial, high-quality solutions for our clients. Meeting client requirements is only the baseline of our performance.  Here are some of the ways our clients benefit from ICF’s values:

• Consultants trained in ethical business practices—ICF offers highly credentialed and motivated consultants who are trained in a strict code of ethics. Employees must certify annually that we know and comply with the code. We also must certify that we will report any suspected violations to the code.
• Quality management—ICF conducts a quality review of nearly all projects in our largest operating division and uses corrective feedback to improve our services and products. We maintain a 94-percent customer satisfaction rating. We’re in the process of standardizing quality reviews in other divisions.
• Sustainable solutions—ICF provides sustainable solutions to some of the world’s most vexing issues.
• Carbon neutrality—ICF maintains carbon neutrality to ensure that our services contribute to our clients’ sustainability, for we are part of their supply chain.
• Impartial advice—ICF provides impartial, practical advice and solutions. We don’t advocate particular viewpoints. We conduct research that reflects the best available practices for getting the right answer.
• Research investments—ICF invests in the development of an extensive library of proprietary tools and research that we use to more efficiently and effectively solve our clients’ problems.

Shareholders

Creating Long-Term Value for Our Shareholders

Shareholder value is not created in a vacuum. It isn’t only related to profit and loss. Shareholder value is influenced by trust, reputation, and relationships. Investors know there is a link between responsible corporate citizenship and long-term value, as described in a 2009 Thomson Reuters study that shows 82 percent of investors now evaluate environmental, social, and governance criteria as part of their investment decision.

For ICF, meeting our growth and profitability targets is only one measure of our performance. ICF’s responsible business practices offer our shareholders the following indications of long-term health:

• Risk mitigation through sustainable and transparent business practices, including a Corporate Responsibility Steering Committee that reports to the COO.
• Accountable relationships with our clients and employees, where we solicit their input through surveys and other feedback mechanisms and consider their comments as part of our process improvement.
• Operational efficiency resulting from changes to minimize our impact on the environment and respond to stakeholder feedback.
• Innovation as a consequence of operating under the checks and balances of corporate responsibility.
• Increased brand value derived from a reputation for good corporate citizenship—measured as a high percentage of repeat business, a high employee retention rate, and recognition from our communities, clients, and industry.
• Continued support from institutional investors that have environmental, social, and governance criteria.

The Environment

Minimizing Our Impact on the Environment

ICF specializes in developing sustainable solutions for our clients, so ensuring that we minimize the environmental impact of our own operations is critically important to us. Our strategy for minimizing ICF's impact on the environment includes:

• Carbon neutrality—ICF began tracking our carbon emissions in 2006, and in 2007 we were the first professional services firm to become carbon neutral. We’ve been carbon neutral each year since 2007.
• Award-winning commuter benefits—ICF offers a monthly subsidy to employees who use mass transit. They also may take advantage of a pre-tax payroll deduction. The environmental impact of this program is an annual savings equal to approximately 600,000 gallons of fuel or 1,800 cars off the road. ICF also has a generous telecommuting policy, and more than 15 percent of our employees telecommute on a regular basis. ICF has been recognized by Washington’s Commuter Connections program and Best Workplaces for Commuters.
• Green criteria for building leases—In 2010 ICF revised our leasing procurement documents to include criteria for sustainability. Future ICF facilities will meet minimum requirements regarding energy efficiency, use of recycled building materials, proximity to mass transit (where relevant), and other sustainable characteristics.
• Energy reduction—In 2010 ICF consolidated data centers, closing several that were no longer needed and significantly reducing the size of that at headquarters. We’re implementing a computer refresh policy that retires aging laptops and replaces them with more energy-efficient models. We’re replacing hundreds of appliances with more energy-efficient equipment. In one office alone we saved 35,700 kWh of power by replacing old appliances. We replaced lighting with compact fluorescent lights and installed motion sensor lighting controls.
• Water conservation—ICF installed high-efficiency toilets and upgraded faucet aerators. In one office alone, we saved 900 gallons of water in 1 year.
• Waste minimization—ICF's highly publicized recycling program has great participation in all of our offices. Some offices also have compost programs. To reduce our use of paper, we’re running a pilot project to make duplex printing the default on all printers. For many staff it is already the default. To reduce our use of plastic and paper products in many office kitchens, we’ve replaced paper and plastic with glassware and stainless flatware.
• Material conservation—When possible, ICF reuses or uses recycled materials and equipment, such as our stationery, which is printed on 100-percent recycled paper. Companywide we stock only recycled paper. We reuse printer cartridges. Through refurbishment, we extend the life of our computers by one to two years.
• Green Team empowered to implement green initiatives—ICF's volunteer-run Green Team has a mission of making ICF operate in a more sustainable way. The ICF Green Team educates and engages colleagues in conservation and waste minimization. The team identifies opportunities to improve ICF’s sustainability and may receive funding to implement its ideas. Many of ICF’s initiatives to operate in a more sustainable way are attributable to the Green Team.
• Investment in high-quality projects to offset our emissions—ICF's climate change experts apply stringent criteria to ensure the quality and efficacy of projects in which ICF will invest to offset our carbon emissions.

Our Communities

Giving Back to Our Communities

There are many valid reasons to give back to society—it forms good relationships—a healthy society expands business opportunity—your  neighbor today could be your client tomorrow—it’s the right thing to do—and the list goes on. ICF accepts all these rationales, but our primary driver is that we want to give back. We want to stay true to our legacy (founded as the Inner City Fund to revitalize neglected urban areas). We want to address the problems surrounding health, education, social programs, and veterans’ issues—just to name a few of the challenges. We want to continue attracting employees who are equally committed to solving these problems, and who compel us to do more. Here are some of the ways we’re giving back:

• Financial support—During 2010 ICF supported scores of charities focused on health, the environment, veterans, and a wide variety of other organizations important to our employees. We also made a significant donation for relief in Haiti following the earthquake.
• Fundraising and gifts in kind—ICF employees raised money and in-kind donations for health, hunger, homelessness, human and family services, education, the environment, global poverty, and animal rescue.
  • Employees across the firm raised money for Haiti and challenged colleagues to meet giving goals.
  • D.C. area staff hosted an annual charity auction that raised $25,000.This event has raised a cumulative $140,000 since first initiated.
  • Calverton, Maryland, staff donated 260 pounds of food to the Capital Area Food Bank.
  • Fairfax, Virginia, staff collected nearly 500 gifts for Toys for Tots.
  • ICFers were running, walking, and cycling to raise money for their favorite charities that fight cancer, AIDS, and climate change and support health, education, and affordable housing.
• Volunteer support—Whether the need is to paint an inner city school, pick up trash along a river bank or roadside, stock the pantry at a local food bank, donate blood to the American Red Cross—our employees are there and eager to help.
  • San Francisco and Oakland, California, employees sorted and packaged food at the San Francisco Food Bank for those in need.
  • Denver, Colorado, staff planted 150 willows and 30 alders in the Arkansas Headwater Recreation Area for the Colorado Riparian Association and Trout Unlimited.
  • San Diego, California, removed invasive plants at the San Diego River Park. Volunteers removed enough plants to fill a 40-cubic-yard dumpster.
  • Fairfax, Virginia, employees supported ICF’s Adopt-A-Highway program by picking up trash along the roadside.
  • Sacramento, California, harvested 1,200 acorns for Sacramento Tree Foundation’s “Seed to Seedling.” Third-graders plant acorns, then replant seedlings, in local schools and parks.
• Board service—Another form of volunteer service by many of ICF’s senior managers is serving on the board of directors of nonprofits or serving in other leadership roles. ICF managers donate their time to organizations focused on education, health, housing, social services, emergency services, crime victims, the environment, wildlife, and the arts.