By now, almost all large and medium-sized companies are aware of the need to develop and improve their Social Responsibility and Sustainability (SR+S) management capabilities. The pressures exerted by the Public Administration, the financial system, customers, and society in general are too strong to be ignored.
The point is no longer whether we should do it, but how we should do it. What elements are essential in the implementation process of the CSR+S management system? What phases does the process comprise? And what challenges remain?
By: Dr. Tomás González Cruz
Listen, reflect, share.
In recent months, I've had the opportunity to hear firsthand the experiences of several companies that we consider pioneers in CSR management, as they belong to that select group of entities that have taken action even though they weren't required to do so by any regulations.
From their stories I have extracted three elements that seem critical to me when defining and implementing a CSR management system.
Essential elements
Entities that have successfully begun the process of adopting SR+S as an integral part of their business present a series of common elements:
- The first and most important is the ownership and senior management leadership. Managers with convictions that are reflected in values that they project onto the organization and that now find a new way to channel them.
- A universal, synthetic and all-encompassing reference. Given the apparent complexity involved in defining and implementing SR+S, companies find in the SDGs a benchmark for rethinking its mission, vision and business model. SDGs They facilitate focus and allow us to define the objectives that the organization can and should commit to based on the characteristics of its activity and circumstances.
- Establish alliances with a community that shares principles, practices and tools that facilitate the development of the process. In this sense, the observed entities agree that the signing of the United Nations Global Compact, helped them transition from a compliance-focused philosophy to one that emphasizes continuous improvement.
The process has its phases, it is not always good to run faster than you can.
Those who start late are often tempted to compensate for their lack of proactivity with speed. However, organizational change takes time. There are processes that cannot be accelerated and phases that should not be skipped.
In general terms, the organizations that have shared their experience agree in pointing out a series of phases that can be summarized as follows: 'Identify, Sort, Synthesize and Align'.
- Select a reporting model to evaluate and diagnose the organization's performance in terms of SR+S. 'Identify and report what is done'.
- Narrow and focus. 'Choose the SDGs on which to focus the organization's attention, resources, and efforts'.
- Adopt a method, practices and tools for managing SR+S. 'Professionalize and standardize'.
- Incorporate the SR+S perspective into all of the organization's activities, with special mention to those with a high future impact, such as innovation and digital transformation. 'Integrating SR+S into the organization's strategy'.
- Awareness of the importance of SR+S as an element of competitiveness and survival. 'Explicitly incorporate SR+S into senior management team discussions'.
- Define a control system that allows for the evaluation of the efficiency of action plans and their effectiveness in terms of the degree to which objectives are achieved. 'Measure and evaluate'.
These phases typically take at least three to four years, all of which requires the commitment of management and the resulting dedication of resources and attention from senior management.
Challenges to face and barriers to overcome
At this point we will refer to two challenges, one of an internal nature and another that transcends the boundaries of the organization:
- Ensure that SR+S permeates all departments and levels of the organizationAs a cross-cutting policy, ensuring that the SR+S perspective permeates all of the organization's activities is still a pending task for the entities that shared their experience.
- To address this challenge, they recognize the need to train a broad base of the management team in CSR and implement cascading training strategies.
- Projecting SR+S beyond the boundaries of the organization. In this sense, managers recognize that there is a fear of opening up to the outside world and perceive interactions with suppliers, customers, and public administration as uncertain and risky.
- Regarding suppliers The difficulty of aligning them with the organization's SR+S approach and objectives is made explicit, and the need to improve transparency levels and develop alliances is recognized.
- Regarding customers and usersThey recognize the fear of sharing and the difficulty of convincing. It's necessary to show that the organization does what it claims or explain why it hasn't. At the same time, it's necessary to educate the customer so they can visualize the consequences of their decisions and convince them of the benefits of adopting new consumption patterns.
- Of Public Administrations, companies expect stability and simple reference frameworks adapted to the circumstances of the business community that surrounds us, mostly SMEs and micro-enterprises.
In conclusion.
Given that the adoption of SR+S is now an imperative, it's worth looking at the path taken by those who have already reached where we want to be. Learn from their experience, recognize that it requires the sincere commitment and perseverance of senior management. Understand that this is a process that requires timescales that cannot be compressed to compensate for managerial passivity. Recognize the importance of training and interaction with communities that can provide us with perspective, models, best practices, and work tools. Finally, we must overcome the fear of opening up to those stakeholders who are beyond the boundaries of the organization but who play a key role in SR+S management.
