The recognitions just keep piling up like sacks of green coffee beans at Dean’s Beans Organic Coffee in Orange.
Dean Cycon, chief executive officer and founder of Dean’s Beans, in 2013 was selected as the first-ever winner of the United Nations Women’s Empowerment Principles Leadership Award for Community Engagement. Cycon was recognized for his company’s innovative social and market-based efforts toward achieving gender equality in third-world coffee bean-growing countries.
Also that year, Cycon, a New York lawyer-turned-Massachusetts entrepreneur, took home an Oslo Business for Peace Award, which is sometimes referred to as the “Nobel prize of business, ” and which honors socially responsible business owners who bring about positive change.
Cycon has done just that since founding Dean’s Beans about 25 years ago. He is dedicated to paying all of its coffee growers premium prices that then allows them to live sustainably, a practice commonly referred to as “fair trade.”
Dean’s Beans works with thousands of farmers raising shade-grown coffee in a dozen countries, including Nicaragua, Papua New Guinea, Rwanda and Peru.
“It isn’t Starbucks, but it is also not a mom and pop operation any more,” he said recently, demonstrating that in some cases you can be socially responsible in what you pay your suppliers and how you treat your workers, and still make a profit.
Most recently, Cycon’s fair treatment of his own employees has earned him kudos when the company was named one of the “Best and Brightest Companies to Work For” by the National Association for Business Resources, which provides specialized business services, education and resources for businesses throughout the United States.
The competition honors organizations “that display a commitment to excellence in their human resource practices and employee enrichment.” The companies are rated on things like work-life balance, employee education and diversity.
Talk to Cycon’s 12 full-time employees — from administrative staff to the people who roast the coffee — and you get a better idea of why he won the most recent award.
They include master roaster Brendan Walsh, who started with the company 12 years ago packaging the coffee. Working for Cycon, he said, has allowed him to accommodate his family’s schedule, a value the company champions.
“We are very family friendly,” says Cycon. “We have three months paid maternity leave and two weeks paid paternity leave. We have flexible hours to accommodate people’s families and their lifestyles.”
Human Resources Manager Katherine Parcell, who’s been with the company for five years, said, “The work-life balance is just huge. I couldn’t be a parent in the way that I am at another company. If my kids get sick, I can run and take care of it … or I can bring them in to play for a while,” she said. “The company is really responsive to whatever else we have going on in our lives.”
Cycon also said he aims to give his employees the best benefits possible, with health insurance that covers premiums, co-pays and deductibles.
“So, basically, everyone here has free health care,” he said. “I really believe health care is a right.”
See, socially responsible. Sounds like a fair trade to us.