By Adam Turteltaub
adam.turteltaub@corporatecompliance.org
The world of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is an intriguing and broad one. It can encompass a great many things from the company’s sustainability efforts to its charitable giving.
While I’m not an advocate for compliance programs falling under the CSR program (or Corporate Social Responsibility becoming a part of compliance), I do think that compliance professionals should periodically monitor what’s going on in the CSR world.
Why? Because some CSR issues become compliance issues.
Back in 2000 when I first began supporting compliance efforts, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and the whole notion of anti-corruption weren’t on too many corporate radars. To be sure, some companies were watching the issue, but it wasn’t the driver of compliance programs that it is now.
Not so, though, for the CSR community. At the first CSR conference I went to it was already a hot topic on the agenda, with speaker after speaker addressing the issue of corruption.
The latest issue to cross over from CSR to compliance is human trafficking. Once again, it is an issue that has been discussed in CSR conferences for years. Now, with the arrival of the UK’s Modern Slavery Act, it is (or should be) on the compliance agenda for any company with operations in the UK.
So keep an eye out for what the CSR community is discussing. Most issues will likely be far removed from compliance, but some may end up on your doorstep, and it’s better to see them coming now then to be blindsided by them later.
[bctt tweet=”Watching CSR… Carefully @AdamTurteltaub” via=”no”]
Thank you for your insights. May I ask you to explain why you advise against putting Compliance under Corporate Social Responsibility?
Rosie:
Good question.
Compliance, at is heart, is about following laws, regulations and the company’s own policies for behavior. That’s a big job, obviously.
Yet, for too long it tended to be a part time responsibility of others such as legal and audit. Only as compliance has been seen to be its own profession (working in concert with legal, audit and others but separate from them) has compliance evolved into a much richer and more effective program.
Combining compliance and CSR makes compliance only a part-time role again, and that would be a step back.
Second, CSR includes things like charitable giving. It’s easy to be distracted by the more fun aspects of a company’s charitable efforts, which takes the focus away from compliance.
In addition, there is the opportunity to create confusion in the workplace. CSR is about what you choose to do, and compliance is about what you are required to do.. If one person or department is responsible for both, it can be difficult to see whether doing x is something it would be nice for me to do or something that I am required to do.
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