CORPORATE Social Responsibility is an ugly term for a noble aim.
It’s the buzz phrase increasingly used by global PR companies, the big corporations and the pundits.
Google it and you find more than three and a half million entries.
Many of these articles come from the United States, where CSR often seems to define the difference between corporate America and enlightened America.

In Britain, the Government is also keen on encouraging CSR, has appointed a Minister for CSR and has even set up its own web site to promote it.
For many businesses, CSR is becoming a box they must now tick. So they install a green recycling bin in the office. Or buy a packet of Fairtrade tea for the kitchen.
There’s nothing wrong with doing either, of course. Both are essential elements of CSR.
But being corporately socially responsible is much more than ‘going green’ or buying ethically.
It is absolutely fundamental to the way we live and work.
It is about the way that employers treat their ‘Human Resources’ (that’s working people, to me and you.)
It’s about paying staff decent wages. Ensuring they work in a safe, healthy, supportive environment. Actively challenging bullying and discrimination. Developing mutually respectful relations between the employed and the employers. Encouraging and recognising trade unions.
As Mike Emmott, head of employee relations at CIPD, says: “CSR minus HR equals PR”.

It’s also about engaging properly with community organisations, special interest groups and all your other stakeholders.
As the world rapidly changes, your business faces increasing pressure to become more corporately responsible.
It can’t be an add-on to your business. You can’t take CSR down from the shelf, dust it off and hope it’s going to work.
It will take hard work and commitment and determination. And if you are to succeed, it’s got to be fundamental to the way you do your business, treat your staff, serve your customers – and discharge your obligations to the rest of society.
CSR can bring real social, economic and environmental benefits.
But most of all, it can ensure your business is Sound.

“Today, corporate social responsibility goes far beyond the old philanthropy of the past – donating money to good causes at the end of the financial year – and is instead an all year round responsibility that companies accept for the environment around them, for the best working practices, for their engagement in their local communities and for their recognition that brand names depend not only on quality, price and uniqueness but on how, cumulatively, they interact with companies’ workforce, community and environment. Now we need to move towards a challenging measure of corporate responsibility, where we judge results not just by the input but by its outcomes: the difference we make to the world in which we live, and the contribution we make to poverty reduction.” Gordon Brown.

• Evening Standard Billboard photo by edmittance @ flickr