Friday, March 19, 2010

HR needs make sure the company practises what it preaches on CSR

HR needs make sure the company practises what it preaches on CSR
by Jan Levy (Jan Levy is managing director of Three Hands)

'Build it in, don't bolt it on.' That's the oft used but absolutely legitimate advice regularly doled out to companies about CSR. No one department should own CSR; it should be initiated by everybody in the business. Indeed, a CSR manager's aim should be to do himself/ herself (actually, usually 'herself' in this world) out of a job, because CSR is 'part of the DNA' (another good cliché) of the organisation.

Many organisations find this pretty hard to achieve. Why? I think it's because you can have as many approaches and policies as you like, but good CSR hinges around the behaviour of individuals in the business. And influencing individuals' behaviour - something that is closely linked to their values - in an organisation of any decent size is a difficult thing to do.

Take a couple of examples I've recently come across. A friend of mine went for an interview at a publishing company. It is one of the big players, with a fairly well established community engagement policy that stresses its commitment to people in the community through a schools programme, a charity partnership and investment in the regeneration of the local area.

But this responsible approach to local stakeholders does not seem to extend to job applicants, at least in my friend's experience. She was not told the salary of the job she was applying for and yet was asked to put together a major presentation of her creative ideas for the magazine she was applying to work on. Her ideas were well received and she was asked back for another interview, but when she was finally told the salary, it was a figure way below her value. Her suspicion was that the recruiter wanted her ideas knowing that, based on her experience, she would have valuable creativity to impart but would never be in a position to take the job.

This approach - whether an accepted recruitment method or down to the behaviour of the individual manager recruiting - was completely inconsistent with general CSR values such as transparency and fairness as well as with the type of commitment they show to the local community through its CSR programmes.

The other mismatch between principle and practice that I stumbled upon recently was at a multinational manufacturing business that takes pride in its environmental credentials and that openly strives to be carbon-neutral. So when a senior team had to travel from its office at one end of the country to take part in a community event 400 miles away, how did they travel? Surprisingly, on the company's private jet. (Just one principled team member refused.) Enough said; gulf between talking the talk and walking the walk duly illustrated.

So what can HR do? I wouldn't purport to tell HR directors how to do their jobs, but here are a few ideas:

Engage in ongoing dialogue with the head of CSR to find out how HR can support CSR, and vice versa;
Appeal to your people's values. Too often employees leave their personal values at the door when they come to work; enable them to express their values;

Include ‘doing the right thing' in behavioural frameworks and PDPs;
Shout about it, then shout about it some more. Companies that are good at this are constantly reinforcing the message with internal comms

A handy comparison is this: 25 or so years ago the health and safety movement was in its infancy; nowadays it is second nature for many managers to think health and safety when making decisions and implementing plans. CSR needs to get to the same place - and it's HR's job to take it there.