CSRI reviews CSR for HR

For those of you who don't know, CSRinternational.org (CSRI)  (Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility) hub founded by Wayne Visser, whose new book, the Age of Responsibility is just hitting the shelves,  publishes monthly reviews of a wide range of CSR books. Occasionally, I also contribute reviews from my CSR books blog. I was delighted and flattered to have my book, CSR for HR: A necessary partnership for advancing responsible business practices included in the CSRI February Book Review digest. Registered (it's free) users can download  the monthly digests, and the February on in which the CSR for HR review is featured can be downloaded here.

The review was written by Matthew Maguire and goes like this:

"In CSR for HR: A Necessary Partnership for Advancing Responsible Business Practices, Elaine Cohen takes a ground-up approach to CSR that focuses on corporate engagement with individual employees. As Cohen says, “This book is both a wake-up call for the human resources (HR) profession and a tool-kit written to help members of that profession to act.” Cohen develops a concept she calls corporate social human resources (CSHR) that redirects traditional HR responsibilities such as organisational development, recruitment, training and compensation toward CSR goals and practices.

To build her case, Cohen tells the story of Sharon, a fictitious HR manager from a medium-sized firm, who, over the course of the book, transforms herself from a CSR novice to a powerful CSR advocate within her company. The narrative approach may be distracting for some readers, but it makes the material accessible for those new to CSR. The book is about more than what HR can (and must) do for CSR, however. It is also about how managers and employees learn about CSR and begin to change their behaviour, as well as the contribution that each employee makes toward a company's overall social and environmental impact. Unlike many CSR books out there, CSR for HR is not preaching to the choir. It is intended primarily for HR managers who may have heard of CSR but don't really know what it means in practice, or how it relates to the job they currently have. Elaine Cohen, currently co-founder and managing consultant of Beyond Business Ltd., has more than 25 years of experience in executive positions at various global companies, including 8 years as an HR executive at Unilever. As a result, she offers a unique insider-perspective that breaks CSR down into real terms.

Through her narrative, Cohen shows HR managers how to engage employees, develop corporate culture, and communicate progress through CSR reporting. The story is informative as well as inspiring. As Cohen tells us, “Sharon realizes she doesn't need to sit around and wait for her CEO or executive team to develop a comprehensive CSR strategy for the HR function.” HR managers interact with employees (a key stakeholder group) in innumerable ways. CSR strategy can come from the top down, but for it to really stick, the employees need to be ready for it. Cohen's book gives HR managers the information and confidence needed to open their companies up to the opportunities that can come from CSR. "

Thank you to CSRI and to Matthew Maguire for a great review !! 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

What do CSR people really do and how can HR help?

A lot has been written about what it takes to make a good CSR Manager, or CRO, or CSO, or VP CSR, or whatever it is that the CSR leaders in the business prefer to call themselves. An example is  the very interesting study produced by the International Society of Sustainability Professionals (ISSP) based on a survey of 400 sustainability professionals. The study identified two core skill sets, one for hard skills and one for soft skills. There are the softs skills are as follows:

There is not much in this list which  actually which is different from any type of staff manager in any business. Communicating, problem solving, inspiring - these are management fundamentals. This is why the CR Practitioner Competency Map  (Let's call it Le Map, for short) might just add the missing link. This Le Map (haha, sounds good, right?) was developed by the CR Academy, which is a collaborative project led by Business in the Community in the UK.

Anyway, Le Map "has been designed to assist CR & HR practitioners to be more effective. It sets out the typical business outcomes that CR practitioners are working towards and the challenges they face, along with the associated knowledge and behaviours required to be successful. It also suggests learning resources to help users overcome the challenges. CR practitioners, or those wishing to enter the field, can use the competency map to identify their strengths and development needs in relation to their current role and to plan ahead for future roles. The map can also be used to structure roles within CR departments, assist with recruitment and help organisations support CR practitioner development." (I lifted this paragraph from Le Map website - even us bloggers are entitled to take a few shortcuts).

You can navigate the map from two directions. If you are a CSR practitioner, the Le Map developers suggest you might prefer to move straight into activities. If you are a Human Resources professional, Le Map offers you are route to behaviours. Whilst I would hope that everyone would consider both angles, this makes a certain sense.

Let's assume we are a CSR practitioner, ready and willing to race to another fun day on the job, and ready to make ourselves even more effective in our roles. After we turn on the PC, tweet awhile and check Facebook and the latest CSR news from CSRwire and CSR reports from CorporateRegister.com, we log in to Le Map website and, as instructed, download three worksheets: an Activities Priotitization, a Personal Development Plan and a Personal Behaviours Assessment. By this time, we need Chunky Monkey. Thereafter, suitably refreshed, we progress to the Activities Map and select one activity to focus on (yes, we used the Activities Prioritization worksheet). Beginning with the end in mind (Habit 2) , we go straight to Measuring and Reporting. This section identifies four different types of activity (business outcomes) with a drill-down for each, describing the types of action steps required (challenges) and the the knowledge, behaviours necessary and resources for further information.  That's a lot to take in and requires some time to study. This level of detail is provided for each of the 13 Activity Areas of a CSR practitioner. 

Then, we decide to make a quick career change (we heard the perks are great in HR) to become an HR Learning and Development Manager. We reaccess Le Map and browse the 16 behaviours that we expect CSR practitioners in our organization to be competent at displaying. Moving straing to the "communication" behaviour, we can review a list of detailed behavioural statements which define what we can expect from my CSR Practitioner. Le Map developers suggest that every CSR practitioner should demonstrate all of these behaviours to a greater or lesser extent. 

Anyway, we log out as we have to go to a meeting about how to embed a CSR culture in the business. We decide to come back to Le Map a little later. 

OK. Scenario over. This is a tremendous piece of work that the BITC and collaborative team have put together. It provides the basic framework for designing and developing CSR jobs, and assisting CSR people in their roles. It is certainly something I would consider using if I were in one of these positions. As a consultant, I can also help me in assisting my CSR and HR clients to develop themselves and their impact in their organisations. As a standalone, it presents most of the basic competency aspects that I would have expected to see.  For practical use of Le Map  in the business, however, a lot of work would be required to adapt this fairly generic framework to the needs of a specific job, organization type and business sector, as the scope is quite broad. However, it is as good a start point as I have seen.

For the future, I would recommend considering expanding the area relating to stakeholder engagement (of external stakeholders) and adding some elements which are found in most competency tools which relate to different levels of jobs in an organization (a VP level role requires quite different activities from a first line management role) and different focus areas (a generalist CSR Manager will perform different activities and require different behavioural expertise than a CSR Reporting Manager, for example). Also, there is something about a CSR Manager which I find essential and that is the walk the talk element, the demonstration of personal passion and commitment to a more sustainable world, beyond the boundaries of the job description. Le Map doesn't quite capture this. But it's a great framework, nonetheless.

In summary, I recommend all CSR and HR practitioners to talke a look at Le Map (after you have read my book on CSR for HR, of course!)

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

Employer Branding : a missed opportunity

Employer branding is increasing in importance, says this article published in HR Review this week. There are nearly three times more HR professionals actively working on employer branding today than there were four years ago. Naturally, it occured to me to do a little research on just how many of these Employer Brands are leveraging the potential of CSR to attract great people for whom sustainability values are important.

My findings are that, whilst Corporate Responsibility is often mentioned in the Careers Section of most corporate websites, persuading potential recruits that the Company is responsible, committed to diversity and adheres to a set of values, they usually miss the point. The point, I believe, is not so much that a potential recruit is looking to join a responsible company, though this is important, but that the potential recruit wants the opportunity to make a difference. The potential recruit want a job that offers meaning beyond the payslip. Something that can be their own little piece of changing the world. New people want more that just to be a part of something that saves the planet, they want to BE something that saves the planet. Few of the Employer Brand messages I have seen are leveraging the full potential of this opportunity to attract the best and most sustainability-oriented people.

The Procter and Gamble career website  focuses on the way P&G hires people who are individualist-type achievers. The Employer Brand is built on the proposition : We hire the PERSON, not the position.  The site showcases 5 superhero individual achievers - a scientist -salsa dancer who works to protect children against abuse, an HR German Paralympic Wheelchair Fencing coach, a Systems Analyst who is a DJ with an "electrified ego" and similar. Wonder-Candidates who make me question how many of P&G's  130,000 employees make this grade or even want to. There is a sustainability section in the P&G careers website,  but I don't see anything which explicitly promises that new recruits will have their chance to do their bit for society and environment.   

Tesco's careers website  prominently displays the corporate commitment to sustainability, with the main focus being  Tesco's impact on communities, combining the elements of sustainability and caring for the local community as strong elements of the corporate identity. However, the focus of Tesco's career communication is "a great place to work".  Why join Tesco ? Be treated with trust and respect, work for a manager that helps you, have an interesting job and an opportunity to get on. Duh. Is that it ? Doesn't sound all that inspiring to me. Seems to me that the sustainability mesage is not truly embedded in this Employer Brand.

Verizon also gives prominent positioning to the Corporate Responsibility programs of the Company as a core part of their careers website. Verizon tell potential employees:  "At Verizon, we believe passionately in using our vast technical, financial and intellectual resources to accomplish something equally significant – making a difference in our communities. Verizon is doing some terrific work to improve people's lives, like expanding accessibility, improving online safety, and providing opportunities for better and faster broadband connectivity. That's just part of our mission to create a great place to work while giving back to the customers we are privileged to serve." This comes a little closer but still misses the mark. It's about the Company, the opportunities it offers as a great place to work and for career building, but it does not emphasize the promise to the individual new hire that s/he will have the opportunity to make a difference. It doesn't seem to me that this Employer Brand communication has truly embedded the CSR approach.

General Electric's career website doesn't offer any additional insight.  Aligned with the corporate branding message and called "GE: Imagination at work", the core proposition in Why GE? is about unparalleled opportunities to build careers and capabilities, extraordinary opportunities and enormous potential, and exciting and dynamic challenges of a lifetime. Wow. So many superlatives in such a short webpage. How about: Working at GE will give you the opportunity to make the world a better place ? Guess that one wasn't sexy enough for the copywriter.

Even Vodafone, one of the CSR-minded companies I most admire, also does not embrace the concepts of sustainability in their Employer Branding communications. Why join Vodafone ? Because you will connect with great people, have the opportunity to develop and express your ideas. Even better, your opinions will be surveyed as part of the Company's recular employee surveys. Hey, that's really something. But not something enough. Not something which embeds sustainability as part of the employer proposition. How about: Join Vodafone and make  your personal footprint count towards a sustainable future ?  (Ok, I am not a copywriter, but do you get the change in the focus of the message ?) 

Now to Intel. "If you are looking to make an impact, Intel is the perfect place...." Sounds promising. The focus is on personal  impact and not only how great the Company is. "At Intel, it's not just what you make, it's what you make possible. Here, you'll be part of developing the better, faster computing platforms the world is waiting for. From innovative processor architectures to state-of-the-art wireless technology, you can have a hand in breakthroughs that have a global impact."  This is closer to what I would be looking for in an Employer Brand that embeds CSR and Sustainability messages, through, even here, there is no direct mention of these terms or concepts. Just adding a few words would make the difference: ... breakthroughs that have a global impact and advance global sustainability... for example.

I have looked briefly at several other careers websites from the Global 100 Most Sustainable Companies and add a few more insights here : Baxter International  (the "doing work that matters" tag line gets close, but is not leveraged in the rest of the site) , Diageo  ("celebrate what you do" does refer to advancing responsible drinking programmes, but doesn't really talk sustainability) , L'Oreal careers focuses on passion for the job, but not much about sustainability, Inditex has nothing about sustainability, Nexen is focused on shareholder value and big opportunities, Roche's career site tag-line is "Make your Mark, Improve lives"  which is a nice generic concept, but doesn't really get full treatment once you dig below the surface. I could go on ....but I will spare you for now.

I will round off with the best example I have found which is SAP. Here the core concepts of personal IMPACT and global SUSTAINABILITY are blended together very effectively. Also there is a great employee feed where employees say things like : (Alexandra: "Rode my bike to work, will go home by metro. Am researching icon trends and thinking about ideas for visual trends" and FredericSales (@CarbonImpact)  "Ending Demand Generation Day talking 2 the CIO of a retail co. With 30 stores now, paper & pen is no longer an option for reporting. Agreed.") The SAP employee volunteering program also features as a part of their career proposition. Very nice. Very sensible. Very sustainable.

To sum up, I am not sure who drives the approach to the Employer Brand in most businesses - whether it is an HR role or a Marketing role, or a combination of both. It doesn't seem to me that the Sustainability Officer is doing this. The opportunity to embed and leverage sustainability messages to create a distinctive Employer Brand which is aligned with the rest of the Company's corporate CSR communications, and focuses on the individual opportunity to make a difference is one which most companies are completely missing out on. This is one of the tests of whether the  culture of Corporate Reponsibility is truly embedded at the core, or still seen as a little project you do in addition to doing your business. If you are an HR Manager, my recommendation is STOP! REVIEW NOW your Employer Brand and your careers communications. Start stalking sustainability to the thousands of potential recruits whose desire and ability to change the world can deliver for your business.

It is time for HR to wake up to CSR !

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