DEVELOPING THE CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY PROFESSIONAL


ARTICLE ON THE FINAL REPORT OF THE DTI/CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY WORKING GROUP ON THE Development of Professional Skills for the Practice of Corporate Social Responsibility: "Changing Managers Mindsets"

A working group established by the British Government's Trade and Industry (DTI) and the Corporate Responsibility Group, has recommended a series of skills and competences for CSR. Is this a welcome sign of maturity and growing professionalism - or an early warning of bureaucracy and entrepreneurial sclerosis?

The working group was largely made up of seasoned CSR practitioners - and was advised by two "feet on the ground" CSR academics - Andrew Wilson from the Ashridge Centre for Business and Society, and Dr Simon Zadek of Accountability. It would be hard to fault their listing of 27 skills and competences (although personally I might add the capacity to prioritise the most crucial CSR issues for the particular business, and stretch their reference to "strategic awareness" to incorporate "integrating strategies" which helps a business to have a holistic and consistent approach to CSR.)

They suggest that required skills and competencies can be described in a framework that comprises three discrete areas (see Figure 1):

• Business skills
• Technical skills (or knowledge sets)
• People skills (including personal attributes or behaviours).

Figure 1 - CSR Skills and Competencies


















A fuller description of these CSR skills and competences can be found at appendix of "Changing Managers' Mindsets" which is available on: www.corporateresponsibilitygroup.com

GENERALISTS OR SPECIALISTS?

The working group addresses the thorny issue of whether integrating CSR will be best achieved by making it part of everybody's business or by leaving it to the dedicated CSR managers.

"There is a debate as to whether or not the focus of skill definition in the competency framework and the education and training provision to support it should be geared to meet the needs of specialist or generalist managers… it is likely that at this stage in the process of establishing and responding to the CSR agenda, specialists who bring skills, focus and knowledge to CSR issues are necessary, but that if embedding is the goal, generalist managers need to develop those aspects of CSR skills that are relevant to their management discipline and function within the organisation. "

They draw an analogy with the evolution of human resources expertise:

"It may well be that even in the longer term, companies that have embedded CSR into their every business practice still require on-going support from CSR specialists to keep abreast of changing times. A useful analogy might be the way in which the HR function in the organisation supports general managers in carrying out their people management functions, whilst it retains a specialist function of its own, or the way in which the finance function sets the budget and procedures but the company expects generalist managers who are budget holders to have sufficient financial literacy to run budgets effectively. The Working Group did not try to resolve a debate that only time will resolve."

They acknowledge that getting CSR incorporated as part of specialisms, like marketing or purchasing will require much more intense dialogue with the relevant professional institutes than was possible for a working group that completed its work in just over three months. This, they suggest, will be one of the tasks of the proposed new CSR Academy which the group was asked to consider and which they endorse.

A CSR ACADEMY?

Positioning this "CSR Academy" as a "dynamic learning space" and "a change agent" the Working Group propose that it should have the on-going task of keeping the list of skills and competences under review; maintain a website / database of available CSR training; and licence the use of the CSR Competences to appropriate trainers.

A survey of CSR professionals for the working group, found strong support for the Academy. Two-thirds believe there is a need for a professional institution to develop and maintain CSR skills. Further evidence of the need, comes from the first ever Corporate Responsibility Index (CRI) from Business in the Community which benchmarks how far 122 leading companies are integrating CSR. The weakest submissions to the CRI proved to be in areas of integration with management training scoring lowest after the link of CSR to executive remuneration and bonuses.

If this new CSR Academy is to succeed it will have to build close links and synergies with the European Academy on Business and Society established in 2002 by INSEAD and other leading business schools; (and this surfeit of "academies" may encourage those seeking a different name for the CSR Academy, to do so!). There are also important links to the Higgs Review in the UK, on the role of non-executive directors (NED); and to the likely increase post-Higgs in training for NEDs, since boards also need training in the fundamentals of CSR.

Left unaddressed, is whether more skilled and competent CSR professionals will lead to more job openings for them. Personally, I am already conscious of a steady stream of bright, enthusiastic and committed graduates and MBAs seeking advice on how to break into CSR jobs.

RELEVANCE TO SMALLER FIRMS?

48 hours after attending the launch of "Changing Managers' Mindsets," I was speaking to a group of owner-managers of small and medium-size businesses about responsible business practices. Even for a group which proved to be knowledgeable and already - in practice - doing a lot of things usually described as "CSR" - I would have hesitated before introducing to smaller firms, the idea of a set of CSR competences and skills. Instinctively, although there is nothing in the Working Group's list which is not relevant to small firms, it feels a step too far at this stage when so many small firms are new to the field except for what the Working Group's chair Sue Slipman called the "sme romantics" (noting "a lack of enthusiasm" from small business respondents). I welcome the Working Group's report and recognise that the first priority has to be large companies. In the longer-term though, we also need to engage many more small firms. Apart from a small minority of owner-managers who will commit to this initiative regardless of the Academy's structure, most smaller firms will need something that's not just a cut-down version of what works for a Shell or Diageo. One early win would be to involve business advisers.

Re-reading the list - with a couple of additions (understanding how to relate CSR back to an owner-managers' values and how to use potential triggers to motivate small firms to adopt CSR) - the Working Group's list of skills and competences could form a good guide for what the advisers to small firms, need in order to advise their clients about CSR. Business advisers in Chambers of Commerce, Business Link operators etc would benefit from a training module based on the Working Group analysis. I hope the BLU - the virtual, "corporate university" for small business development professionals can work with the CSR Academy to design and deliver this.


A SALUTARY WARNING

And there is also a warning there about the execution of what is a good idea. More than ten years ago, work started on developing a set of Standards for English small business advisers' skills and competences. A decade later, they were finally presented and became mandatory. In that case, bureaucratic execution and long lead-times from gestation to action, left many advisers bored and unconvinced. The challenge for the proposed CSR Academy, having set out its stall, is to ensure that its implementation is entrepreneurial, fast, creative and achieved with a light touch - "inspiring" not "bludgeoning" as we say at Business in the Community!

David Grayson is a director of Business in the Community and chairs the Small Business Consortium to increase the competitiveness of smes through improving their social, environmental and community impact.