Cement Energy and Environment

Components of CSR Corporate governance: Good corporate governance policy enables the company to realize its corporate objectives, protect its shareholder rights, meet the legal requirements and create transparency for all its stakeholders. Business ethics: This means transferring the core value of the company such as honesty, trust, respect and fairness into its policies, practices, and decision making. This also involves a company's compliance with legal standards and adherence to internal rules and regulations. Workplace and labour relations: Good CSR practices relating to workplace and labour relations can help improve the workplace in terms of health and safety, and employee relations. It includes a better human resource policy of the company to retain its staff for longer periods of time. Good practices: An equal opportunity employer and diversity of workforce includes people with disability, people from the local community, etc. A well -thought out gender policy, code of conduct/guidelines on prevention of sexual harassment at workplace, prevention of HIV/AIDS at workplace, employee volunteering, etc. , are some of the practices that reflect a company's CSR practices. Supply chain: The supply chain includes social, environment and human rights. A company should use its strategic position to influence the entire supply chain to positively impact the stakeholders. Environment: CSR also ensures that the company delivers envi ronmental benefits. This includes finding sustainable soluti ons for natural resources, reducing adverse impacts on the environment, reducing environment-risky pollutants/emissions as well as producing environment-friendly goods. Community: The community is a major stakeholder of the company. There may be direct interaction with the community or it may be the communities living in the neighbouring areas. This helps in delivering a community focussed CSR strategy making positive changes to the lives of the people and improving the brand image of the company. Involvement with the community could be both direct and indirect, through funding and other support for community projects implemented by local agencies. Need for Integrating Sustainability indicators for CSR Nowadays, CSR is evolving beyond philanthropy and it has more to do wi~h the social obligation of the company. With its extending role in the future, more and more companies as well as governments and civil societies will assess the social return on investment that companies make, both locally and globally. This may involve, for example, local enterprise initiatives linked to the supply chain; pre– employment training; local human and institutional capacity building; or designing infrastructure - like roads or water supplies - to ensure benefits are reaching to the local people. Earlier, the role of CSR was restricted to 'service functions', viz. , delivery of services such as education , health and housing. Now, CSR includes other community processes such as providing assistance for local level livelihoods to the community based groups, ensuring effective local level governance system for better delivery of services and assisti ng communities to access thei r rights and entitlements. I With the change of time, more and more companies are encouraging and involving their employees in the numerous social activities as a result of a revolutionary change in the attitude of the corporate sector towards the communities they are operating in and an increasing awareness of the companies about the need of ecological sustainability. There is also a growing desire to establish a strategic relationship with the state by showing their commitment towards the communities by creating a positive image amongst the people. Thus, the company may earn special respect amongst its stakeholders and , in many cases, also attract social investments. These days, CSR is not limited to 'feel-good', voluntary and charitable efforts. In many companies, CSR functions are based within the human resources or public relations departments. Companies that commit themselves to developing a comprehensive CSR strategy can expect benefits from a number of possible positive outcomes, like enhanced brand value, Improved customer loyalty, facilitating business in sensitive environments by getting informal social license, and developing more employee satisfaction. Benefits of sustainability reporting There are several benefits accru ing from sustainability reporting. This strategy: 50 ,.