Taking CSR to the next level

Updated: 2014-03-28 08:42

By Ben Yue in Hong Kong (China Daily Europe)

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 Taking CSR to the next level

Volunteers from Bayer China help level land in Jiangyou, Sichuan province, after a strong earthquake destroyed farmland. Photos Provided to China Daily

 Taking CSR to the next level

Children attend an English class run with the help of volunteers from Bayer China in a temporary school set up in the aftermath of the earthquake that hit Jiangyou, Sichuan province, in May 2008.

Business sector is becoming more engaged with contributing to society through volunteer work

Like millions of Chinese people, Beijing resident Gong Ziwei first gained some real understanding about volunteer work in 2008, the year China had the summer Olympic Games and a huge earthquake.

Around 100 million people were involved in volunteer work that year, equal to nearly one in 13 Chinese people.

When the earthquake struck in May 2008, Gong was working for Bayer China in a clerical role. The German pharmaceutical company sent a team to a seriously damaged small city, Jiangyou, in Sichuan province, to distribute free drugs, rebuild sanitation facilities, and to help with primary school education, elder care and other community work.

The activity was co-organized by Bayer, the local government and a corporate volunteer consultancy that specializes in providing volunteer activities for multinationals.

"The experience was life changing," Gong says. "Three years later, I quit my job, joined the consultancy and became a professional volunteer."

Gong says that her friends have noticed that she is happier today doing what she enjoys. "We have a good team. The industry is new and very promising," she says.

The company she now works for is Horizon Corporate Volunteer Consultancy, a leading volunteer activity planner in China that provides consulting services to big corporations.

Gong has noted a clear trend of more companies in China seeking professional advice on volunteer work. And, according to the feedback HCVC has been getting, the demand is growing fast.

"China's corporate volunteering has a short history of only one decade," says Wang Zhongping, founder and director of HCVC. "Compared with developed countries, which have decades of experience in this field, China is still very unprofessional."

As one of the pioneers in the industry, HCVC is blazing a trail. It has gained nearly 100 clients from Fortune 500 companies, helped the Beijing and Shanghai governments to build city volunteer service associations, and won several professional awards, including the Make A Difference merit award by the Hong Kong Institute of Contemporary Culture.

Wang says that although most of his clients are multinationals, the number of State-owned and private sector clients in China is picking up - so much so that the Beijing-based company is thinking of opening two new offices this year, in Guangzhou and Chengdu.

"Many Chinese companies have done a lot with corporate social responsibility, in terms of the amount of money they have donated, but not many had considered volunteering as their major CSR work," Wang says.

International firms generally have a longer history of staff volunteering programs.

"They have a mature corporate culture of encouraging employees to participate in volunteer works," he says.

Wang says that it is not a case of one approach to CSR being better than the other. "I'd like to think they are at different phases of development."

He points out that the situation is changing fast and that demands from domestic companies in China will be much bigger in the near future.

"Many Chinese companies already have strategic thinking about volunteer works. For example, Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu all have their own foundations for public welfare."

The pattern of corporate volunteering is unlikely to make any leaps in development, Wang says, but it will continue to grow steadily. Big jumps in activity can be expected, however, during occasional major events, such as the Olympics or the World Expo.

"We have a research and development department as well," Wang says. "Their work is to create standards and innovation for corporate volunteer activities."

Gong says that HCVC's business has been good so far because many companies do not have the knowledge about how to organize volunteer activities and also how to encourage employees to do it.

"For example, (companies lack) the communication skills to get in touch with underprivileged groups that need help from volunteers, and a clear vision of combining the companies' own strength with their volunteer activities," she says.

But while there may be a long way to go for Chinese companies in terms of the nuts and bolts of organizing volunteer activities, the tide is turning when it comes to attitude.

Corporate volunteering has been catching people's eyes in the past few years as an important part of CSR. This has been growing in tandem with increasing social awareness of the responsibility of the business sector.

"Companies are starting to change, from only taking responsibility for their shareholders to the society as well," says Li Yang, vice president of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Since 2009, CASS has published an index to measure companies' CSR activity by comparing with those companies' CSR information disclosure level.

The index shows that China's CSR activity is at a basic level, with more than half of the companies still waiting for their reports to be published. At the same time, the index reading was growing at an average growth rate of 18.4 percent during the last five years.

"State-owned companies' CSR readings are the highest among our 300 surveyed companies, followed by foreign companies and private companies," says Zhong Hongwu, director of the CSR research center at CASS, which is responsible for the survey.

The report shows that listed companies have slightly higher readings than the overall index reading, while foreign companies from East Asia have higher readings than companies from the other regions.

In terms of different sectors, the energy and banking industries are leading the way, followed by IT, chemical, metal refinery, food and beverage, and car making. At the lowest level are real estate, garment making and retail.

Although more Chinese companies are taking CSR seriously, corporate volunteering has not, to date, been their favored way to give something back to their communities.

According to a report from Junior Achievement China, a non-governmental organization focused on young people's development, 70 percent of corporate volunteers in China are from foreign companies, mainly in big cities.

Taking CSR to the next level

BVF-FESCO is the Beijing Volunteer Federation branch of the Beijing Foreign Enterprise Human Resources Service Company, the city government's official volunteer workforce that coordinates with foreign companies' local offices.

According to Zhang Ping from the BVF-FESCO, foreign companies not only have a longer history in the field, but also use more incentives to encourage employees to participate in volunteer activities.

"For example, some companies give their employees paid leave to do volunteer work," she says. "Some companies calculate volunteer hours that employees can exchange for other rewards, while other companies cooperate their offices in each country to do the same volunteer work on the same day."

Zhang explains that the federation is a spontaneous organization that helps people working in different companies to share their volunteer experience and seek help.

"BVF-FESCO was founded in 2005, because of the need of serving the Beijing Olympics," she says. "We had many people working for foreign companies who speak foreign languages who were able to help guests coming for the Olympics."

During the 2008 Beijing Olympics, BVF-FESCO's volunteers did a wide range of volunteer jobs, including that of drivers and hotel helpers.

And even after the excitement of the Olympics passed, the enthusiasm for volunteering has not dwindled. A recent survey published by HCVC shows that more than 99 percent of company employees in China are willing to get involved in volunteer activities.

But this does not necessarily translate into action. Due to practical difficulties such as time arrangement or shortage of funding, only 46 percent of people have actually taken part in volunteering. Levels of participation also vary according to the type of company.

HCVC's China Corporate Volunteer Activity Development Report surveyed 2,821 people from 103 companies. About 37 percent of respondents working for foreign businesses have volunteering experience, followed by 25 percent of respondents from companies in Hong Kong, Macao or Taiwan.

Thirteen percent of respondents from State-owned companies have tried volunteering, and the lowest is from private companies on the Chinese mainland, with a 6 percent participation ratio.

Half of surveyed companies do not have separate departments to deal with volunteer work.

More than 60 percent of respondents said they hope their company would offer paid days to do volunteer work or provide more volunteer opportunities. About half of the respondents agree that companies need to provide more funding and training to improve the quality of volunteer work, and evaluate the results after the activity is finished.

According to HCVC's Wang, environment protection and education are the most popular themes for corporate volunteering, followed by activities that can use the company's own advantages, such as big sporting events, community service, elder care and disaster help.

Shanghai are Beijing are still the most popular places for corporate volunteer activities, but Guangdong province is catching up, followed by Jiangsu, Shandong and Sichuan.

For HCVC's Gong, volunteer work is not just a politically correct choice for corporate employees. It also provides a cross-department communication platform inside the companies that can help people get to know their colleagues better.

"I think volunteer work needs to be self-motivated, and completely engaging," Gong says.

"Many organizations we have known for years have told us after they receive help from volunteers, and those volunteers are also changing," she says. "They are becoming more capable and thoughtful."

benyue@chinadailyhk.com

(China Daily European Weekly 03/28/2014 page16)