Corporate Social Reponsibility

Corporate Social Responsibility is operating a business in a manner that meets the ethical, legal, commercial and public expectations that society has of business. To be more precise it is a continuing commitment by business towards economic development while improving the quality of life of the workforce and their families as well as of the local community and society at large. CSR is most significant in large companies and small business organizations too.

Instilling and maintaining values of CSR in the employees is very important in an organization. This can certainly be done through few activities like:

Corporate governance: Ensuring sound corporate governance and compliance practices. Effective governance system includes good internal control System, management System, and auditing System.

Compliance policies are to create awareness around white-collar crimes such as bribery, dishonesty, corruption and fraud. Campaigns include

• War on Corruption: Raising the profile of white collar crime
• Identity Theft: Reminding staff to verify client identities and to keep information confidential
• Know Your Customer: A training programme for staff as required by the Financial Intelligence Centre Act.

Reporting: CSR Reports now not only include the environmental performance of the organization but also the most organizational social issues and non-financial key performance indicators. Increased transparency on reporting should be adopted.

Ethical policies: Maintain ethical policies and provide training to ensure that all employees perform with high standards of integrity and trust. Ethical policies include real concern and respect for employees (training, development, rewards, work-life balance, incentives, perks), for customers (safe, quality, value for money products and good customer service), and for suppliers (fair trade policies etc.)

Products and services: Develop and enhance products and services that provide social and environmental options for clients and prospects.

Well-being programs: Continue to provide talent management and well-being programs on stress management, physical fitness, nutrition and counseling through which employees can thrive and excel As part of employee assistance, these programs may offer health assessments, wellness workshops, counseling sessions and fitness center memberships, among others. Employee wellness programs aim to enhance employee health, leading to more productivity in the workplace.

Relationship: Build relationships with suppliers whose CSR goals and activities are aligned with expectations of the company.

Security programs: Ensure proper risk management, data security and privacy programs are in place.

Though there has been considerable research into the relationship between corporate social responsibility and profitability, the results proposed no relationship between them. Specifically, varying levels of social orientation were not found to correlate with performance differences too.