Quanta Corporate Citizenship The dangers of lazy lip service 20/04/2010
We all know at least one person who says they go to the gym. They are the ones that are healthy, active and responsible about looking after their health. They are usually the ones that make others a little bit jealous. The reality for a lot of gym members, though, is they talk a lot about going to the gym, but just as the time comes to pull on their trainers an episode of the latest TV drama comes on that cannot be missed, or a long lost friend is in town for one day, or they need to catch up on emails, or they’re worried about that old injury returning, or they are just too tired.
Most of us can probably recognise a few excuses in there ourselves, but as wannabe fitness people we pay lip service to ‘going to the gym tonight’, time and time again, until one day a friend makes a joke about us not knowing what the inside of a gym looks like. The ridicule you can probably live with, after all its true, but we lose two significant types of advantage once our cover is broken.
The first is the perceived advantage. When you look after your health, and balance seeing friends and doing well at work, you’re the person who has it all. You’re the rounded individual who can handle anything thrown at them. You’re not lazy, distracted or complacent to the important things: you take the lead, the one in charge. You’re interesting, multi-faceted, and this is an attractive quality to have. After all, ‘hobbies and other activities” is the section we always have to add to our CV’s for fear of being just a standard human being.
The second is the real advantage. When you actually get to the gym you improve your cardiovascular fitness, you decrease the risk of heart attacks and strokes, keep your weight to an optimum level and reduce the risk of diabetes and increase your mobility in the later stages of your life. You really are the person who is set to have it all.
Both of these advantages are the ones you risk when you leave yourself vulnerable to whistle blowers of your inactivity. Our lazy, but ‘want to be part of the cool group’ approach increases the stakes we have to lose. And so it is with CSR. When companies fall victim of great criticism about the inactivity of their CSR commitments, not only do they undermine the perceived advantages of their CSR programmes – good PR and reputation –, but their inactivity means a longer term damage to their business, to the health of their company not 5 years down the line but 50 years down the line. With global online and off line communications becoming more and more advanced, it takes just minutes to hear reports of shareholders opposing environmentally harmful activity or of supply chains being riddled with human rights abuses.
CSR is not easy work. It requires commitment and hard effort, and businesses need to learn how to protect the perceived and real advantages of their efforts with solid strategies. Strategy is the foundation stone, the key to knowing where to start and what effort to put in. It is the coaching your gym instructor gives you after you’ve discussed your goals that makes the most of your time, gives you the best rewards for your efforts, and makes you keep coming back for more.
- Kim
Most of us can probably recognise a few excuses in there ourselves, but as wannabe fitness people we pay lip service to ‘going to the gym tonight’, time and time again, until one day a friend makes a joke about us not knowing what the inside of a gym looks like. The ridicule you can probably live with, after all its true, but we lose two significant types of advantage once our cover is broken.
The first is the perceived advantage. When you look after your health, and balance seeing friends and doing well at work, you’re the person who has it all. You’re the rounded individual who can handle anything thrown at them. You’re not lazy, distracted or complacent to the important things: you take the lead, the one in charge. You’re interesting, multi-faceted, and this is an attractive quality to have. After all, ‘hobbies and other activities” is the section we always have to add to our CV’s for fear of being just a standard human being.
The second is the real advantage. When you actually get to the gym you improve your cardiovascular fitness, you decrease the risk of heart attacks and strokes, keep your weight to an optimum level and reduce the risk of diabetes and increase your mobility in the later stages of your life. You really are the person who is set to have it all.
Both of these advantages are the ones you risk when you leave yourself vulnerable to whistle blowers of your inactivity. Our lazy, but ‘want to be part of the cool group’ approach increases the stakes we have to lose. And so it is with CSR. When companies fall victim of great criticism about the inactivity of their CSR commitments, not only do they undermine the perceived advantages of their CSR programmes – good PR and reputation –, but their inactivity means a longer term damage to their business, to the health of their company not 5 years down the line but 50 years down the line. With global online and off line communications becoming more and more advanced, it takes just minutes to hear reports of shareholders opposing environmentally harmful activity or of supply chains being riddled with human rights abuses.
CSR is not easy work. It requires commitment and hard effort, and businesses need to learn how to protect the perceived and real advantages of their efforts with solid strategies. Strategy is the foundation stone, the key to knowing where to start and what effort to put in. It is the coaching your gym instructor gives you after you’ve discussed your goals that makes the most of your time, gives you the best rewards for your efforts, and makes you keep coming back for more.
- Kim
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The good, the bad and the ugly. 02/03/2010
The press over the weekend has been filled with dialogue surrounding Apple’s disclosure of child labour, environmental abuses, excessive working hours and poor working conditions in supplier factories. Aside from the general public criticism we would expect of such activities, there has also been a wealth of commentary around whether Apple’s disclosure should instead be commended. More positive comments have included defence of their transparent reporting procedure and to the lead they are taking in their sector, since their competitors do not report at the same level.
The support for transparency is certainly an indicator of the growing appetite of consumers and media to really know the brands and to be able to make informed decisions about their purchases. Whilst this trend has been developing for some time and is being escalated by recent corporate behaviour, it seems that we are reaching a tipping point from which we will start seeing a far deeper level of public scrutiny of the reporting processes. Our work is showing us a substantial shift towards public scrutiny not only of the outcomes, but also of the reporting process itself.
Malcolm Moore, a journalist reporting on the Apple story was criticised so heavily for his article over the weekend that he felt it necessary to post another article defending his critical stance of Apple’s supply chain ethics. I mention this because in defending his reporting, Moore was forced to go straight to the detail. With Apple supplier reports being available from past years, he made cross comparisons and has detailed falling standards from Apple and inconsistency in their reporting processes. The debate focused not on the outcomes produced by Apple, but on the way the company portrayed those outcomes. The reporting hiccup served only to undermine the otherwise good practices of the company.
The logic applied by consumers and media is, ultimately, a very simple one: ‘If I can’t trust your process, I can’t trust your outcome’. Regardless of how good the outcome actually is. The consequence of this is that, from a pure PR perspective, especially for companies operating on B2C markets or B2B with high public exposure, investing on the outcomes but overlooking the reporting process, is at least as dangerous as not investing on the outcomes at all. In an age of public cynicism, publishing reports based on anecdotal, sporadical, superficial, confusing or irrelevant information is a dangerous game to play.
Transparency and the commitment to doing the ‘right thing’ will find few rewards if done halfheartedly. We live in the age of instant communication where Twitter is reporting the headlines before the news agencies and where companies are going to find a growing public and eagle-eyed analysis of their behaviour. Companies who really want to build strong brands and avoid the criticism that will abound from poorly carried out responsibility initiatives, are going to have to look more seriously at their responsibility strategies and reporting mechanisms. Without these, professional and amateur commentators alike will find more than enough ammunition to criticise 'good' company intentions and leave them looking ugly.
- Kim
The support for transparency is certainly an indicator of the growing appetite of consumers and media to really know the brands and to be able to make informed decisions about their purchases. Whilst this trend has been developing for some time and is being escalated by recent corporate behaviour, it seems that we are reaching a tipping point from which we will start seeing a far deeper level of public scrutiny of the reporting processes. Our work is showing us a substantial shift towards public scrutiny not only of the outcomes, but also of the reporting process itself.
Malcolm Moore, a journalist reporting on the Apple story was criticised so heavily for his article over the weekend that he felt it necessary to post another article defending his critical stance of Apple’s supply chain ethics. I mention this because in defending his reporting, Moore was forced to go straight to the detail. With Apple supplier reports being available from past years, he made cross comparisons and has detailed falling standards from Apple and inconsistency in their reporting processes. The debate focused not on the outcomes produced by Apple, but on the way the company portrayed those outcomes. The reporting hiccup served only to undermine the otherwise good practices of the company.
The logic applied by consumers and media is, ultimately, a very simple one: ‘If I can’t trust your process, I can’t trust your outcome’. Regardless of how good the outcome actually is. The consequence of this is that, from a pure PR perspective, especially for companies operating on B2C markets or B2B with high public exposure, investing on the outcomes but overlooking the reporting process, is at least as dangerous as not investing on the outcomes at all. In an age of public cynicism, publishing reports based on anecdotal, sporadical, superficial, confusing or irrelevant information is a dangerous game to play.
Transparency and the commitment to doing the ‘right thing’ will find few rewards if done halfheartedly. We live in the age of instant communication where Twitter is reporting the headlines before the news agencies and where companies are going to find a growing public and eagle-eyed analysis of their behaviour. Companies who really want to build strong brands and avoid the criticism that will abound from poorly carried out responsibility initiatives, are going to have to look more seriously at their responsibility strategies and reporting mechanisms. Without these, professional and amateur commentators alike will find more than enough ammunition to criticise 'good' company intentions and leave them looking ugly.
- Kim
I strongly recommend Muhammad Yunus’ second book, ‘Creating a World Without Poverty – Social Business and the Future of Capitalism’. Yunus’ remarkable success as the founder of the Grameen Bank, which pioneered the microcredit concept and used entrepreneurship to lift people out of poverty, led him to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. With such social success to back his argument, his thoughts on the role of companies in achieving positive social change through corporate social responsibility are very insightful.
Yunus argues early on that through weak or strong CSR programmes, companies will operate either on a level of ‘do no harm to people or planet’ or ‘do good for people and planet’ respectively. Neither of these behaviours will come about if there is a risk to profit and this is the underlying problem with CSR. Why? Because companies have a fundamental responsibility to their shareholders and shareholders measure by profit alone.
This reasoning raised a lot of questions for me in light of Quanta’s work and recent reading I have been doing. One of the key questions that came to mind, was whether we are doing a good enough job as companies in informing our shareholders of the important expectations that other key stakeholders have? Are stakeholders underestimating the value of better social behaviour by their companies or are we failing to make them aware of it?
Marketing firm MS&L Worldwide wrote recently about what they consider to be the new consumer DNA, which has come about following a ‘values recalibration’ with this key stakeholder group. They found that consumers are now looking for companies to demonstrate a social relevance in everything they say and do and that brand distinction (a commonly recognised profit tool) comes about when consumers are engaged in ways ‘that take them to a different, more positive, emotional place’. Sounds remarkably like the effect of a great CSR programme.
Another key stakeholder group for our shareholders to be considering is of course our employees. HR managers across the country are looking for ways to stop employee disengagement and inertia that comes with insecurity in a workforce, so, again, are we overlooking the value of good CSR programmes to keep employee morale and activity high? A Quanta client recently told us that whilst 14% of its workforce was being made redundant a staggering 80% of employees said the CSR programme was essential and had to continue despite the economic climate. It was the only business practice that employees identified should remain the same in light of such significant changes going on within the company. It was the activity employees could rally around and find comfort in.
And of course our stakeholders don’t stop at our consumers or employees, we have our suppliers, government, competitors, society, the environment and not for profit sector to consider. When we listen to all of our stakeholders then we may start to hear a voice intrinsic to profit making that even shareholders cannot ignore. Whilst the rest of Yunus’ book takes us on a voyage through the merits of social enterprises, led by social impact not profit, I cannot help but wonder if the financial crisis and our ‘values recalibration’ as consumers, employees, society, suppliers etc. is giving the corporate sector the space to become social change makers.
For us at Quanta this is the exciting frontier for development. It is why we work on a strategic level with our clients to open their decision making process up to all of their key stakeholder expectations and show them the value of a CSR programme aligned with their business objectives.
- Kim
Yunus argues early on that through weak or strong CSR programmes, companies will operate either on a level of ‘do no harm to people or planet’ or ‘do good for people and planet’ respectively. Neither of these behaviours will come about if there is a risk to profit and this is the underlying problem with CSR. Why? Because companies have a fundamental responsibility to their shareholders and shareholders measure by profit alone.
This reasoning raised a lot of questions for me in light of Quanta’s work and recent reading I have been doing. One of the key questions that came to mind, was whether we are doing a good enough job as companies in informing our shareholders of the important expectations that other key stakeholders have? Are stakeholders underestimating the value of better social behaviour by their companies or are we failing to make them aware of it?
Marketing firm MS&L Worldwide wrote recently about what they consider to be the new consumer DNA, which has come about following a ‘values recalibration’ with this key stakeholder group. They found that consumers are now looking for companies to demonstrate a social relevance in everything they say and do and that brand distinction (a commonly recognised profit tool) comes about when consumers are engaged in ways ‘that take them to a different, more positive, emotional place’. Sounds remarkably like the effect of a great CSR programme.
Another key stakeholder group for our shareholders to be considering is of course our employees. HR managers across the country are looking for ways to stop employee disengagement and inertia that comes with insecurity in a workforce, so, again, are we overlooking the value of good CSR programmes to keep employee morale and activity high? A Quanta client recently told us that whilst 14% of its workforce was being made redundant a staggering 80% of employees said the CSR programme was essential and had to continue despite the economic climate. It was the only business practice that employees identified should remain the same in light of such significant changes going on within the company. It was the activity employees could rally around and find comfort in.
And of course our stakeholders don’t stop at our consumers or employees, we have our suppliers, government, competitors, society, the environment and not for profit sector to consider. When we listen to all of our stakeholders then we may start to hear a voice intrinsic to profit making that even shareholders cannot ignore. Whilst the rest of Yunus’ book takes us on a voyage through the merits of social enterprises, led by social impact not profit, I cannot help but wonder if the financial crisis and our ‘values recalibration’ as consumers, employees, society, suppliers etc. is giving the corporate sector the space to become social change makers.
For us at Quanta this is the exciting frontier for development. It is why we work on a strategic level with our clients to open their decision making process up to all of their key stakeholder expectations and show them the value of a CSR programme aligned with their business objectives.
- Kim
