HR professionals have a huge opportunity to boost the bottom line by driving corporate social responsibility (CSR) delegates heard in this month’s Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development (CIPD) CSR conference in London. The conference explored the role of HR in managing effective CR programmes: developing strategy, integrating responsible business practices and engaging employees with the organisation’s values and objectives. It offered delegates a complete guide to Corporate Social Responsibility drawing on a number of expert case studies from an array of international organisations such as KPMG, BT, IBM UK and Aviva, which shared their insights and learning from how they have embedded CR into the core values and culture of their organisation to drive business goals, while engaging employees.

Jonathon Porritt, director of the non-profit organisation Forum for the Future, highlighted Marks and Spencer’s Plan A sustainability programme as a leading example of the value that CSR can add. He explained how this retailer who launched this initiative five years ago has already made a large contribution to its bottom line, highlighting the fact that critical to its CSR plan’s success were cultural change and employee engagement. Porritt stated: “M&S has said that the business case for Plan A is absolutely clear. In 2010 they announced that the plan had positively contributed £50million to profits, and in 2011 the figure is closer to £75m.”

“HR owns the culture and people management functions that influence change and that is why it is so critical that it is involved in CSR strategy,” he added.

Furthermore, Sue Ells, BT CSR programme director, urged delegates not to wait for top level sign off or big budgets to get started on CSR programmes to engage staff and boost performance. During her seminar “Creating an Engaged Workforce – how CR plays a significant role,” Ells discussed how Corporate Responsibility is turned into a lever for high performance at BT, and how the triple bottom line really is a route to improved employee engagement. She explained that when BT had started talking about CSR and cultural change, some people thought investing in it was “indulgent”. Ells argued that cultural change had been critical in getting staff buy in at BT, explaining how in order to kick start this change the firm sent top executives on sustainable leadership development training, run by Henley Business School, to challenge what they thought about CSR.

These successful case studies of organisations like Marks and Spencer and BT demonstrate that more and more business leaders the world over are realising that a CSR agenda is an essential ingredient in the firm’s corporate strategy as well as to employee engagement and satisfaction. And research continues to reinforce this strong business case for employee engagement in Corporate Responsibility.

The Global Workforce Study carried out by Towers Perrin’s in 2007 revealed that a firm’s reputation for social responsibility is one of the top 10 drivers of employee engagement worldwide. Moreover, research led by the Kenexa Research Institute based on a survey of 1,000 employees found that working for an organisation whose employees view corporate responsibility efforts positively has a significant, favourable impact on how they rate their pride in the organisation, their overall satisfaction and their willingness to recommend it as a place to work. And employees with favourable opinions of their organisation’s corporate responsibility activities are more likely to state an intention to stay.

In her recent article entitled “Aligned Incentives and Engaged Employees Improve Triple Bottom Line Performance”, Jackie Pitera, Senior Analyst at Altaterra Research explained how employers can engage their employees around their sustainability efforts as well as advising on the best policies and tools that an employer can use for engagement in Corporate Responsibility. Pitera commented: “There are many elements that can comprise employee sustainability education and engagement campaigns. These need to be tailored to a company’s circumstances, but will typically include visible sustainability goals, visible executive support, effective communication channels, proper messaging and training content, policies and programmes to institutionalise sustainability and integrate it into employee roles and proper incentive structures.’’

Pitera went on to say that employee incentives need to be aligned with the organisation’s sustainability goals. Managers can take a look at their corporate policies to identify what current employee incentive structures exist. Depending on what does exist, entirely new incentive structures may need to be created or current policies re-aligned so that incentives motivate employees to act in a way that is aligned with corporate sustainability goals, emphasised Pitera. In addition, different groups of employees may have different motivations so multiple types of incentive policies and programmes may be needed at one company. Here she made reference to the organisation Intel who found that employees are very motivated by their annual performance bonus, so corporate sustainability goals have been tied to this bonus structure.

Joe Gerada, CEO at the Foundation for Human Resources Development stated that the concept of corporate social responsibility has always guided his professional career and it is his prime motivator at work. He said that while people appreciate being recognised for their competence, they still want to know that their contribution is part of a greater whole that makes a difference to their organisation and the community. HR needs to make the link between personal value and CSR.

Research is ongoing at the CIPD and Dr Jill Miller, adviser at the CIPD, said that the Institute will be carrying out research early next year to examine the extent to which CR impacts an organisation and demonstrate the business benefits that can be gained from an effective, integrated approach to CR along with HR’s role in delivering it.

Hence, it is clear that engagement is key in Corporate Responsibility. Employees need to be and feel engaged in the Corporate Responsibility agenda. Businesses that involve their employees in key decisions and in their CSR embedment will see big payoffs in their bottom line. And finally, as Dr GuoPeiyuan, General Manager and co-founder of SynTao Co. Ltd put it: “From a strategic perspective CSR is all about risk and opportunity. Organisations that want to benefit from CSR have to be patient in making CSR a part of their DNA. It is a whole-system approach ranging from employee engagement and corporate governance to business services.”

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Angele Camilleri is a researcher

at the Foundation for Human Resources Development