Employees

A quarter of a century ago, forward thinking executives in IBM UK helped to set up a new charity in Britain, Action Resource Centre. Now merged with BITC, its mission was to engage employees in community action, then mainly full-time end-of-career secondees. Today, the ways are getting employees involved are legion and virtually all large companies and many smaller ones offer some sort of help.

In the intervening years, the importance of human resource management to corporate success has been transformed: flexible, motivated, well-trained, productive workforces are essential just to stay in business in the face of global competition. That the company can get real benefit from employee community involvement, then just a hunch, is now becoming, albeit hesitantly, a provable driving force. Evaluation is giving community affairs managers the hard evidence to make the case to HR and line managers. In an era when growth in spending budgets is unlikely, certainly not real increases beyond growth in corporate profits, here is the fuel to drive corporate involvement agenda.

Corporate Citizenship Briefing, issue no: 39 - April, 1998