Alberto Andreu Pinillos has been global head of Organizational
Development and Corporate Culture at the Spanish telecom giant Telefónica since
2014. For 14 years prior, he was Telefónica’s director of reputation and
corporate responsibility and a pioneer in the business sustainability movement.
“Ever since I started with this whole corporate responsibility
thing,” says Andreu, “a lot of people have asked me: What do you do? What’s
your job actually about?” He distills the job into three principal activities
and responsibilities: foresight, nurturing, and evangelism.
Foresight
The director’s responsibility here is to identify the social and
environmental risks or opportunities that may not be relevant in the near term,
but will be in the medium to long term — and then place them in front of the
appropriate decision makers. The corporate social responsibility manager, by
engaging with stakeholders in government, industry, civil society, and
international organizations, captures valuable information about emerging
social and environmental issues.
By placing those issues into context and relating them to the
business, corporate responsibility directors make them accessible to decision
makers. “For example, 10 years ago very few executives were aware of the social
and environmental issues involved in the supply chain,” notes Andreu. He points
to the Bangladesh textile factory collapse in 2013 that killed more than 1,000
workers and tripped up brands like Benetton and Mango that were outsourcing to
the contractors.
Likewise, diversity has recently been incorporated into the legal
framework of national laws and European directives. Effective corporate social
responsibility directors helped guide human resources executives in addressing
these concerns in advance of regulations.
Thus, the director acts as a “social radar,” detecting emerging
issues, understanding their potential importance to the company and
communicating any concerns in the language of executives they need to
influence.
Nurturing
Alberto Andreu Pinillos, a corporate
responsibility pioneer, distills the job into foresight, nurturing, and
evangelism.
Just as there are incubators for startups, Andreu says the
corporate responsibility office needs to act as an incubator for internal
projects. The office must work with other functional areas to bring about the
needed improvements in social and environmental performance.
Let’s imagine a company is operating in Europe. The previous
example of diversity is one that has been identified as a priority subject by
the company’s corporate responsibility office, and the director initially takes
the lead on moving the company toward compliance — but after incubation, this
issue is now is a matter dealt with primarily by the human resources
department.
The challenge lies in ensuring that the transition from one team
to the next happens at the right time. “The problem is that [managers] get
confused in one of two ways: Either releasing projects before they’re ready or
holding on to them for too long,” says Andreu. “You can’t make a mistake when
it comes time to let your “children” leave home . . . neither too
soon, nor too late.”
Evangelism
In the long run, what is the purpose of a corporate responsibility
office? To bring the company into a more sustainable mindset, to spread the
word about sustainability. But there should also come a time when the word is
thoroughly spread. As Andreu puts it, “The true test of a responsible company
is when all functions and departments are capable of minimizing their own
negative impacts and are thinking about making a positive impact on their
community.”
There are a number of functions that make sense to have in the
corporate social responsibility office such as environmental reporting and
relationships with global and local nonprofits. But in the long run, all this
may be a temporary state of affairs, says Andreu. To be truly successful,
corporate responsibility directors should be putting themselves out of
business.
-The Boston Globe
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