A recent article about the ‘corporate activist’, Adam Werbach, highlights one of the issues that appear to be holding back the progress that could be being made by the corporate sector in lessening the threat of carbon resource reduction to its ability to conduct sustainable business.

The appointment by many companies (and certainly those in the UK that fall under the scrutiny of the incoming CSR-related sections of the Companies Act 2006) of a CSR director or manager is a step in the right direction.

However the pace at which corporate social responsibility has been, to some degree, forced upon the business world means that normal and, arguably, sensible business rules and considerations appear to have been either ignored or just missed during this integration phase.

When any organisation takes on a new employee it is because they will be bringing added value to the organisation or filling a production/revenue generation gap. When the CSR people were hired or (in many instances) existing employees were re-deployed, the usual rules appear to have gone out of the window. So what do many companies now have?

• An individual (who may or may not also have a staff of people working with/for them) who does not logically fit with or within the organisation
• An individual who does not appear (an important distinction) to bring anything to the organisation - rather, they appear to be in place to take away from the organisation.
• An individual who, in Werbach’s words, is more concerned with protecting values than creating them.

Some of these individuals are as commercially aware as their counterparts in the organisation and should be working to integrate sustainability, a core business concept even before the ‘green’ hue and cry, into business process. Often, however, they are marginalised or, worse, they marginalise themselves through their actions or words.

A telling indicator of this situation is when I ask CSR directors or managers, when I meet them outside of their organisations, “what are your KPIs? What measurable results/outputs are you tasked to deliver in the next financial year?”

Invariably, the answer leaves a lot to be desired. This is a shared fault of the organisation and the individual: what is a company doing, especially at a time of financial challenge, paying someone a substantial salary to fill a job title without tasking them to deliver, to be accountable for cost reduction or, more importantly, growth?

And what on earth is the individual concerned doing, taking on a role where his/her contribution is neither recognised nor valued; where is the career path and the sense of self worth in that?

CSR managers/directors are a vital component in the continued growth of a company. There will be a time in the not too distant future when they may be critical in working co-operatively to secure the very survival of the company… but only if they have the same shared goals, targets, duties, responsibilities, KPIs and accountabilities as the rest of the management team.

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