Corporate Social Responsibility
CSR, also known as « Corporate Social Responsibility » - The SHG Team offers you to set up a comprehensive Corporate Social Responsibility policy within your organization.
For SHG, setting up a CSR policy in a company will not only make the company more competitive, it will also make it more responsible.
From Antiquity to industrialization – Corporate Social Responsibility appeared as early as Antiquity. It was then thought that proper management of an entity – any entity – must benefit society as a whole, and not represent a cost to it. This mindset survived into the Middle Ages under the concept ¨respectable businessman¨. True to a given set of values, such a businessman introduced a certain number of behavioral norms aimed at inciting tradesmen to follow virtuous practices as seen by society as a whole. The notion of ¨Corporate Responsibility¨ will however only appear as such with industrialization – among other things within big corporations. As an example of such an awakening, dwelling places for workers and their families started to appear in the vicinity of the companies.
From the 50s to the 80s, the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility as we know it today appeared in the United States, in the 50s. At its inception, a community of people wished to increase the profits of their companies while simultaneously improving the social system. At the time, this point of view was not widely shared, quite to the contrary. The definition of the CSR then was ¨to make it mandatory for businessmen to carry out the policies and make decisions aimed at achieving the objectives and the values that are considered to be desirable by society as a whole¨. In the 70s, social and business perspectives began to draw closer together. As a matter of fact, corporations that respected and followed this moral code of conduct stood out from among their competitors. As globalization exploded, environmental, social, and economic issues have become more salient in the mainstream narrative. Consumers are becoming more critical of corporations that do not take into account such concerns. Corporate Social Responsibility is thus becoming an asset for your company.
Since the 90s, CSR has become more regulated. Fearing being left behind by their competitors, corporations have increasingly integrated this perspective into their business model.
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According to the SHG Team, the aim is to integrate environmental and social concerns into the decision-making process. In times of global warming, this represents quite a challenge in the face of the increasing number of natural catastrophes. Corporations are faced with the following question: how to implement CSR as quickly as possible? SHG can provide you with counseling by establishing a Team that will offer you advice on how to best implement such a policy in Africa and Asia, tailored to local cultures while contributing to the growth of your company and your staff.
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The objective of this new counseling service from SHG is to help you take into consideration environmental, social, and economic concerns in the strategic decision-making process of your company. CSR ensures that whatever action undertaken by your company will have a positive impact on society as a whole, respect the environment and human rights while ensuring that your company remains economically profitable.
CSR is a path that is freely chosen by the organization that implements it. SHG masters the ISO 26000 norm, which defines the seven important criteria that form the basis of our approach:
The environment
Consumer-related issues
Loyal practices
Local communities and development
Organisational governance
Human rights
Working conditions and workplace relationships
Why is SHG sincerely convinced that we all should implement a CSR strategy within our companies? Often seen as a cumbersome and non-mandatory approach, CSR nonetheless provides, according to SHG, the following eight advantages:
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As a general rule, it helps improve the image of the company and stimulates competitiveness. Investors prefer supporting a company that has a CSR strategy;
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It is beneficial for all the parties involved (partners, clients, suppliers, staff, local population that is present in the vicinity of the company);
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It encourages innovation and adaptation ;
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It strengthens Team spirit around a project that makes sense and increases productivity; it increases the attractiveness of the company (people would rather avoid working for a company that does not act responsibly);
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It helps make the company´s activity sustainable in the long term by identifying opportunities and anticipating risks;
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It reduces costs;
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It helps better understand the expectations of the involved parties and to communicate in a responsible manner;
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It respects the existing rules and regulations and anticipates their evolution.
SHG puts at your disposal a Team with a wealth of experience, whose outlook is grounded in humanistic values drawn in large part from its presence in the Martial Arts, to assess your needs, identify solutions and provide you with oral advice or through concrete demonstration. We will be at your side to achieve the objectives of the CSR, which depend on the values and the activity of your company, by setting up a CSR policy based on the environment, with continuous verbal assistance, to measure the performance of your company; to carry out a Life Cycle Analysis to assess the impact of the product on the environment; a carbon footprint to identify the most important sources of CO2 and put in place solutions aimed at reducing them. The strategic tools put in place by SHG will help you identify where you should concentrate your efforts and establish an efficient action plan for producing better while improving your social and environmental impact.
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Don´t hesitate to contact us!