Letter to the Corporate Sector: Can Your Buzz Words Play with Our Catch Phrases?

June 29, 2007

Heard this one? A terminal cardiac patient is admitted for heart transplant surgery.

The Doctor advises, “you’re in luck, two hearts just became available, so you will get to choose which one you want. One belonged to a Corporate Business Executive and the other to a Social Worker“.

The Patient quickly responds, “I want the heart of the Business Executive”.

The Doctor asks if the patient seeks additional information before making their decision.

The Patient states emphatically, “I already know enough thank you. Social workers hearts are always bleeding and the Exec’s has probably had little actual use. I demand the Corporate heart!???’. Time to move past stereotypes and assumed rivalry? The Humanities and the Corporate Business sector may appear polar opposites in intent, aim and purpose. Common ground, however, does exist amongst the public and their children, commonly known as ‘customers’, ‘clients’, ‘patients’, ’service participants’ and/or ‘consumers’. They access our agencies, services, franchises, businesses and events whilst others move around the various premises, centre or community in which we operate. The Public exhibits various levels of competence and capacity in their social functioning. This can impact directly and indirectly on your business affecting or influencing staff, profits, economic fluctuations and general business acumen.

The bridge between corporate and human services linking business with the social sciences can come from engaging in a type of ‘Buzz Phrase Lego’. I’ll start with your catch phrase. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) allows for business to be conducted outside of a parochial vacuum of focus. Formal room is created to extend and involve local and/or global social, humanitarian and environmental interests, alliances, associations or projects partnered with ‘core business’ productivity. This can become, if you will, business done with not only a heart but a brain and a (social) conscience. Similarly, the Social Sciences cite the benefits of of developing genuinely Child Friendly Communities (CFC’s - the non-environmentally damaging ones!!!) as part of a broader action plan to reduce the margin for childhood abuse and neglect. It is therefore proposed that we allow our respective buzz phrases do the funky boogaloo as your CSR’s and our CFC’s can, potentially, form quite the harmonious and compatible marriage.

Danger can lurk in them there Buzz Phrases. Those snappy little phrases can switch our brains off and dilute the seriousness behind the slogan or letters. Once the REAL meaning is lost, all bets are off.

Enter the need for genuine COMMITMENT. We can make the conscious decision that there’s room for both business ends via humanitarian means and vice versa. CSR’s can involve and stop at (albeit valid and generous) philanthropic gestures based on sponsorship of a given Human Service charity, organisation or foundation. CRS’s can also radiate innovation and creativity and create new pathways. For this occur, there is the vital need to form sustainable partnerships, networks and relationships that flourish beyond good intentions, nervous hand-wringing and rhetoric. The challenge is to establish our areas of over-lap and shared boundaries and create entry points as opposed to ominous and heavily guarded ‘no- man zone’ areas where we share common ground but traditionally fear to tread! This process also includes moving outside of that reliable and sturdy square many of us live, breathe and work in and allowing the odd wee round peg to do a little break dancing to dissipate assumptions, stereotypes and beliefs which have reached mythical or even legendary proportions!

A prime example is the area of Child Abuse and Child Protection. I can hear the collective gasps as I write. “Hey Lady - we didn’t order any lecture on Child Protection. There’s little space for it in our boardroom. Take it back marked “No Such Address”.

Children are vulnerable to abuse because they are developing their own capacity to assess risk or challenge their experiences, including the illicit behaviours or actions of adults. Small-fry rely on us Big People to pave the way and ensure they stay safe. Some perpetrators engage wily and effective techniques to access a child or children to commit atrocities then silence their victims, avoiding detection and any investigative or punitive process. Some aspects of abuse, such as Child Witnesses of Domestic Violence, can be inter-generational whilst most forms of physical, mental, psychological and sexual harm or neglect can impact both directly and indirectly on the development of a child and spill out negatively onto their adulthood. Various risk or protective factors, some connected to socio-economic factors, can increase or decrease the possibility of abuse respectively. “This is all well and good and educative”, you may ask, “but what does this have to do with my business?”. Well, you see, developing those truly child-friendly communities minimises space for abuse. This type of activity however involves some significant shifts in the shared social mindset about Child Protection and how to go about it all. But guess what?

There’s room for us all on this Oceanliner. Who-oooo - all aboard whose going aboard! After all, Child Protection is EVERYONE’S business and that includes YOUR business or event or franchise!

Still not convinced there’s room for your business or corporation in the area of Child Protection? I recently witnessed two small children, aged around 2 and 3 years of age respectively, move freely around a large local shopping centre sans adult supervision. I watched them toddle into a large Department store where they proceeded to misappropriate lollies from a low shelf, undetected by any other adult or Profession in the shopping centre apart from myself. My Professional background informed me of the HUGE potential for harm - including abduction and/or assault - for these children. Spying store security, I advised of the kid’s apparent AWOL status.

The staff moved quickly however the focus, naturally, was on recovering the stolen merchandise. Protecting the on-the-lam toddlers was a somewhat secondary concern although one the staff conducted with grace and due diligence. Children and parents were eventually reunited however one staff member remarked that encountering unsupervised children was not an unusual event. This is an prime example where a business or corporate CSR can adopt a practical CP focus involving two words which are more than at home in a business environment:Policy and Procedure. There may be room for the development of policy and procedures that aim to protect children, share information, develop key partnerships and work together to create a society which screams, ‘we’re all in this together!’.

Further information:

Australian Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility

Risk Management

Children Friendly Business Model NSW