Community role as important as daily work

NORTHUMBRIAN Water is a company that counts.

That is official after it came top of the Sunday Times list of the same name, that acts as an index for just how responsible businesses in the UK are.

Companies are judged in four areas and the Pity Me-based water company attained a platinum standard in all four, making it the top performing utility company in the country.

It included the company's performance in the workplace and how it treated its employees, how it behaved towards customers and suppliers, how it behaved with regard to the environment and how it behaved in its community.

That final point, the way companies fit in to and work with their local communities, is becoming more and more important to local businesses.

Giving their employees time to do charity work, or work for the public good, is now seen by companies not only as the morally right thing to do, but also as an important personal development tool.

Louise Hunter, Northumbrian Water's corporate responsibility manager, said: "Part of it is our work with charity.

"We have a scheme which gives 15 hours of work time for employees to go out in order to go and do whatever activities they like in their own community.

"We encourage employees to match that with their own time and it can be anything. Some go and dig community gardens, some act as magistrates, others do team building exercises.

"I think it is important as a business we have a responsibility to look at our wider resources and apply these resources to the communities we work in.

"It is about the expertise and skills our employees have, not just money."

The company was delighted to have been recognised with the award.

Ms Hunter said: "It is absolutely fantastic. It means we are up there with companies like Marks and Spencer and Barclays, which have huge budgets and are international companies.

"It shows it isn't just about how much money you throw at something, it is about what activity you actually do underneath that."

● It is fair to say that Felix O'Hare is a very busy man. As site director for Croda at the Wilton plant on Teesside, he is responsible for overseeing one of the chemical company's major European operating sites, as well as ensuring the welfare of hundreds of workers.

But there is another responsibility Mr O'Hare takes very seriously.

He is chairman for a group bringing together the companies at Wilton in a social responsibility programme.

And Mr O'Hare believes its role in the local community is just as important as any other work the company carries out.

He said: "There is an awful lot talked about this.

"It is very important. It is all about companies understanding that they are not just here to satisfy shareholders and to make money, that they already have a bigger responsibility to all their stakeholders, such as their employees, their customers and to their local community.

"If a company acts in this way, it develops these partnerships, thinking over and above the basics of customer satisfaction and profitability and saying we are actually here to make society better."

So what community work dooes the firm do? It covers a broad spectrum from charity work to getting involved with local schools.

Mr O'Hare said: "We have companies with a reasonable number of people working for them, they can do community activities, support local charities and community organisations, which is good for the employees themselves.

"At Wilton, all the key operating companies have got together and decided that on community liaison we all work together, such as programmes that we carry out with local schools."

It is not just the charities that benefit either.

Mr O'Hare believes that by developing projects with charities workers improved their leadership skills.

He said: "There are a lot of employees involved in these activities and they like it. I think they are mutually beneficial, they are hard work but they turn people into good managers."

But social responsibility is not just about working with charities.

Mr O'Hare believes that because the companies have such a large prescence in the local community, it is important to say what they do.

He said: "We have set up an information centre so that people in the local community can see what we are doing and so we can demonstrate what we are doing.

"A lot of chemical companies in particular, people find difficult to understand what we do.

"This is part of our responsibility to say this is what we do and this is how we do it.

"We can show its importance within society and how it has a positive benefit."

On Friday last week, Mr O'Hare gave a speech at an event organised by the Butterwick Hospice, in Stockton, to highlight the work the hospice does with businesses.

He said: "In terms of things like Butterwick, that hospice is an important part of our local community here on Teesside.

"Working with an organisation is extremely important to the local community.

"It provides a huge benefit to the companies involved as well, and that is just one example.

"Companies cannot just isolate themselves and be a big black box, it just does not work, it is not something that will be successful in the long term."

In fact, charities are now developing a more businesslike approach to working with companies, rather than ad hoc arrangements.

Jackie Leighton, of the Butterwick Hospice, said: "We sometimes work with businesses as a corporate partner and reward that business in some way for the help they are giving to the hospice "If the company makes a £5,000 donation to the charity, we work with the company to raise their profile and to make their staff, shareholders and customers aware of the help they are giving to the hospice.

"It is trying to demonstrate how much that company supports their community through the hospice."

One of the hospice's corporate partners is the North-East building company Rok.

Ms Leighton said: "Rok wants to support the work we do. It allows them to show how committed they are to their community and raising their profile in a corporate partnership scheme has given them the means to do that."