INSIGHTS

By: Evodio Sánchez

After analyzing several Social Responsibility initiatives that involve a link with the community, identify a pattern that begins with the intention of the company to solve a problem, but where there is a lack of understanding and causes that originate it, they can even be external (social, environmental or economic) of the same company that feed into it.

There is seldom a reflection on how the support offered to the community should maintain a relationship with the mission, vision and values ​​of the company, because the problem to be solved probably requires a long-term commitment and the causes are multiple, therefore, it is not feasible to solve it in a short time, in addition, scarce resources are involved that are seldom well used because there is no strategy for linking with the community.

The above results in the shaping of objectives aimed at improving the reputation of the company through a RS initiative that attempts to connect with a community to try to solve a problem, the result will only reveal the tip of the iceberg of the problem that arises that is needed to solve. This chain of errors is reflected in the indicators used to monitor development and results, the information focuses on the volume of efforts and little or nothing on mitigating the problem (social, environmental, or economic) to be solved.

For example, a company may aim to increase employment for a certain community through a series of specialized courses that train young people of working age focusing its indicators on: hours of training, number of courses, number of trained / participants, number of affiliate companies, attendance / desertion of participants and number of graduates or certificates

The interest is to ensure that the trained young people can be employed within the organization or with a supplier or client, in order to create a mutual benefit, but according to studies the indicator that would demonstrate the achievement of the objective is omitted due to poor results. From the analysis in the outreach initiatives, on average 5% of the participants manage to place themselves in the first year and the second year shows a decrease of up to 2%, so it is better to show the interest groups volumetric results than the real solution to solve the problem.

Linking initiatives are mostly implemented by volunteer employees who start with enthusiasm and dedication causing a sense of belonging, but after the low results it causes the opposite effect since the volunteers are discouraged by the poor results and the company over the years buries the initiative resulting in the lack of capacity to solve the problem of the community.