Skip to main content

Advertisement

Advertisement

Corporate Social Responsibility can be a game-changer

In his National Day message, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong talked about how Singapore must “reassess our position, review our direction and refresh our strategies to thrive in this new world”.

In his National Day message, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong talked about how Singapore must “reassess our position, review our direction and refresh our strategies to thrive in this new world”.

As a subset of the larger society, the business community can play a role to kick-start this process of reassessment, review and refreshing of strategies — necessary drivers for innovation and progress, and essential for human development, not only to the State, but also to the individual, civil society and enterprises.

Today, our lives are so entwined with the business community, with long hours spent at the workplace building our careers and reliance on corporations for everything from food to financing, electricity to technology.

As such, an enterprise’s influence on societal change, innovation and progress cannot be underestimated and it has great responsibilities on a variety of stakeholders, including employees and customers.

How can an enterprise leverage on creativity and innovation to engage their stakeholders and make it a competitive advantage?

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is the key.

CSR, seen through old-fashioned lenses, simply means “paying back to society” through charitable means. For many enterprises, it remains a “nice to have” or “add-on”, and to cynics, CSR is a way for an enterprise to improve its image, perception or reputation without doing anything more.

However, the CSR model has undergone an evolution in the last few years and CSR can now be a game-changer to create opportunities for many enterprises in the way they engage their employees, tap on their creativity and raise the level of innovation and productivity.

Most people know from experience that innovation and creativity cannot be born out of a simple work plan. You simply cannot order people to have ideas. What is needed to nurture creativity is a dedicated atmosphere and culture that can trigger individuals and crowds to question why they do what they do, to invest their efforts into the process and be proud to share the results in the end.

For years, companies have been collecting data from customers through surveys and questionnaires to understand their customer preferences, so that they can shape and market their products. But there is actually a huge reservoir of ideas and knowledge from within — the so-called “unconscious wisdom” of an organisation — that bears huge potential once it is understood and unlocked.

Unlocking this internal resource of “unconscious wisdom” requires building an atmosphere and culture that allows the organisation to engage with its core stakeholders — its employees.

SPEAKING THE SAME LANGUAGE

Think about companies that outsource research and development without consulting and engaging its own people. Or, external consultants coming in to tell your bosses what you have already known.

In such situations, you would probably have heard colleagues muttering under their breath statements like “I know this too!” or “I have a similar idea, but no one asked me. So I kept silent!”.

So why not tap into a company’s own internal resources?

To start, a structured, appreciative and respectful atmosphere for dialogue is necessary — listening is an important tool. And once dialogue begins, people need to talk in the language that is understood by all.

How often do you find dozens of different languages being spoken in your company? The engineers talk with a different focus from the sales people; the accountants can never understand the jargon of the marketing department or the staff at the shop floor.

Think about your reaction to the latest internal communication programme in your company and you can see the problem areas in communication.

The greater the sphere of common language and common culture you build in your company, the more sense it makes for its employees, and the higher will be each individual employee’s input to the company.

This ultimately leads to a higher output for the organisation. In short, this is the recipe to create a new culture of innovation and, more importantly, to move to a culture of “open innovation” which taps on the ability of all its stakeholders to question, review and rethink strategies.

SHARED VALUES

To prepare the company for this desired stage of development requires a structured approach and methodology. This can be provided by an integrated CSR approach, where the rights and contributions of each employee is respected, looked into and taken care of.

With this approach, employees are engaged, impacts and the subsequent responsibilities are clear and monitored, core messages are communicated in a language that is understood by all and finally, values are shared. The DNA of an organisation can evolve and improve through listening, appreciating, respecting and rethinking.

An enterprise is one player in the larger ecosystem of our society. What can be applied to a single organisation can also be applied to the society at large.

The greater the flow of information, expressed in a common language and common culture within the society, the greater the number of ideas that can be generated; the more creative, innovative and productive a society can be, the more its stakeholders are willing to invest to create a better future.

Einstein once said: “Idiots are those doing always the same and expecting different results.”

But luckily we are smart.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Florian Beranek is the Principal Consultant of CSR for the United Nations Industrial Development Organization. He will be conducting a workshop Building a Culture of Innovation and Sustainability — How CSR can help you develop an engaged workforce on Sept 3, as part of the International Singapore Compact CSR Summit. For more information, go to http://www.singaporecsrsummit.org/

Read more of the latest in

Advertisement

Advertisement

Stay in the know. Anytime. Anywhere.

Subscribe to get daily news updates, insights and must reads delivered straight to your inbox.

By clicking subscribe, I agree for my personal data to be used to send me TODAY newsletters, promotional offers and for research and analysis.