By Moses Nosike

Ken Egbas is the Managing Partner TrueContact Ltd, a Public Relations company that also touches other areas of communication and integrated marketing communication.

In this interview with Saturday Vanguard Business, Egbas explains why private organisations should be deeply involved in corporate social responsibility in any environment they operate. Excerpt:

How does corporate organisations react when it comes to corporate social responsibility in country?

Ken Egba

Well, it is very a interesting journey for us. Seven years ago when we started promoting corporate social responsibility as something an additive to business practices that can further enhance business standing at the bottom line, a lot of people, companies or corporations did not see the direction we were coming from or going to at a time.

But when we set up our company, our mission statement is to promote companies as they grow and they should also be growing in terms of their involvements with communities because we understood that seven years ago , the future foundation of stakeholder engagement of every organisation was going to be through the instrumentality of CSR, that is owing to the fact that across the world, communities demand more accountability, transparency, availability in terms of presence in communities. They’re demanding more of those three.

As at that time, we have seen that movements heightened in other parts of the world like Europe and America and we knew that even though there was poor governance in Africa or Nigeria, with time this market will respond to the international market and bring CSR to the fore. And over the years that is what we have seen. So when we started Social Enterprise Report Award (SERA) in 2007, before then you could count five companies that operated CSR as a policy, but when you look five years down the road, that number has shot up close to hundred and something and the number keeps growing and people are now seeking ways of understanding how to build CSR or sustainability into their business practices and not only that, we have also seen the fact that you hardly open any media today without reading one company or the other talking about their corporate-social responsibility.

I think we have been able to through the instrumentality of SERA, generate more interest in CSR in Nigeria. So, we are working towards the era of not just participation but compliance with the best practices any one can find around the globe, that is part of what we have been doing for the past five years.

However, if you look around the quality of CSR practice, implementation or design has also continued to improve, and that was also in line because we found out there was a massive gap in terms of understanding. There are a lot of companies that want to get involved but don’t know how and that is why we ventured into training, bringing some of the best brains across the world to come and help our people see how to put their current performance along side the best practices so that we can further deepen the level of CSR in Nigeria.

Why have many organisations not shown interest yet?

I used to say so three, four years ago. But now a lot of them are becoming interested. But their problem in the boardroom has always been how to make a business space for CSR; how do you show your shareholders the one that is important ? That is where people are beginning to understand that those days, the concept of profitability doesn’t hold anymore.When you look at profitability from the issue of finances alone, it doesn’t hold water anymore. Everybody now understands that profitability is actually a free bottom line concept when you look at the financial environment and you look at social as well.

Do you think certain government policies hinder some companies from participating?

My answer to that will be yes and no. People who do not want to responsibility even in the family will always find excuse or reasons for that. Four years ago, we saw companies came up with excuses and they told us, we pay taxes to the government, so it’s the duty of government to take care of social responsibility. Our own duty as corporate organisations is to pay taxes and we pay our taxes. Some of the companies will tell you that our major responsibility is our shareholders, that is true. Newton Freeman in 1969, made this statement that, “the major responsibility of every business is to make profit for its shareholders”. This statement was made in 1969 and repeated in 1987, and in the year 2011, companies are still quoting that but they have also forgotten that there was a time government across the world used to be a major financial power but today you have some corporations that are larger than government of some countries and they have major profits out of the environment and sometimes to the detriment of the environment and to the community.

So, social responsibility does not only mean I must do what is right because it suits my bottom line, but it also means I have to do what is necessary because it makes everybody happy. So, that argument people used to make for a long time that government has to do this and do that, yes government has responsibilities, but with the amount prosperity in the hands of private organisations today, you find out that it’s normal that communities will expect them to do something to that direction. For instance, it is like the normal African settings where a member is so wealthy and your sister’s children can’t go to school, and you just pretend it does not matter because it’s not your responsibility. No, business has moved to that point. We’re in an era where people are trying to run businesses with a conscience, businesses that try to balance what is good for them and the community.

If you look at that, people would not sit back and wait for government anymore. They will now change that panacea and then say what can we do to support what government is doing. How do we as corporate organisations use our own strength which is accountability and add to the government to make sure these things work. If you see the UN, only United Nations came up with (Public and Private Partnership (PPP) to get organisations to work with arms of government on project issues.

The only issue for example, in the African economy and other parts of the world is accountability because it was an issue of political leaders. So they say, how can we get private sectors who shall run on the basis of accountability and get them to work with government in bringing development to communities. That was what gave birth to PPP).

But I believe organisations themselves have to begin to look at things from that perspective and begin to see how to partner with government to make sure that there is security in every expect of our operational system in this country.

Having traveled far and wide, how can you assess CSR globally?

Globally, it has grown. It’s one of the youngest field internationally . And if you go to Europe and America, a lot has been done in the area of Corporate Social Responsibility. And to prove to you how much it has grown, it used to be corporate social responsibility, but in Europe and America, they have exhausted CSR as it were, now it is corporate responsibility and sustainability because they found that CSR which is 1.0 was limited in terms of putting your projects together.

A lot of companies get stucked in putting projects together and did not know how to move it to the next level. So, there came the second CSR which is corporate responsibility and sustainability which most people refer to as CSR 2.0 which now moves the argument foward. If I put a project down, I should make sure in ten years time this project continues to solve the problem of which it was designed which by so saying, the focus has shifted from corporate social responsibility to corporate responsibility to sustainability – how you can get strategies working, how you can make sure that if you have a plan for education or health whatever, you can measure exactly the impact that is making.

What has been the achievement of SERA as an annual event since inception?

This year’s edition will make it the fifth SERA Award. When we started the first one in 2007, the project cost us almost N15,000.00 and we were in such a huge debt after the event. I remember one of the shareholders in a company asked me a question, are you going to do this next year and I said we have to keep it going and he responded, where are you going to get the money to fund it, but I repeated we have to keep it going until people buy the message. He asked, are we going to be making money and throwing it away? I said well, that might become our own social responsibility to make sure that other people become socially responsible and we kept going even though we have not made profit even once.

For us, there are many things we can’t forego, for us you can’t preach responsibility and you are irresponsible in any way. For us, credibility must be in high level. And if you are doing anything here and credibility is high, the chances are that you are not going to get many people to associate with you. Because we have had people in the past tell us this is what we want, but we said sorry, we don’t do that now. With that, people have come to know that we’re very credible.

I understand the basic tenets of setting any business . I understand very clearly that credibility comes before profitability. So, what we have done over the years is to put together a project we believe is credible and helped improve the relationship between brand and community. We put together today a project which governs itself . IFRS which is our major partner has also founded on our platform how to interface with brand and strengthens the issues of tax payment and all the issue ranging from employee relations and environmental protection etc.

We have used this to set a new agenda and be able to chart a new course for corporate organisations. Since 2007 till now, we are even having award categories for small and medium scale business but we also believe they have a role to play. We are also planning one pattern that is very interesting on global level. Private philanthropists like Bill Gate and some rich individuals actually spend more than companies and we are beginning to see a pattern here being replicated in Nigeria. People who have money now set up foundations and I think this is part of what has come because of the fact that we have been consistent even when we are not making money to preach this message and organisations understand the importance of give back to communities.

This year, we are looking forth very excitedly and expectantly to the fact that we would have a wonderful event. This year’s call for entrance is much more deeper. We are looking at the issue of employee relations, environment, anti-corruption and so on.