Future proofing CSR for an infrastructure company

Background

An infrastructure company asked Article 13 for help in evaluating their Corporate Social Responsibility activities and make proposals for taking them forward into the next decade. The challenges they faced included the globalisation of the business and the company.

SAMI Consulting worked with Article13 to explore the issues which the company faced over the next 10 years.

The Findings

During reviews of the literature and discussion with a range of stakeholders and influencers in relation to the infrastructure company, several issues became clear:

• The company, in common with most of the industry, had historically taken a fairly narrow view of CSR and needed to get a handle around the new issues of sustainability

• Sustainability issues included use and source of energy used in the network infrastructure, and the source and qualifications of engineering staff

• The engineering staff, in common with those in most organisations, seemed at first sight to pose a “demographic cliff” challenge, with a large proportion over the age of 50. However, in this organisation, the underlying technology is due to change in the next 10 years, which will sharply reduce the number of engineers needed.