Engaging employees to take part in CSR activities

It is not only important for organizations to formulate CSR strategies but also important to make them to be adapted by their employees. The human resource department and corporate social responsibility are closely interrelated with each other (Sharma, Sharma and Devi, 2009). The success of implementation of corporate social responsibility relies upon the participation of employees in it. It is the responsibility of the human resource department to make employees in more numbers to participate in organizations’ CSR activities (Fenwick and Bierema, 2008). Human resource management plays an important role in propagating the values of corporate social responsibility to the staff members (Skinner, 2002).

The employees form the key role for the success of implementation of CSR strategy. It is therefore important for organizations in order to engage employees in CSR activities. The following figure shows the, ‘Employee Engagement Pyramid’, proposed by Melcrum (2006), in order to make them, involved in CSR activities.

As shown in the above figure, the employees first should be made to know by the HR department that there are certain CSR strategies within the organization in which they are working. Next, they must be taught the reason behind the implementation of CSR initiatives of the organization and finally have to made to involve themselves in CSR activities. On doing so, CSR strategies can be successfully implemented by the organization.  The HR departments make sure that all their employees are engaged in CSR activities by implementing the employee engagement program.

References

• Sharma S., Sharma J. and Devi A. – Corporate Social Responsibility: The Key Role of Human Resource Management, Business Intelligence Journal, 2(1)205-213
• Skinner, C. (June 2002). Links Between CSR and HR. Ethical Corporation Magazine
• Fenwick Tara, Bierema Laura (2008). Corporate Social Responsibility: Issues for Human Resource Development Professionals, International Journal of training and Development, Vol. 12(1).
• Melcrum. (2006). Engaging Employees in Corporate Responsibility: How the World’s Leading Companies Embed CR in Employee Decision-making. London, UK: Author