Tips for your CSR-day

Nov 23 is Deutche Telekom's CSR-day, the whole company engages is value creation, philanthropy and gender equality efforts. Symantec has launched a CSR website. What is going on? How do they know what to do? Read on, help is coming:

Photo by aresauburn Flickr CC

Harvest the benefits

Some say that CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) is only a publicity stunt, and that CSR reports are worthless. The irony is that companies like British Tobacco do cancer research, which attracts a lot of criticism but at the same time help science. Whichever way you look at it CSR is a major movement and well worth investigating.

Cecily Joseph, Symantec's Director of Corporate Responsibility is cited by Deborah Fleischer in her greenimpact blog, giving a list of benefits for CSR reporting:

• Identifying new goals, including a new overall GHG-reduction goal


• Creating a competitive advantage by attracting a more diverse talent, and therefore, creating a more innovative culture


• Delivering a better understanding of stakeholder concerns and materiality


• Educating employees and stakeholders about how sustainability is relevant


• Saving money by identifying more efficient environmental strategies


• Developing new market opportunities around products that can help customers save costs and reduce energy use at their data centers


• Making the company more transparent and accountable to stakeholders and employees


• Challenging the company to do more

Joseph's work is based on the Global Reporting Initiatives framework and a great matrix identifying the main areas which are important for both the company and its stakeholders.
Symantec materiality index

The matrix with one axis for stakeholder value and the other for company value, clearly shows both which topics to work on, and why - genius!

CSR's different directions

There is more to CSR than making reports and matrixes. Wikipedia has a really good article on CSR and the different directions:

• Community based development - where companies interact with the community, which makes a lot of sense for gender equality and sustainability when working with the local community


• Philanthropy - maybe the most common form of CSR, companies donate money to organizations and communities. The value of philanthropy can be debated and especially if it should be the role of companies when government is constructed just to fill the function of justly divide resources


• Integrating CSR into the business strategy - like many famous brands, Bodyshop is just one example


• Creating Shared Value, CSV - the idea came from Harvard's Michael Porter and is based on the principle that a healthy business can not survive in a failing society, and vice versa

Wikipedia illustration of various types of CSR

The CSV idea is especially appealing, European companies outside the main centres will suffer from lack of managers and supporting the local community is of mutual benefit. Philanthropy and especially donating to far away places, with a multitude of unknown implications can be both wasteful and potentially harmful. Offering free rice to starving communities can amount to total destruction of weak local farms since prices are destroyed and many other such examples of mis-directed efforts exist throughout the world.

Symantec and Deutche Telekom versus Small Companies

Symantec's CSR site is a source of inspiration and information, Deutche Telekom's efforts as well. Both are giant corporations with the possibility of having specialists dedicating both time and efforts to CSR, how about small companies? In 2005 the European Union focused a project on the specific issue of mainstreaming CSR among SME:s, in the area of focusing employees the project suggested:

• The improvement of working conditions (incl. health and safety at work) and job satisfaction


• work/life balance


• equal opportunities and diversity


• training and staff development (incl. career planning)


• communication/information of employees and participation in company decisions


• responsible and fair remuneration or financial support of employees (e.g. pension systems, interest-free loans)

The results clearly shows that CSR can be a part of any company agenda, and for SME:s, possibly a great doorway to the active use of strategy.

Call for action

Big companies are already into CSR, those wanting to be listed on the South African Stock exchange are even forced to present a sustainability report. The powerful ISO has just published the 26 000 norm on CSR, with the explicit statement that it is not intended for certification but to clarify the role of social responsibility. SME:s can take part by formulating strategic intents and being better on straightforward areas like focusing employees and reducing waste.

What are we waiting for? Is it all clear? Comments?

Comments

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