Scottish Business in the Community

Focus on a Partner - March 2009

Samantha Barber

In this interview, Samantha Barber, Chief Executive of Scottish Business in the Community (SBC), introduces key CSR topics for companies in Scotland and presents TRAIN4CSR - a collaborative EU co-funded project - and how the expertise attained from this project will help the organisation add value and provide better services for its members.

In your view, what are the main CSR topics and priorities for companies in Scotland?

CSR in the recession, opportunities and challenges, is the most topical priority in Scotland for SBC members. Generally, businesses are looking to how they can integrate CSR more deeply in the business, while dealing with business challenges, like redundancy. Others are using the economic situation as a reason for adopting CSR, while a few, currently low numbers, are cutting back on CSR budgets.

Leading businesses are beginning to understand that they need to provide focus and time for staff, at all levels, to learn about CSR, to discuss how it can benefit the business, how it relates to personal and business values, to business and world challenges, and the changes in the business and focus in their role that will support its integration.

Research conducted for the Leonardo Train4CSR Project, showed that other areas for priority include: Employee Engagement, Supply Chain, Transparency and Accountability and Stakeholder Engagement.

SBC has prioritized skills for employment and talent and is running a campaign around skills development and community engagement. Could you tell us about this campaign and what it is trying to achieve?

Keeping Scotland a competitive economic partner in Europe is a key priority for the Scottish Government and SBC members. Central to this is ensuring that we have a skilled workforce and that everyone can make a productive contribution to the economy.

SBC members have therefore launched a campaign called Scotland's Got Talent. The campaign aims to encourage businesses to nurture their current employee's talent and skills in a way that also benefits disengaged young people and the unemployed.

It is based on research that demonstrates the clear business and staff benefits of providing staff with development opportunities that also bring them into contact with schools and local community groups that help people back to work. These opportunities are cost-effective, challenging and innovative and help support a business's CSR agenda.

The campaign will provide businesses with advice, information and ideas on how they can develop their employees' skills and help to up skill the many talented people who are currently unemployed.

A key part of the campaign is a Talent Summit which will be held in Edinburgh on the 2nd of April where we hope to attract up to 100 businesses. The aim of the Summit is to demonstrate how businesses can get involved and sign post them to the opportunities available.

In the current economic climate, keeping staff morale up and raising the skills of the current and potential Scottish workforce is even more critical. We are pleased at SBC to be helping to drive this agenda.

Scottish Business in the Community is currently involved as a partner in a European collaborative project, TRAIN4CSR. What do you feel is the biggest added value of participating in pan-European projects?

Organisations, like SBC, while working in all sectors with a myriad of partners, effectively work in isolation in their area of expertise. CSR has a vast and broad scope, and we are beginning to understand that CSR is about 'how you do business'. It is an enormous challenge to make a shift from 'business as usual'.

As CSR develops, different countries are gaining different strengths. We need to work together to make it work for all our economies and societies. SBC's experience working in on the Train4CSR project is helping us harness our most successful work, and the sharing knowledge, ideas and good practice is undoubtedly propelling the agenda forward in Scotland.

The TRAIN4CSR project looks to develop trainings on specific CSR topics and allow the partners involved to develop train the trainers' skills. Where do you see the biggest need for CSR trainings in companies? How do you think trainings will support SBC in better serving members and expanding the organisation's reach within Scotland?

SBC has demand for CSR training at all levels from organisations, and strongly believes that this is the only way to make CSR work. Businesses understand this too and we are particularly seeing interest for our CSR Essentials training for CSR Champions, Executive Boards, and mixed groups representing all functions of the business.

Organisations train on many topics, all important to the success of the business, often providing their own specialist training. However the very nature of CSR makes it difficult to generate effective learning frameworks, content and experiences only from within the organisation. The external drivers, and holistic, cross department approach that characterises CSR, and the values and behaviours that underpin it, make it important to turn to stakeholders and partners to help develop and deliver effective CSR training experiences.

The TRAIN4CSR project will help SBC develop even more effective training on more topics, taking the best from Europe in a matrix of opportunities that can be targeted to our customers needs. We can support their trainers and provide a more effective external training experience. As we develop our position as a lead CSR training and development organisation, with a backdrop of economic uncertainty and a need for a new way forward for our economies, the TRAIN4CSR project could not have come at a better time.

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