Corporate Social Responsibility Policy - What To Include
Corporations everywhere are trying their best to protect their finances, customers, employees as well as the general public. This may sound easy and many people boast that if the employees will just do the right thing there is no need for a corporate social responsibility policy. While that may be true, there is always one in the bunch that ruins it for everyone else. Corporations wish they could turn a deaf ear and not need to spend thousands hiring firms to seek legal advice for the policy either. Enforcing and instilling a responsibility policy is not easy and certainly not cheap.
The question then becomes, what to include in the corporate social responsibility policy? There are so many topics and issues that employees could engage in unethical behavior, so where does one start? There are many issues in a social responsibility and a vague description or policy will simply not hold in court or with employees. The guidelines need to be to the point and easy to understand. They need to detail how to handle borderline situations and what to do if they have knowledge of others engaging in unethical behavior.
The best way to know what to include in the policy is to hire a firm that writes the policy for a living. There are numerous lawyers and other firms that can advise and explicitly write the policy for your company. The guidelines generally define what ethical vs. unethical behavior is, guidelines to follow and who to report the behavior to in case of suspected wrong doings. The policy leaves little room for loop holes or other statements of misunderstanding. That is another reason that it is important for the policy to be written and not verbally stated. Employees could always use the old quote of they were not told or didn’t understand, but if they have signed their name it tells the court all they need to know.
Bringing the corporate social responsibility policy to the company is actually the easy part, though it does not seem like it in the beginning. The enforcing of the policy is what becomes difficult over the long haul. Supervisors and other higher ups in the corporation generally field many questions, concerns and reports of suspected unethical behavior. This can take time and many of the claims may not even be founded. It is also often difficult to know what constitutes unethical behavior, even for managers and supervisors. It is equally important to have a clear cut policy for managers and other supervisors handling or fielding the reports. Some corporations/businesses have established a committee or group of employees to hear reports of unethical behavior and that way managers can take their concern and make a decision with a team.
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