The View from the Boardroom - UNDP Trinidad and Tobago

The View from the Boardroom - CEO Study on Corporate Social Responsibility in Trinidad and TobagoCHAPTER 4Managing Human Capital through CSR – The Business Case for Corporate Volunteering“Benefits of CorporateVolunteering• Provides creativeopportunitiesfor professionaldevelopment• Deepens relationshipwith existing strategicpartners• Builds brandawareness andenhances thecompany’s effortsto be seen as a goodcorporate citizen• Makes a positivedifference in thecommunities inwhich the companyoperates• Employeeswillingly take upthe opportunity tovolunteer one dayevery year for charityor to give back to thecommunity.”Dennis Evans, CEOCitibankgetting our people involved in thatprocess brings them together andcreates a bond in terms of a family.Therefore, you are doing good but youare also building an organization. Sothere is a benefit to us as well. Yes, itmakes us and our employees feel thatwe are giving back but it also buildsa strong bond amongst our people.Working together, playing together,being conscientious together in termsof society and the environment buildsa better team.” Wayne Dass, CEOof credit rating agency CariCRIS,shares a similar belief: “Sometimesthe business benefits of corporatevolunteering are not direct, they comeback in an indirect way. When youstart to get into volunteering, yougo beyond yourself and I think thatdevelops in you a certain mindset, acertain caring about things beyondyourself. I think that then feeds backinto the organization. When you havea person like that coming back intothe organization, these persons, theway they operate, the things they say,the comments that they will make ina team meeting will spread to otherpeople too. It strengthens team work,it widens their network of contacts, itmakes them realize that business doesnot exist in isolation but that there is awider world outside there that one cantap into and bring the benefits of thatexperience back into the organization.”And of course, there is the importantaspect of companies benefiting fromgreater levels of loyalty, dedicationand commitment of their employeesresulting from the fact that oftenCSR programmes and an employer’sattention to the principles of ethicalbehaviour are positively perceived bythe workforce as making a positivedifference in the lives of citizens inneed. In other words, corporate imageimpacts on individual commitment.The personal attitude of CEOs towardsthe very idea of civic engagement andthe personal volunteer history of seniormanagers are important indicators forthe level of acceptance, understandingand support that members of theboardroom are prepared to extendto volunteer initiatives within theirown companies. 85.7% of all CEOsinterviewed for this report wenton record as saying that they hadpreviously volunteered as privateindividuals in support of publicprojects. Such personal involvementwould have sensitized managers to thepublic need for volunteer assistance,to the social and infrastructuralchallenges experienced by manycommunities and to the value of civicengagement for building more stableand inclusive societies (the latter anobvious pre-condition for successfulbusiness operations). Arguably, CEOswho have been exposed to voluntaryaction as private individuals are morelikely to lead efforts of integratingthe principles of an individual aswell as organisational social andenvironmental commitment into theircorporate culture.Have you ever volunteered as a private individual insupport of a public project?14.3%85.7%YesNo58