Social Responsibility

Social responsibility has been taken up at company management level through active commitment in the company's interested parties and increasing numbers of corporate leaders see the work as value-adding.

CANEA's training courses within Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) give you the tools to work effectively with social responsibility in your organisation. You learn aspects such as how to integrate the work into the company's management system. The training course is aimed at people in management or those who have some other reason to be involved in the company's CSR work. Social responsibility is significant for all organisations, including non-profit organisations and authorities.

Meaningful work with social responsibility should be based on a voluntary action from the company. The expression includes social, ethical and environmental considerations. The essence of the company's social responsibility lies in nurturing relationships with all of its interested parties and in working for long-term sustainable development.

In recent years, a number of international initiatives have been started to stimulate work with corporate responsibility and to facilitate the comparison between companies. Such an example is the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), which is a global framework for sustainable reporting. The organisation, which consists of an association of interest groups across the whole world, issues guidelines aimed at creating unity in corporate reporting from a social, environmental and economic perspective. The Swedish government has decreed that all government-owned companies should establish sustainable reporting according to these guidelines.

Other major efforts to highlight social responsibility in companies and organisations has been done both by the UN and the OECD. The UN's initiative, the Global Compact, is aimed at inviting global companies to work for ten shared principles in line with the UN's goals for the environment, development and human rights. The OECD has also developed ten guidelines for social responsibility in multinational companies.

The new standard for social responsibility, ISO 26000, was launched in 2010. The Swedish standards organisation SIS together with the Brazilian equivalent led the development work. Among other things, the standard builds on guidelines issued by the UN and OECD. The standard contains seven core subjects for social responsibility and a number of recommended actions. The actions are aimed at giving the company concrete tips on how they can work with sustainability issues.