Embedding CSR is the key to better performance

The CSR Academy was established in July 04 through close Government, industry and key stakeholder co-operation as a response to the discussions and frequent calls to “mainstream” CSR.

Some describe the current challenge facing CSR as “embedding”, or “to impact the business mainstream, to make it part and parcel of all we do”, or for others, “to move CSR from being bolted on to being built in”.

The mantras ring different, but the meaning remains the same.

The CSR Academy is about skills and competencies, working with managers to develop the particular skills and competencies necessary to realise the CSR agenda.

It’s about the practicalities of building those skills into the life cycle of employees, from recruitment through appraisal to succession planning.

It’s a tightly focussed agenda, but skills and competencies is where the Academy begins and ends.

These calls, far from being off message, are at the cusp of the CSR agenda.

In a fast moving discipline, CSR is no longer solely about how companies give money away or support the community. It is much more.

The CSR agenda, as mentioned above, is about how the management of a company impacts its stakeholders, the environment and the community in which it operates.

It’s about the integrity with which a company governs itself, how it fulfils its mission, the values it has and what it stands for, how it engages with its stakeholders, and how it measures its impact and publicly reports its activities.

CSR is more about how companies make money in the first place and that involves management making decisions at all levels in the company.

In today’s business environment, managers across the business require the skills and competencies to take into account an increasing range and complexity of factors relating to the financial, environmental and social implications of business operations.

To help managers across the business functions integrate CSR within their organisations, the CSR Academy offers the first ever dedicated CSR Competency Framework.

Its aim is to help in a focussed way in bridging the gap between knowledge and action, providing the means for CSR practitioners and HR specialists to work together in developing employees who from recruitment to promotion have the skills and competencies necessary to meet this challenge.

The CSR Competency Framework is a very practical tool developed from a piece of research undertaken by Ashridge, Accountability and the Corporate Responsibility Group.

This is the first ever Competency Framework focussed on CSR skills.

The Framework draws on the views of over 400 CSR specialists in the UK who were interviewed as part of its development.

The review isolated over 60 competencies that managers with a CSR outlook would display and these were grouped into six key characteristics.

Understanding society, building capacity, questioning business as usual stakeholder relations, strategic view and harnessing diversity.

The Framework sets out various levels of attainment for each of the core characteristics and provides detailed behaviour patterns and case study examples.

The DTI is committed to this agenda, and following a competitive tender process, has chosen five partners to deliver this programme of activity.

For leading companies Accountability, BITC and the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development are delivering a programme of activity.

An autumn series of Masterclasses focussed on using the Competency Framework have been a sell out, and further Masterclasses are planned for 2005 with a regional programme of HR seminars beginning in January in London, and then Birmingham, Manchester, Bristol and Edinburgh.

The Framework is not the preserve of leading companies, small business contributed to its development and the Academy’s programme for the SME sector is being driven by the British Chambers of Commerce.

Launching on 8th December the British Chambers will be holding 12 regional meetings around the UK focussed on the specific aim of developing the skills necessary for furthering their CSR activities.

Looking to the long term, the Academy recognises that business education will play an important role in the understanding and further development of CSR within the Boardroom.

That’s why the Academy has spent time developing a training map of all the accredited CSR related training courses available in the UK.

From MBA electives in social entrepreneurship to a Masters in Corporate Governance, details of the courses are accessible on the Academy website.

To further this work, the Association of Business Schools has been appointed as a Programme Partner and recently held an event introducing the Framework to over 50 UK business schools. Further events are planned for 2005.

After its first quarter of delivery the Academy has seen considerable interest in the Competency Framework and already a number of companies are scoping how they integrate the Framework into their existing activities to boost performance.

Looking to 2005, the Academy’s own key performance indicator is not awareness but take up.

Its early days, but the Academy stakeholders will be watching closely for further tangible results in the subsequent quarters for 2005.

Andrew Dunnett is project director of the CSR Academy.

This article is reproduced with kind permission of Ethical Corporation magazine.
For daily news and articles visit www.ethicalcorp.com or www.ethicalcorp.com/subscribe for free weekly and monthly email newsletters