Well, Well, Well... It pays off!

A press release on 29th December 2010 announced that Smart Communications, Inc. (Smart) of the Phillipines won an Excellence Award at Asia’s premier awards program on corporate social responsibility, the 9th Asian CSR Awards, for its holistic employee wellness program, Live Smart: Healthy U, Wealthy U, Happy U.  Live Smart! promotes physical, financial, social, spiritual and community wellness of employees. Employees are given the rudiments of managing finances wisely under the Wealthy U! pillar. Through this, employees get entrepreneurship opportunities, attend seminars on managing finances, and enjoy discounts and promos. Happy U!, on the one hand, serves as employees’ outlet for fun and meaningful activities. Under Happy You! is Happy to Help, the community service program wherein employees get to choose a partner organization for their volunteer activity.

This wellness programme is fairly unique, as far as I can tell, amongst the spectrum of employee wellness activities in many companies not least because it includes the aspect of financial health and wellness, not just physical and spiritual aspects. Helping employees manage their personal finances can be a massive contribution to empowering them with far-reaching implications for the strength of local communities. Most people have never received any formal education or training in the complexities of managing household economics, in selecting insurance, in setting up savings progammes, in providing for the cost of education or possible sickness in the family,  in making significant purchases including home-buying and mortgage, in aspects of banking costs and much more. Helping employees to live within their means, provide for their own future and enjoy a life of managing money in a stress-free way is part of the triple bottom line of CSR applied to individiuals. This is an area in which corporations can do much more, I believe, and gain added value through improved employee wellbeing and engagement.

I am pleased to see the recognition for such a program at the Asia Awards.  This is of course is at the heart of a CSR for HR approach. In fact, I recently wrote an Editorial for CSRwire.com on the subject of employee wellness programmes, quoting a Harvard Business Review article  in which conclusive proof is provided to show that investment in employee wellness, beyond the minimum requirements of the law, delivers a Return on Investment beyond the reasonable expectation of most. Johnson & Johnson report a $2.71 saving for every $1 spent, saving the company $250 million in healthcare costs over the past decade. In many cases, the return is even greater, as HBR reports "The ROI on comprehensive, well-run employee wellness programs can be as high as 6 to 1."  The authors of the HBR study point out that "passes to fitness clubs and nutrition information in the cafeteria are not enough".

I believe this aspect of CSR and HR has been long underestimated. It is now an approach whose time has come. The investment in employee wellness has to be considered one of the most fundamental tenets of a CSR approach, and I have not come accross a single company that has implemented such an approach and not reaped significant benefits. There is a clear business case, with measurable financial benefits, unlike some other areas of CSR which are header to measure.

Whether your company is in it for the money, or simply because you value your employees, it seems that an employee wellness programme should be an imperative for any Company serious about sustainability in 2011.  This is why I will be repeating, also in 2011, my mantra : It is time for HR to wake up to CSR!

elaine cohen, CSR consultant, Sustainabilty Reporter, HR Professional, Author of CSR for HR: A necessary partnership for advancing responsible business practices. Contact me via www.twitter.com/elainecohen  on Twitter or via my website www.b-yond.biz/en

Best use of CSR in HR

This article in hrmagazine.co.uk advises that Hyder Consulting won the HR excellence Award for the Best use of CSR in HR. Best USE of CSR ? Is CSR an HR tool ? I would have thought that the Award should go to the best HR team that operates with responsibilty and accountability. Or the best HR team that works with a CSR mindset. Am I getting caught up in semantics? The category is described as:

"Judges will be looking for an organisation that has embedded corporate social responsibility throughout the organisation, in particular through its people. Entrants should demonstrate the role HR has played in the strategy and execution of CSR initiatives. They should demonstrate how CSR is making a difference to employees and the business through measurable results." Ok, could be worse. (Can you embed something not through people?)

As far as Hyder is concerned, "Judges thought the most impressive aspects of Hyder's approach to CSR was its effort to engage employees and the fact targets for 2009/2010 were agreed by senior management from its five geographic regions. These were to raise £30,000 for charity; donate 4,000 hours of staff time to charity work; establish a monitoring process for capturing data on waste, energy and water consumption; and to devise a system for recording employee travel data to set reduction targets for 2010." But wait, who were the judges - I can't tell - all I can work out is that " The HR Awards for 2010 will be judged by an expert panel of the most influential people in HR." What do HR people know about CSR ? Enough ? I doubt it.  

Hyder Consulting is an engineering company, offering advisory and design services for property and infrastructure development. The Management team of 9 men and one woman (in HR, what a surprise),("Hyder Consulting is an equal opportunity employer committed to diversity in the workplace."),  does appear to have a CSR commitment and have produced CSR reports for the last few years. The most recent report for 2009 (published 2010)  contains two pages (out of 19) on employees and suffers from a serious case of genericitis, though some basic positive element are included, such as 90% of employees in a survey say they are prepared to go the extra mile for the Company. However, only the good data is shared, which makes me rather suspicious. Similarly, single year data is reported. For example, employees in 2010 numbered 4,182. In the 2009 report, employees in 2009 numbered 4,694. A workforce reduction of 11%. in 12 months. That's quite a hefty number for a small company. No mention of this in the report or references to the way over 500 people were let go. Still, getting back to the awards, the report does provide  detail about how Hyder engages employees: This is basically done in two ways: appointment of CR representatives in each region, and provision of a sophisticated intranet application allowing employees to record donations and resource consumption and provide access to this data to all employees. There is certainly something to be said for this positive level of internal transparency. It would have been nice to hear more about HR processes which support the embedding of a CSR mindset in the business. How do HR do it ? What is different about the way HR functions ?

Anyway, it is good to see the inclusion of a CSR theme in HR Excellence Awards. At least that's something. And congrats to Hyder consulting for making it to the top of the shortlist beating Equity Insurance Group and Sainsbury's . However, as the tone of this post may indicate, my take on this is that it is rather primitive. Full marks for intention, but I think this award misses the point. It is not clear to me that the award encourages the adoption of a CSR mindset by the HR function, or good project management by HR to implement projects such as internal communications or employee volunteering. If the latter, HR will only be as good as the corporate strategy. If the former, the HR function will itself be transformed and support a more responsible organization whatever the business strategy. Does that make sense ?

elaine cohen, CSR consultant, Sustainabilty Reporter, HR Professional. Contact me via www.twitter.com/elainecohen  on Twitter or via my website www.b-yond.biz/en

CSR HR and SME's

The brilliant Julie Urlaub of Taiga Company (  @TaigaCompany ) tweeted this link to People Practices ROI of the Top Small Company Workplaces. I took a look at some of the  practices.

Daphne Utilities with 66 employees: underwent a transformation process to create a "business enterprise guided by principles of accountability, transparency and empowerment."

A Yard and a Half Company with 18 employees:  on-site English classes for those among its workforce that don't speak English as their first language.

Dealer.com with 271 employees: employee development with job rotation and internal mentoring.

Tasty Catering with 84 employees: complimentary daily meals provide a time for people to meet and talk, while weekly bi-lingual newsletters include discussion of business performance and activities.

Maya Design with 42 employees: turning supplemental teaching work at local universities into a paid benefit and providing financial support to those among its workforce of 42 who create viable plans for new, complementary companies.

The Sky Factory with 34 employees:  leadership runs the firm entirely by consensus, involving all 34 employees in all major decisions. Also, The Sky Factory offers all of its educational programs – on topics including financial literacy, architecture and business writing – in-house.

These are some examples which caught my eye as being representative of a csr mindset - practices which go beyond legal requirements to ensure inclusion, participation, stakeholder engagement of the workforce, and in some cases, attention to issues relating to sustainability, community contribution or empowerment of individuals. It seems that even small companies can adopt such practices and, in doing so, derive benefits in terms of better business, as the Winning Workplaces site confirms. Many of these Companies may not have a Human Resources function, but are running the business in a way which makes sense to them, based on the values and enlightened approach of the leadership. In fact, CSR with regard to people practices may well be about survival rather than just a strategy for better business, though they might not define it as such.

I find this fascinating for 2 reasons:

First, that the development of CSR in SME's still has a long way to go, and yet, these outstanding examples shows that it pays off.

Second, that there is something to be learnt here in larger businesses. A csr-hr approach to people, with more of a personal consideration of people's needs, rather than a human resources process mindset, which tries to formalize and standardize, might be a clue.

elaine cohen, CSR consultant, Sustainabilty Reporter, HR Professional. Contact me via www.twitter.com/elainecohen  on Twitter or via my website www.b-yond.biz/en