CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY – A PROFITABLE VENTURE IN ITSELF

The inspiration to this blog is from latest post "Stand up comedy??" in Ravi’s blog on civic amenities in Bangalore and Chennai. He had made a mention therein that Corporates in Chennai are looking at profitability even in discharging their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) towards the society. I do agree with him that it only goes on to show the degenerating human values here.

But I for once feel there is definitely a lot of profitability even in discharging CSR in both tangible and intangible forms. It is just that some of the Corporate leaders in Chennai lack that lateral and indepth vision to realise the potential. It is wrong to use the word profit in CSR, but the fact remains that even with the profit motive the society stands to gain a lot.

It is a well known fact that today the human resource is the single most important asset of every company and every day a new concept and principle is being evolved to improve the efficiency of this resource. A lot of gimmicks and exercises are being done to remove the stress out of the human resource to make them more productive. The amount being spent on these exercises atleast in professional organisations is quite substantial.

Proper discharge of CSR by the all the Corporates as a unit would go a long way in removal of stress from the employees mind. For example if certain basic facilities like garden, super market, hospitals, bus shelters etc. are provided in every locality, the children would have pollution free playing facility resulting in a more healthy body one one side and reduction in accidents on account of playing in roads. This means the earning member has to spend lesser money and time on the safety and healthy upbringing of his child. Again the home maker would find it easier to get all the amenities for home without depending on the earning member to help out. All these would go a long way in the family responsibilities playing very minimal role in the minds of the employees and they getting more focussed on their office work. This would result in increase in efficiency, quality of output and lastly a huge reduction in expenditure on stress reduction, all tangible gains.

Again the employee will be more committed to the organisation, being aware of its contributions to the cause of his family in general and society in particular. This is an example of intangible gain and there is also a tangible gain in the sense of reduced labour turnover.

This is just an example. There are many other ways in which CSR efforts can be implemented for long term gain for both the society and the Corporate world, only that one needs to look at both as part of the same macro-system.