Wednesday 28 July 2010

CSR -The Game Changer - Workshop by NASSCOM Foundation

With more and more IT companies operating in India taking the CSR route, it is imperative to strengthen these efforts and provide a forum for sharing practices. NASSCOM foundation did just this on July 21st when they organized a workshop "CSR - The Game Changer" in Bangalore for its member companies.

The participants were given useful inputs on CSR strategy development and alignment with business goals. Participants also involved in 'developing CSR strategies' as part of a case study to get a hands on feel for coming up with sustainable CSR strategies.

Thursday 8 July 2010

Indian Companies lead by Example in CSR

A recent article in Harvard Business Review by Dr Cappelli commends Indian companies for their social mission. The research covered 100 business leaders of top Indian companies and comes out with the finding that every executive interviewed described the main objective of their company in terms of a social mission.

The article draws on the examples of Bharti Airtel, ICICI Bank, Dr. Reddy's Pharma and INFOSYS among many other Indian companies. Of course the TATA's who 'also make steel' finds special mention for spending 65% of their profits for charity purposes.

The study concludes by saying that: "There is every reason to believe that these companies have done well precisely because they are doing good"

Another feather for Indian efforts in CSR, way to go...hope many more companies emulate the examples set by these top Indian companies

It is Official now, CSR keeps your employees happy!

In the ongoing discussions on CSR, it is often said that Companies use CSR to motivate and retain employees. Now a recent study by the Centre for Creative Leadership (CCL) confirms that Corporate Social Responsibility is a great way to engage employees and linked to how committed an employee is to the company.

Spanning over 2000 workers around the world, the CCL study sampled their opinions on their company's CSR. The main findings are:

1. Corporate Social Responsibility programs are linked to how committed an employee is to an employer
2. Employee perceptions about CSR remained constant during the depth of the economic decline
3. CSR programs are not a panacea for retention issues - CSR is related to organizational commitment but not to turnover, so companies can't consider CSR as a magic cure for all retention issues

The study has come at the right time when Indian IT companies are again struggling with attrition as recruitment efforts are picking up. It gives a fillip to CSR efforts as keeping employees committed and happy will sure impact the bottomline of any Corporate.