CSR for HR

A Necessary Partnership for Advancing Responsible Business Practices

Elaine Cohen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351278584
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Arguably, the Human Resources (HR) function is the key partner in embedding Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Sustainability initiatives in any organisation, as this can be achieved only when a company educates, engages and empowers its entire workforce. This book goes even further and proposes that the HR function has a responsibility to be proactive in leading the way in establishing a company-wide CSR-enabled culture. And, yet, this is not happening. HR managers are preoccupied with their traditional roles of organizational development, recruitment, training and compensation, and are failing to see the opportunities that CSR brings for them as professionals and for their organizations.

CSR for HR has been designed to change the game. It provides HR managers with a thorough understanding of the drivers and principles of CSR and a practical step-by-step guide to the way CSR interfaces with every HR function. Recruitment, compensation, training, employee communications, employee well-being, health & safety, employee rights, involvement in the community, and employee impacts on the environment are all discussed from the CSR–HR standpoint, with many clear examples showing how HR can leverage CSR strategies to deliver greater benefit for the business, for employees, for society, for the environment and, ultimately, for HR professionals themselves.

The HR function plays a critical role in embedding a values-based, strategic CSR mindset and establishing an organizational culture that meets the needs of today's stakeholders. HR professionals who understand this and adapt accordingly will reap the benefits. The book explains why, how and what to do next, offering detailed advice, tools, a roadmap to get started and hundreds of tips from companies around the world, including original content from HR managers of large corporations.

Written from the standpoint of an HR professional waking up to the strategic possibilities of incorporating CSR in her day-to-day role, the book has an easy and engaging style, ideal for the busy managerial reader. CSR for HR is both a wake-up call and a toolkit and will be essential reading for practitioners in both HR and CSR, as well as being a sought-after teaching resource for both executives and students.

Part I
HR: a critical partner for CSR

1
HR meets CSR

She is a human resources manager of a medium-sized company, operating globally on a limited scale. Her company is called Andromex Ltd and is a privately owned software developer, headquartered in Bristol, UK, employing 2,500 people, with several operations outsourced to India and other countries. She is skilled, with 13 years of HR management experience. She has studied organisational behaviour, training and organisation design, read every one of Dave Ulrich’s books¹ and attended a coaching course to equip her to career-coach managers at Andromex Ltd. She hasn’t missed the leading national annual HR conference in the past four years and has even presented a couple of papers. She is well respected as a business partner in the Andromex management team. She runs a tight HR organisation, providing training, welfare, career development programmes, internal communications, recruitment and support for business processes. Her team of 20 people are highly regarded and acclaimed for doing a good job. She and her team won the HR Excellence prize last year for an exceptional new recruitment model she developed and implemented. She loves the HR profession and sees herself progressing into larger roles in the future. She knows that HR is strategic, and a necessary enabler for business development and growth. She truly feels that she does a job that is critical to helping the business succeed, and very worthwhile. At last, her CEO has agreed to her attending the ASTD conference² in the USA — a major expense for a business run on a tight budget, and she is looking forward to the trip.

Little did she know, it would change her life as an HR manager.

By the way, her name is Sharon.

As she boards the connecting flight from London to the conference, refreshed after a brief shopping spree in Heathrow airport and armed with a newly acquired copy of Guts! by Jackie and Kevin Freiberg,³ a book that has come highly recommended to her, she searches for her aisle seat in business class, grateful for the fact that the company revised its policy on economy flights for long-hauls. She found herself seated next to a woman, a few years older than her, poring over a book whose title she couldn’t quite make out, something ‘unusual’. The woman looked up and smiled, and reverted to her book. An hour or so later, as lunch is served, the woman started a conversation:

The woman: Where are you travelling to?

Sharon: I’m going to a conference in San Diego. It’s a conference about training, the ASTD conference. I work in human resources.

The woman: Is that right? Incredible! You won’t believe it, but I am travelling to the same conference. I go every year. I am also in human resources. I work for International Food Company Ltd (IFC). I am the European HR VP. My name is Arena.

Sharon: Really? What a coincidence! Pleased to meet you. I’m Sharon.

Sharon and Arena started talking. Sharon noticed that the book Arena was reading was Business as Unusual by Anita Roddick, the pioneering business woman and social activist who created and led The Body Shop,⁴ one of the first ethical businesses to become globally successful and defy traditional ways of doing business. Arena noticed her looking at Anita Roddick’s picture on the cover.

The values of The Body Shop

• Activate self-esteem
• Protect our planet
• Against animal testing
• Support community trade
• Defend human rights

www.thebodyshop.com

Arena: I admire Anita Roddick. She died in 2007, at the age of 64. A tragedy. One of those deaths, for me at least, where you remember exactly where you were when you heard. She was such an inspiration for us all. This is the second time I am reading this book. The values Anita Roddick led at The Body Shop and the way she integrated them throughout the business were quite revolutionary at that time, though now, no respectable business can afford not to take notice of social and environmental issues. It has become quite a movement, corporate social responsibility. It has changed the way I think and work so much over the past few years, as an HR professional. Anita Roddick said ‘we were searching for employees but people turned up instead’⁵ — and you know, that is really what social responsibility is all about. Ensuring that we not only respect people and our environment, but also take time to understand their concerns and aspirations, and enable them to maintain a respectable standard of living. Take their issues into account as we plan and develop. I was thinking of calling myself a CSHR manager — corporate social human resources manager, as I seem to be doing as much CSR as I am HR these days. There was a quote from a couple of people at Canadian Business for Social Responsibility⁶ who said that CSR minus HR is PR.⁷ Do you understand that? If a company tries to behave as a corporate socially responsible company but doesn’t take the time to ensure all the HR processes are aligned, and that people are respected, then CSR becomes nothing more than a public relations exercise. But I’m preaching. That’s what happens when you enjoy your work, I suppose. Anyway, Sharon, what do you do about corporate social responsibility in your business?

Sharon: er …

Sharon had to admit that she didn’t do anything very much about corporate social responsibility in her business. In fact, she had to admit that she didn’t really know what it all meant. It was a little embarrassing really. She knew CSR had something to do with contributing to the community, such as sending employees out to do maintenance on old people’s houses, or organising volunteer days. She had thought of doing something like that in her company, because it seemed like an interesting approach for an employee Fun Day, but there were always so many other things to do. As long as the CEO wasn’t demanding a community programme, Sharon didn’t feel it was part of the core HR role to initiate these things. ‘I am busy enough as it is,’ she thought.

Sharon: I have to admit that I don’t really know what corporate social responsibility involves. I am not sure why it’s important. Contributing to the community and improving the environment is fine, but I don’t see it as something that the HR function should recommend. I am proud of what we have achieved as an HR team. We have developed a strong position in the company because we work closely aligned to business strategy, and we have started to track metrics, such as training effectiveness, so that the management team knows how we are adding value. We have become accepted as business partners. I don’t think it’s right that we should start recommending allocation of time and budgets to contribute to the community. The CSR concept sounds like someone else’s area of responsibility, like public relations or marketing. It sounds to me like a lot of effort and I am not sure what it contributes to the business. I agree that it would be nice to make a donation to the community here and there, but frankly, my boss will not release money for this. We just don’t have the funds. We are a privately owned company and budgets are tightly controlled. It took me four years just to get him to let me go to this conference in the USA.

Arena: Sharon, you sound just like me a few years back, before I joined International Food. That’s exactly how I thought about things. But today, well, I couldn’t work for a company that didn’t have a social and environmental responsibility strategy. I couldn’t do an HR job without being part of a CSR team. CSR has helped me understand the real meaning of sustainable business. It has helped me realise that my job as a human resources manager is even more meaningful. Today, CSR is a key element of managing risk, developing new business opportunities and protecting and enhancing the company reputation. For us HR managers, it’s a core element of our company culture, and has major strategic value. But it also means that we have to learn new skills and do things a little differently than we did in the past. So for HR, CSR represents new challenges. It’s exciting! Look. We have a few hours ahead of us. Let me tell you a little about CSR and why HR managers can’t afford to ignore it, OK?

Sharon: I did want to catch the new Richard Gere film on Channel 2.

Arena (laughing): Believe me, Richard Gere might give you a quick thrill, but CSR will change your personal and professional life forever. In any case, I saw that movie already and, believe me, Richard Gere is not what he used to be.

Sharon: OK, Arena. I am always happy to listen. Thanks.

Despite Sharon’s seeming reluctance, Arena started to educate Sharon on corporate social responsibility. First, she shared the following definitions:

Corporate social responsibility (CSR). A way of doing business that is based on ethical principles and structured management controls, and that takes into account social and environmental considerations alongside economic considerations when making business decisions, and attempts to create positive impacts on all stakeholders. CSR is a voluntary approach, going beyond compliance with laws and regulations.

Sustainability. Sustainable development of business means ‘satisfying the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’. This is the most commonly quoted definition of sustainability, coined by the Brundtland Commission⁸ in 1983.

Arena: These two terms are often used interchangeably, but they are rather different. CSR is about how a business does things and impacts on people, society and environment. It involves an evaluation of the way the business impacts on all stakeholders and adoption of business practices to improve these impacts. It requires engaging stakeholders in dialogue about their concerns and aspirations, and what they expect from the business. CSR also involves identifying ways in which the business can succeed in the long term by addressing these expectations, so as to deliver positive outcomes for all as far as possible, including positive outcomes for the business, of course. It’s about businesses taking responsibility and being accountable for their impacts on people, communities and the environment. Obeying the law is not enough. CSR goes beyond the requirements of the law. Sustainability, on the other hand, tends to refer to the ability of the business to sustain itself through time, while contributing to the improvement of society and the planet as a whole.

Sharon: I don’t understand the difference.

Gap Inc. values

Integrity, respect, open-mindedness, quality and balance

www.gapinc.com

Arena: OK. Take Gap Inc. Gap is a large business with a strong reputation for CSR. I see you are wearing a GAP sweatshirt. Gap Inc.⁹ has a complex supply chain that is outsourced, mainly to Asian suppliers. There are hundreds of thousands of employees in the Gap Inc. supply chain in over 2,500 contract factories. We know that human rights in these businesses are often abused and difficult to control. Gap Inc. instigated a major supplier auditing and training programme and required suppliers to adhere to strict ethical standards. This is CSR. The focus is on directly managing the way the company does business in order to ensure it does no harm and even makes a positive overall contribution. On the other hand, Gap Inc. has been active in building government, third sector¹⁰ and industry coalitions to address the global issues of human rights and child labour in outsourced factories. They have been involved in setting standards for eliminating exploitation of workers in Asian countries, addressing problems of child labour, enabling freedom of association, setting appropriate hygiene standards and so on. These are industry issues that are wider than one business alone can influence and that have an impact on the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Meet Arena Dardelle
• Meet Sharon Black
• Part I HR: a critical partner for CSR
• Part II Embedding CSHR
• Part III The CSHR infrastructure
• Appendix: Companies referenced
• Index