Wake up SHRM

So this is what I mean when I talk about a wake-up call for the Human Resources function. I just happened to notice that the SHRM, agruably the largest and most influential HR professional body around, is holding its annual conference next week in San Diego.(This amused me as the protagonists of my book, CSR for HR, also attend a conference in San Diego). I looked through the 96 page brochure of the conference. Of the 150 concurrent sessions, there is not one single session which covers the role of the HR Manager in partnering and advancing Corporate Social Responsibility or Sustainability. There is all the same old stuff we have come to expect from HR conferences - how to engage your employees, how to manage mergers and acquisitions, how to train better, how to communicate better, familiarity with employment law, attracting and retaining talent, carrots, sticks, leadership and the whole HR mantra ... more and more  and more of the same old boring stuff that I can't imagine sitting listening to that  for three days. (Good job I won't be, haha). About the only thing that comes marginally close is a session by Dave and Wendy Ulrich called " The Why of Work: How Great Leaders Build Abundant Organizations That Deliver Value To Employees, Customers, Investors, And Communities." The Why of Work is the title of the Ulrich couple's new book which I have almost finished reading and will review in due course. This session at least shows evidence of a certain level of stakeholder thinking. There is one other session called Ethical Leadership, by a former Wal-Mart exec, which talks about "how vision, culture, dedication, commitment, passion, excellence, execution, and leadership all converged to build one of the largest, fastest growing businesses in history, and how these values can align, direct and sustain organizations of any size. " That's a lot to cover in 75 minutes - hope he doesn't forget the ethics part.

This agenda of the SHRM conference is a big disappointment. It says to me that HR is remaining in its inferiority-complex-driven themes of professional legitimization, fixing employees, and never letting them go. Dear HR colleagues:

WAKE UP

or there will not be a sustainable world for you to wake up in, when you eventually decide to.

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 or not at Deutsche Telekom

The CSRBot tweeted an intersting post (thanks, bot!) about Deutsche Telekom employees who are complaining that they are harrassed and intimidated with regard to forming a union inthe USA. The article says:

Workers at T-Mobile USA say the company is making a mockery of its parent’s claims of corporate responsibility. Earlier this week, Deutsche Telekom (DT), the giant German telecom company that owns T-Mobile, patted itself on the back for its “leadership” on environmental matters. But workers point out that corporate social responsibility extends beyond going green, it includes treating workers fairly. And on that score, DT and T-Mobile fail miserably. Workers say DT should “be green. not mean.”

The article  goes on to quote a report on Deutche Telekom's American Labour Practices in the workplace issued in 2009 that found that T-Mobile is conducting a vicious anti-union campaign to prevent workers from joining the Communications Workers of America (CWA). This is part of an ongoing campaign on the internet.

Deutche Telekom's labor relations practices are handled by local management in each country. I wonder where the Human Resources people are in T-Mobile Germany and what levels or responsibility they are demonstrating in relation to this issue and how strong their voice is. Freedom of association is one of the most basic labour rights and the HR function should be clearly on top of this one both as part of their professional performance and their social responsibility.

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

150 HR resources

Another compilation of things relevant to HR, CSR and CSR for HR:

50 Human Resources blogs to watch

a great compilation of several general and content-specific Human Resources blogs, posted on Twitter by @ConnectHive

100 articles every Human Resources Pro should read

another great compilation of valuable articles relating to Human Resources Maangement, posted on Twitter by @GautamGhosh and @steveroesler. .

The thing that strikes me as I run through all the titles of blogs and articles is how these are all related squarely to the HR profession and how there is barely any overlap with CSR themes. This reinforces the need, in my mind, for a wake-up call for HR professionals to start understanding the CSR mindset and the way HR professionals can do a better job, have a better impact on people, organizations and society through a CSR-HR approach. This is not such a massive stretch, but it takes awareness, willingness and a  move out of the HR comfort-zone. More on this in my book scheduled for publication in October this year.  

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

Gen Y's, Unilever, health

Gen Y's Green Demands for the Workplace By Leslie Guevarra, published May 2010.

Outstanding analysis of the attitudes of Gen Y's - which for your reference are those youngsters born between 1981 and 2000 - who want to "see and feel the greenness in their workplace" And this does NOT mean putting more potted plants in the office .....

Unilever gets down to business with health on HR leader , May 2010.

"Unilever has become one of the first organisations to be able to prove the relationship between health, engagement and performance. At Unilever Australia, the Lamplighter program is currently being piloted under the name ‘Ignite U’. Dean Patterson, global health and productivity manager for Unilever,  says Unilever has become one of the first organisations to be able to prove the relationship between health, engagement and performance. A study, evaluated by Lancaster University, found that employees who participated in Lamplighter felt significantly more engaged with their work and were less likely to take time off work due to health problems, able to perform better in their job, less likely to be adversely affected by pressure at work and more likely to practice healthy behaviours at work. Further, the overall number of employees classed as a “high health risk” dropped by 5 per cent and the overall number of employees classed as a “low health risk” increased by 23 per cent. “Increasing the number of employees in our low risk population ultimately means cost savings for the business, as low risk employees cost the company less money in health care costs and absenteeism,” . Read the full article. Impressive results.

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

Green HR, Top HR, Exec pay and Embedding CSR via HR

Five more interesting resources on CSR and HR and the intersection of both:

Combine your Green and HR Efforts (published in December 2008)
This article is subtitled "reducing your environmental impact one employee at a time" and was referred to me by Twitter friend @cathyj131.  The point is that HR can make a big contribution to the greening of a Company. We all agree, for sure.

Today's HR Executives : How Career paths have changed - and stayed the same
Thanks to @claytontford for referring this article.It is about the changing nature of HR career paths and HR careerists, and ends up with a quote "Human resources is a crucial point of intersection between the broader society and business." The full research paper, providing the basis for this article, on attributes of HR Leaders,  by  Dr Peter Capelli and Yang Yang can be downloaded here

More Businesses Tie Executive Compensation to Environmental Metrics, published May 2010 on Environmentalleader.com . The article says that companies are realizing the power that executive pay policies have on environmental perofrmance. Good development.

Lloyds looks to train “every manager” in sustainability, published on Greenwisebusiness.co.uk , May 2010. Thanks to Fabian Pattberg for his post on the Sustainabilityforum.com for alerting me to this article. Clearly, ensuring managers know how to advice customers is a necessary element of advancing CSR.

The most heard words at the Responsible Business Summit 2010 were "DNA" and embedding. Article posted by Pam Muckosy, chief researcher at Ethical Corporation, in May 2010,  on how CSR is embedded in the business. She quotes figures from a research paper Ethical Corporation published last year.  Actually, I reviewed this paper in a number of posts on my CSR Reporting blog:
Embedding CSR in the Human Resources function
Embedding CSR in the procurement function
Embedding CSR in the Finance function
Embedding CSR in the Operations and Logistics Function
Embedding CSR in the Corporate Communications Function

Don't forget to keep me posted of interesting things YOU come accross!

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

Employability, discrimination and talent wars

Three more interesting things of note relating to CSR and HR this week:

My editorial on CSRWire.com
I chose to raise the provocative question of how companies decide about downsizing and whether investing in "employability" is a convenient alternative to make firing people acceptable. See the full editorial here.

Novartis gets fined for discrimination against women
This is what happens when true culture of diversity, inclusion and gender equality are not comprehensively embedded in the business. The $3.4 million bill that Novartis must pay in damages is far less, in my view, than the business they have lost through discriminatory employment practices and alienation of competent women in their workforce. Read the full article here.

What people are looking for from employers
Interesting article from CSR Expert Matthew Rochte who says that real sustainability will have to take into account the aspiration of X-gens and Millennials who are looking for meaning, not just for paychecks. Read the full article here.

Dont forget to let me know of any interesting articles covering the intersection of CSR and HR. Thanks!

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

HR competencies for CSR

New post by Susan R. Meisinger on "HRE online" entitled HR's Citizenship Competencies.

Susan  says " As organizations have grappled with designing their CSR strategy, there are obvious implications for HR executives. HR needs to ensure that it is in alignment with and facilitates the company's corporate citizenship and sustainability strategy. " Of course, she couldnt be more right.

Susan goes on to list the leadership competencies published by the Boston Center for Corporate Citzenship for CR leadership, and says these are a good startpoint for HR Managers (see her post linked above) . And they are. But we must not forget that HR Managers are not in CEO or even CRO roles - they are in HR roles, both as leaders and practitioners and as such, the competencies they require may contain elements similar to those of business leaders (which could apply to most other senior functions in a business) but also specific HR-aligned competencies are necessary to ensure the complete and unique contribution of the HR function in a sustainable business.

More on this in my book :)


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

HR - Compliance - Ethics

Excellent post by Thomas Fox on the role of Human Resources in compliance and ethics programs.

"One of the key company lynch-pins in any FCPA compliance and ethics program is Human Resources. Most HR professional do not think of themselves as on the front lines for FCPA compliance and ethics. However the HR function is plays a key role in “connecting the dots” for FCPA ethics and compliance. What policy does a company take to punish those employees who may engage in unethical and non-compliant behavior in order to meet company revenue targets versus what rewards are handed out to those employees who integrate such ethical and compliant behavior into their individual work practices going forward? One of the very important functions of HR is assisting management in setting the criteria for employee bonuses and assisting management in the evaluation of employees for the bonuses. This is an equally important role in getting out a company’s message of adherence to a FCPA compliance and ethics policy".

For more insights, see the full post here

 

For those who dont know what FCPA is : it's the  Foreign Corrupt Practices Act covering anti-bribery.

What should HR do to ensure FCPA compliance? How does HR support instilling an ethics culture in the business ? More in the Autumn, with the publication of my book.

By the way, I am thinking of calling it: 

CSR and HR: A necessary partnership for advancing responsible business practices. 

Unless you have any better suggestions! 

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