HR and CSR

I came across an article online titled Corporate Social Responsibility: HR’s leadership role. I found it very interesting as this is the program I am in so I am going to highlight a few of the important aspects of the article and how I think I can apply them to my future employment.

The article emphasized how increasingly companies are accepting the concept of corporate citizenship and are seeing that it is no longer just a figure that affects the bottom line. A lot of consumers evaluate brands and companies by the overall contributions to society as proof in the Millennium Surveys which we studied in class. I found this interesting and I immediately linked this to the HR profession as one of the major HR functions is developing the employee citizenship and commitment to an organization. For a long time, and still to this day, HR has to constantly prove why they deserve to be their own department and how they indirectly and directly contribute to the success of an organization. The process and growth of the field has been slow, but I see a similarity in situations as CSR can be viewed as a rising concept. CSR being an upcoming topic that I think will continue to snowball with the amount of recognition it receives within organizations.
Another area of concern involves the impeding labour shortage that is expected to occur as the baby boomers retire and there is not enough skilled employees to replace them. Human Resource departments are trying to combat this is two ways: company reputation and human capital. One way to attract qualified and skilled employees is to define your competitive advantage and to use it to your advantage to retain employees. One area this could be expanded into is corporate social responsibility and demonstrating to current and future employees that social issues matter as well. A lot of companies that do well in society are generally recognized through means such as “top 100 places to work”. For a company to achieve a title such as the one above, they can utilize that to their advantage in attracting employees and they may receive recognition for the work they are doing for others.

The article outlines some creative ideas about how to either pitch or support the CSR initiatives in your organization as an HR leader. Some of the ideas include: entering into a partnership with another organization to fund a project, contact local organizations to learn of any upcoming social events that the organization could potentially sponsor, ask employee’s their opinions and what they would like to see the company doing. It is important that no matter which initiative you choose to have the policies and procedures in place to support it. It is also important that in a publicly traded company, that the organization has the support of all the stakeholders involved including owners, employees, stockholders, etc. It’s important to have a unified approach to CSR initiatives and their main goal should be to help the world become a better place.

Lockwood, Nancy R. "Corporate Social Responsibility: HR's Leadership Role | HR Magazine | Find Articles at BNET." Find Articles at BNET | News Articles, Magazine Back Issues & Reference Articles on All Topics. HR Magazine, 2004. Web. 13 Feb. 2011. .


Posted by: Denise Bloomer