Corporate social responsibility

Ok so here I am on the train back from the city trying to recall the seminar I have sat through this afternoon on CSR and ethics. Personally I think the 2 things are absolutely intertwined and we need to be sure they are both adhered to. It was interesting listening to Tom from Sedex, Martin from ETI delivering content based on our clients demands. Both organisations grow based on the basis of peer pressure, if so and so does it en we nuts also do it. How many of these organisations are doing it from a philanthropic base rather than a what's in it for me base remains to be seen? It is this that concerns me the most because I really do care, but I am being forced to comply with oodles of red tape that is really difficult to understand. Anyone tried to supply goods to LOCOG?(London Olympics 2012) If so you know what I mean! Somewhere along the supply chain must come the sharing of this data to allow more than one company to benefit from the social audit that has been carried out by an independent assessment firm of a particular factory. Rather than all of us doing the same audit over and over again. This is where Sedex really could come into it's own. The cost to industry of compliance is huge and still growing, so come on big business do you really need that extra bit of Social Accountability or will the one carried out a few months ago by another company suffice?

So interestingly in a room of 40 or so people only around 10-12 promotional products distributors were represented. Does that mean that only 0.5% of our industry cares about this topic or is it just those that are being forced to comply that were there? It scares me a little about the cost of these compliance issues, who will pay. Will it be the end user who may be driving down the price of a product whilst asking for more and more compliance and quality. With a 'grown up discussion' it may well be, but this will only be true of certain corporate who really do get the whole 'partnership ethos.'. I guess in reality it will be the distributor who will continue to have their margin eroded to conform to our clients needs.

Listening to both a supplier and distributor ( direct competitor but a really good firm!) give a presentation each on what it means to them, I can see that it is not just me that is fearful about the reasons why we are being asked for so much compliance. This is going to be one hell of a learning curve with many companies doing it differently to one another. Clearly this means that the client will have options, but not necessarily being able to compare 'apples with apples'. As with most things in life there are many companies out there offering different levels of compliance, this is due to the different market forces but ultimately with audits you get what you pay for! So beware of people offering really cheap audits because if it looks too good to be true, it probably is!

We must all remember that Social Accountability is not just about child labour there are many other aspects and we at Merchandise Mania check for them all.

I would be really interested to hear back from anyone with experience in this area.

Thanks

Simon





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Why you never wash a rental car?

So on Tuesday I was at my Academy of Chief Executives Group meeting and the speaker was a guy call Mark Fritz. The subject was, 'Why you never wash a rental car.' Immediately my alarm bells went up as I was expecting some kind of brash American telling me what I was doing wrong and what I needed to do to put it right.

Well, that couldn't have been further from the truth. The takeaway value of his session was huge and I think I ranked him the highest speaker I have heard at #ACE.

Why was it so good I hear you ask???......There were so many nuggets to takeaway and I don't mean chicken ones….actual golden ones!

In delegation…….."Deciding what you don't need to know"
Become Outcome focused rather than activity focused - is it important to make 50 cold calls a day or 5 calls and secure 5 appointments. The outcome outweighs the activity. It is all very well being too busy being busy rather than being busy and productive!

Our job as leaders is to create the conditions that enable success, whether it be the processes, the people or the behaviours.

We also spent some time talking about bringing an outcome approach to meetings and to do this what would need to happen. Well he showed us that before we even think about an agenda for that meeting we have to decide what the successful outcome of the meeting would be. This would take place well before setting any kind of agenda. In fact setting the agenda would be at step 6 meaning there are 5 more important things than the agenda in preparing for a meeting!

'Lightbulb' moments were plentiful in this invigorating and educational session and my thanks go out to Mark Fritz for his presentation, and to Brian Chernett for having the belief to book him.

If you want to hear what Mark has to say contact him at mark@markfritzonline.com

Thanks guys!

Best

Simon