Workplace II Flashcards
Corporate Social Responsibility
Represents the organization’s commitment to operate in an ethical and sustainable manner, by engaging in activities that promote and support philanthropy, transparency, sustainability, and ethically sound governance practices.
Corporate social responsibility (CSR)
- Traditional concerns of ethical behavior
2. Newer issue of sustainable behavior
CSR as a way to
- Compete for and retain top talent.
- Remain competitive in the talent market.
- Increase employee engagement.
- Attract socially conscious customers.
PESTLE affect on CSR
Environmental concerns: climate change has increased govt regulations and requirements- including reporting requirements - Sustainability has become more central to corporate branding.
PESTLE affect on CSR
Economic Pressures: Energy efficiencies can have an even larger impact in times of financial limits, which can encourage sustainability efforts.
PESTLE affect on CSR
Economic pressures: Limit corporations’ willingness to finance sustainability efforts.
PESTLE affect on CSR
Sociopolitical forces: Same-sex marriage: Changing public perceptions on key issues such as diversity and environmental concerns have also helped shape which social responsibility efforts are emphasized and what the “appropriate” responses are.
CSR steps: From a purely tactical, reactive approach; to a more strategically integrated position
Compliance: Defensive posture and sees social responsibility as a cost of doing business-a tactical response to regulatory requirements or negative publicity. They may be a means of demonstrating good corporate citizenship, but such efforts rarely align-and often directly conflict with corporate strategy
CSR steps: From a purely tactical, reactive approach; to a more strategically integrated position
Integration: CSR is integrated into the regular functioning of the business. These organizations have redesigned their products or services and their processes and procedures to be more responsible and sustainable. These companies approach CSR as enlightened self-interest.
CSR steps: From a purely tactical, reactive approach; to a more strategically integrated position
Transformation: Organizations have redefined themselves, their brand, to reflect a commitment to CSR. This becomes part of a strategy to differentiate the organization from its competitors. Example, numerous food producers promote their products by focusing on sustainable practices regarding local sourcing (to lower carbon use in transportation)
4 key HR opportunity areas for CSR
Culture change: Increasing stakeholder engagement and becoming more customer-responsive are difficult and critically important and HR is perfectly positioned to help with these human related objectives.
4 key HR opportunity areas for CSR
Corporate strategy: The more directly involved stakeholders are in the strategic process and such involvement is a measured aspect of GRI (Global reporting initiative sustainability measurement and reporting from organizations) reporting the more central HR’s role can become in strategic planning.
4 key HR opportunity areas for CSR
Organization effectiveness: CSR requires decisions and changes regarding corporate structure and processes. Is there to be a separate CSR department? Are outside organizations or consultants needed? HR is well- equipped to help match the right structures and processes to the organization’s culture and needs.
4 key HR opportunity areas for CSR
Human capital development: Creating a CSR strategy redefines how a company sees its mission and goals and how its employees see their jobs.
“Advancing Sustainability: HR’s Role” lists seven areas that will be affected:
- Employee contract; The desire for meaningful work in an organization that values sustainability is a trend that HR must, first, actively convey to management and, second, weave into the corporate culture.
“Advancing Sustainability: HR’s Role” lists seven areas that will be affected:
Recruiting: Recruiting efforts need to be refocused, incorporating the organization’s sustainability profile into its employee value proposition (EVP)
“Advancing Sustainability: HR’s Role” lists seven areas that will be affected:
Brand: Many workers, skilled and talented younger workers especially, look beyond salary and benefits. An organization’s environmental and social record, the volunteer opportunities the organization provides its workers, their sense that they can “make a difference” or be creative and innovative within an organization
“Advancing Sustainability: HR’s Role” lists seven areas that will be affected:
Engagement: Employees will need to be given opportunities to act on their interests in promoting the social and environmental responsibility espoused by the organization’s mission and values.
“Advancing Sustainability: HR’s Role” lists seven areas that will be affected:
How people work: Efforts to reduce an organization’s carbon footprint will require openness to new ways of working, and this may involve everything from telecommuting to flextime to new technologies.
“Advancing Sustainability: HR’s Role” lists seven areas that will be affected:
Accountability and measurement: CSR will need to be incorporated into key performance indicators. Reporting mechanisms that create accountability for sustainability performance will need to be implemented.
“Advancing Sustainability: HR’s Role” lists seven areas that will be affected:
Training and leadership development. Sustainability will need to be woven into all training and leadership development curricula.
Compliance
In accordance with all national, federal, regional, or local laws, regulations, and government authority requirements for all the nations in which an organization operates.
Ethical behavior
Focuses on acting according to “core ethical beliefs and convictions” about “honesty, respect, fairness, and responsibility.” Compliance focuses on fulfilling the technical requirements of regulations.
Ethics in the Supply Chain
- Know the provenance of every product it sells -who sells them the product and where the product is made.
- Set and assess workplace standards for suppliers factories.
- Work with suppliers, governments, and nongovernmental organizations to address challenges within the supply chain.
- Support factories to help them achieve the retailer’s standards.
What is the best definition for the term governance?
Organizational rules and processes used to foster ethical and compliant behavior
Sustainability
Originally referred to an ecological goal, the preservation of the environment.
Sustainability
Projects undertaken by an organization were considered sustainable to the extent that they minimized the negative impact on the environment by using as few resources as possible and/or relying on the environment by using as few resources as possible and/ or relying on renewable resources.
To be sustainable
An organization’s practices must be analyzed in terms of their social, environmental, economic effects. These perspectives are sometimes referred to as the 3 Ps, for people, planet, profits.
To be sustainable
Environmental concerns include issues such as use of resources and the release of environmental contaminants. Social concerns involve impacts on health, safety, and well-being.
To be sustainable
Economic considerations recognize that businesses need to be profitable in order to fulfill their ethical obligations to investors and to continue to employ people.
Sustainability: Redefining stakeholders
Stakeholders are all those affected by the organization’s social, environmental, and economic impact-shareholders, employees, customers, suppliers, regulators, and local communities.
“creating economic value in a way that also creates value for society by addressing its needs and challenges.”
Reconceiving products and markets. This begins by asking, “Is our product good for our customers?” Their examples include new efforts to meet the needs of emerging economies and other under-served markets, such as inexpensive mobile phones that enable mobile banking for low-income consumers in emerging markets.
“creating economic value in a way that also creates value for society by addressing its needs and challenges.”
Redefining productivity in the value chain: By examining each player and process in the value chain—reducing waste, minimizing use of resources, and ensuring the health and safety of workers—organizations can both cut costs and benefit society.
“creating economic value in a way that also creates value for society by addressing its needs and challenges.”
Enabling local cluster development: Porter and Kramer argue that most companies’ success is dependent on a cluster of other organizations (related businesses, suppliers, schools) and infrastructure (roads, communication networks, water and energy supply). Shared value results when organizations build and enhance the local cluster and improve the conditions of those operating in it, benefiting the organization and its community.
triple bottom line
(a term coined in 1994 by John Elkington) applies sustainability’s 3 Ps principle, arguing that the environmental and social costs and benefits generated by an organization should be considered as well.
Social Audit Areas of Examination: Ethics
Are the organization’s policies, practices, and day-to-day activities fair, honest, and transparent?
What are its charitable giving and volunteering efforts?
Social Audit Areas of Examination: Staffing
How does the organization reward, train, and develop its staff?
How does it ensure nondiscriminatory, fair, and equitable treatment of all its workers?
How does it promote diversity and inclusion?
Social Audit Areas of Examination: Environmental
What are the organization’s policies regarding energy use, waste management and disposal, environmental impact of projects, and damage reduction?
Social Audit Areas of Examination: Human Rights
How does it ensure that it does not violate human rights or deal, trade with, or support any organization that violates human rights?
Social Audit Areas of Examination: Community
What are its policies relating to the local community and community involvement?
How well does it uphold agreements made to or with the community?
Social Audit Areas of Examination: Society
How does the enterprise seek to improve or benefit society?
How does that translate into policies, activities, and procedures?
Social Audit Areas of Examination: Compliance
How does the organization ensure its compliance with statutory and legal requirements (e.g., health and safety, employment law, environmental law, criminal law, financial and tax laws)?
What have the new definitions of sustainability retained from their ecological origins?
Focus on long-range considerations of value rather than short-term returns
Code of conduct (or code of ethics)
Defined as principles of conduct within an organization that guide decision making and behavior
Code of conduct should enable employees to:
- Recognize potential compliance and ethical risks.
- Apply a framework or decision-making process to their resolution.
- Articulate reasons for the decision based on the code.
- Understand stakeholder ethical/compliance expectations and the costs/benefits of meeting them.
Code of conduct should enable employees to:
- Track and report on their code adherence.
6. Assess the risks of future actions and initiatives.
An effective code of conduct
- Is clear about its objectives
- Is understandable in its language. Codes should be translated into the languages of all countries in which the organization has employees.
An effective code of conduct
- Equips employees to respond to real situations. It should reflect the specific and unique challenges of the particular organization’s industry and its locations.
An effective code of conduct
- For the global organization, balances a deep understanding of how acceptable behavior differs from one location to the next with an acceptance of the organization’s core values.
Code of conduct creation and implementation process
- Gain senior management commitment.
- Agree on the purpose and uses of the code.
- Identify all stakeholders and their priorities and concerns.
- Identify who should be directly involved in the code creation process.
- Review existing frameworks and guidelines.
- Draft the code (perhaps done by working group involving key organizational functions)
Code of conduct creation and implementation process
- Test, pilot, and revise the code as necessary.
- Gain formal approval
- Publish and publicize.
- Review after implementation.
- Train and communicate to the entire organization.
- Connect the code to performance management policies and systems and internal controls.
two-part code to the code of conduct
- Defines the organization’s values, principles, and obligations to its internal and external stakeholders.
- Defines what the organization expects of its people, providing guidelines for expected employee/agent behaviors.
Part one of the code of conduct: Organization’s Values
- Commitment of leadership to the code. This may be in the form of a statement from the CEO or board of directors.
Part one of the code of conduct: Organization’s Values and principles
- Mission statement and/or vision statement
- Organizational values and principles. As the mission statement provides a broad-brush declaration of what the organization hopes to accomplish, this provides a declaration of the values it will uphold in achieving its goals.
Part one of the code of conduct: Organization’s relation to community, environment, and society.
The organization’s CSR stance, this presents a more detailed set of principles and goals, specifying the organization’s ethical obligations to all its various stakeholders. It should enable someone to make decisions about future organizational actions.
Part two of the code of conduction: Organization’s expectations: Ethical and conduct guidelines
This will likely include such areas as conflict of interest, bribery/corruption, confidentiality, privacy, harassment, record keeping, relations with external stakeholders, use of company resources, and so on.
Part two of the code of conduction: Organization’s expectations: Examples of ethical and unethical behavior
The goal here is to help employees recognize a potential risk or conflict when it arises.
Part two of the code of conduction: Organization’s expectations: Specific rules of conduct
These cover issues of compliance with specific external regulations. This may be a separate document or even a set of function-specific documents for separate departments within the organization.
Part two of the code of conduction: Performance evaluation
Employees should have a clear sense of accountability and of how conduct will be evaluated and acted upon. Clear channels for reporting misconduct should be specified.
Key Components of a compliance program
Be supported by a corporate culture and clearly defined channels and procedures supporting the culture’s values and goals - that encourages employees to seek advice on compliance and ethical issues and to report transgressions.
Key Components of a compliance program
Have a comprehensive educational component that provides not only rules of conduct but decision-making guidance.
Key Components of a compliance program
Have an ongoing monitoring, auditing, and evaluation component that ensures its effectiveness.
Compliance program: Process evaluation
Purpose is to monitor which program activities are actually performed and what their outputs are.
Compliance program: Process evaluation
Asks questions such as: What training classes exist? How often are they given? How many attend? What knowledge do they retain? What is their satisfaction with the courses?
Compliance program: Outcomes Evaluation
Aims to determine the actual results achieved by the program.
Compliance program: Outcomes Evaluation
It asks questions such as:
Is there less misconduct?
Is there less exposure to risk for misconduct?
Can employees and agents recognize compliance issues at work?
How often are decisions made with reference to standards, procedures, and expectations?
Compliance program: Outcomes Evaluation
How willing are employees and agents to seek advice?
How willing are employees and agents to report concerns?
Compliance program: Outcomes Evaluation
How satisfied are those who report their concerns with the response from management?
How committed are employees to the organization?
Does the culture of the organization promote ethical conduct and discourage misconduct?
What two dimensions of HR make it central to fulfilling the code of conduct’s role in the organization?
Educator and stakeholder outreach lead
What is a key component of compliance program training?
Ensuring that all employees know where to seek compliance and ethical advice and feel they can do so without fear