Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a management philosophy that is increasingly practised by businesses to positively impact and contribute back to the communities that their operations affect and depend on. Though the fundamental understanding of CSR is consistent across the world, organisations differ on the reasons why they do CSR and how they carry out their CSR initiatives.
At Skillseed, we believe that there is a kernel for positive impact within every organisation; not just to do no harm through our business actions, but also to do good well while managing our finances. Hence a large part of our work involves partnering with corporate organisations to develop and amplify their CSR efforts through our ground experiences and network of community partners. This aspect of an organisation has become very relevant and crucial for young employees today who value passion and purpose in their work, as much as, or perhaps even over a paycheck. We’ve had the privilege to partner with GIC and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) in supporting their CSR programmes, and we wanted to hear them share their success stories behind implementing these programmes!
As Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, GIC’s CSR efforts align with their mission of securing Singapore’s financial future, where they see these efforts as a way to create long term impact in the community. At the same time, they also see it as an opportunity for GIC employees to come together beyond their differing daily work experiences.
“GIC invests to secure Singapore’s financial future. Similarly as an organisation, our community programmes seek to build more confident and inclusive communities. Through our work with the community, we are also exposed to a range of new experiences, which enable us to better value those around us for the gifts and assets that they possess.”
As one of our valued partners, we are inspired by GIC’s efforts in empowering their staff to collaborate and co-create with communities in a dignified way through their flagship CSR programmes. GIC Sparks & Smiles is a leadership and community development programme that has been running since 2015 , with close to 200 committed youths from low-income households participating in the programme each year. In addition to an education grant offered to recipients, they also undergo training, engage with GIC management and volunteer with Beyond Social Services and Very Special Arts Singapore.
GIC Sparks & Smiles empowers committed youths in Singapore to make a difference in the lives of others
In this year’s iteration of GIC Sparks & Smiles, GIC partnered with Skillseed to equip the students in human-centered leadership skills such as Empathy, Active Listening, Collaborative Power and more. It was completed over a series of virtual workshops to prepare them for their VSA volunteering stint and empower them to become change makers in their communities.
GIC X Change is a mentorship and volunteering programme where GIC employees “mentor” and also learn from youth “mentees”. The beauty of the programme is that both mentors and mentees experience leadership and community engagement skills equipping, together. With these skills, they co-design solutions for communities through asset-based, dignity-promoting lenses in their project teams. The lines are blurred between the mentors and mentees as they learn from each other and are, in turn, inspired by one another’s perspectives to identify gaps and available resources to build confident communities.
GIC mentors and youth mentees come together for GIC X Change
GIC’s CSR programmes are intentionally designed to build a multiplier effect in the community. GIC views this as a powerful way to bring people together and expose their employees to various experiences, such as mentoring and adopting an asset-based paradigm to community development. This approach not only builds on their professional skills but also their personal leadership by offering meaningful platforms to practise empathy, active listening and applying user-centric design in generating ideas and solutions.
Their recent and timely initiative, With Love GIC, was based on the premise that GIC employees can use their assets to design their own initiatives. The employees did not disappoint! They identified the increased community needs due to COVID-19 and led their own ground-up projects with the support of GIC to match them with community partners. One of the employees, Sharon, rallied her colleagues and their families to design gift bags, and used the bags to distribute essential items such as sanitisers and soap to families in need. She managed to procure, pack and deliver around 500 bags!
GICian Sharon Koh delivered care packs to AWWA's beneficiaries, as part of With Love GIC - a global movement of GICians leading projects to support groups affected by COVID-19
The gift bag and its contents!
Just as we are agile to adapt to changing times, CSR too is expected to evolve. GIC envisions CSR initiatives being virtualised and acknowledges the need to constantly find different yet relevant ways of engagement. As Marissa shared with us, it is important to learn and grow through this iterative process and most importantly commit the time and effort needed to achieve the end goals.
“It’s hard to get clarity from Day 1. You learn along the way. It is a continuous journey to identify where our contributions will make the most impact and what will resonate most with our staff. We emphasise collaborations with community partners who share similar values, and adopt an iterative process to implementing programmes. For example, GIC Sparks & Smiles has been continuously refined over the years based on feedback and ideas from our stakeholders.”
Similarly GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is another treasured corporate partner of Skillseed. GSK is a science-led global healthcare company with a special purpose: to help people do more, feel better, live longer. Their why and how of doing CSR was a fresh perspective in the context of the healthcare / pharmaceutical domain. Skillseed has partnered with GSK Singapore to equip their employees who are part of GSK TalNet Future Leaders Graduate Programme through our training suite.
For GSK, CSR is seen as a foundational element of being a sustainable business. They recognise that protecting the environment should be the bottom-line because without the environment, nothing can be produced. GSK’s main stakeholders include the healthcare industry and its consumers, so the organisation naturally senses a responsibility to practise CSR and operate with ethics and values.
GSK’s CSR initiatives are angled as public goals such as environmental sustainability, fair-trade and eliminating inequality in terms of disabilities, gender, ethnicity, LGBTQ+ community and more. GSK’s values – transparency, respect, integrity, patient/consumer-focus and its purpose ‘to help people do more, feel better, live longer’ are aligned with contributing to society and helping to improve healthcare. Apart from social responsibility, sustainability and CSR is understood to play a part in an organisation’s long term future and has become a very practical and relevant consideration for corporate organisations like GSK.
“I don’t believe everyone comes to work just to get a salary. When you work in a company like GSK for a long while - the inner motivation comes with wanting to help others. Having the inner motivation encourages employees to want to join and support the programmes that we do. Our Future Leaders Graduate Programme is encouraging new employees with talents to grow personally and professionally. To ensure our approach to CSR stays relevant, we even send some employees to be on a paid sabbatical for 6 months where they join and learn from other non-profit organisations while GSK continues to pay their salary. They then return to GSK to share and refine our approach towards social responsibility.”
With global exigencies such as our climate crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, we see organisations actively working towards becoming more sustainable and identifying global needs. Paul also shared that as more companies become more responsible beyond financial performance, the differential factor to success comes from being socially and environmentally responsible.
Elaine, one of the future leaders in the TalNet Programme, has participated in Orange Day, an initiative which gives employees time-off to support local charities. Along with her department colleagues, Elaine volunteered at Willing Hearts to prepare ingredients, cook and deliver food. She also shared her experience on working with SPD to facilitate one of their morning sessions.
Apart from volunteering as manpower at Willing Hearts and SPD, Elaine is also part of the core team that ran a half-day event for Sunbeam Place @ Children’s Society. Activities were planned around Children's Society’s values of Respect, Resilience and Responsibility.
TalNet SG volunteers conducted a half-day event in 2019, with activities focused on Children’s Society’s values of Respect, Resilience and Responsibility
Though it was a challenge to accommodate activities for a sparse age group of 6 to 18 years old, the volunteers found it fulfilling to witness the children enjoying themselves during the word hunt, mini game booths and painting activities. The session concluded with the children settling down and reflecting on their learnings from the games. This was a very heartwarming and nurturing experience for the TalNet volunteers, seeing the children working together to achieve a common goal while being a role model and providing them guidance throughout the activities.
The children who participated thoroughly enjoyed the mini game booths, word hunt and painting activities.
“I wanted to amplify the impact on giving back to society and hence I was looking at being a part of sustainable programmes. When getting started, small steps in contributing are important to keep ourselves motivated. For example, by using a fitness tracker, GSK employees can earn points for sustaining healthy habits and in return receive a reimbursement which they can choose to donate to a cause, namely ‘Save the Children’. Also, it helps in meeting like-minded people through such initiatives and I’m glad to have met the other Future Leaders (FLs) in this programme. ”
Wanshi who is a Value Stream Process Engineer at GSK shared that she was only exposed to CSR as a term when she joined GSK. She was looking for volunteering opportunities to serve a greater purpose and pilot something different that is beyond just benefitting a particular group of people. After joining the Future Leaders Graduate Programme, she felt that it’s an opportunity provided by GSK to explore projects beyond her own job scope and also gain a better understanding of the issues around her and to be able to give back.
“From my experience, I find stakeholder management to be very important. Most of the time we rush into solutioning instead of taking a pause to consider if what we have proposed actually works for our end users. Organisational support is also equally important to encourage employees to do their part. I was able to discuss with my manager to come up with a development plan for the year which included setting aside about 3 hours every week dedicated to working on the TalNet programme. This helped to balance my core work and my involvement in GSK’s CSR initiatives.”
Besides their TalNet Future Leaders Graduate Programme, some of GSK’s notable CSR efforts on the global front include increasing access to essential medicine in different countries. For example, GSK is working towards making HIV medications more accessible in Africa by allowing other companies to produce them at a lower cost. In the last 20 years, GSK has also been researching Elephantiasis and investing in the World Health Organisation largely eradicating the disease. They have also worked with Save the Children to prevent treatable illnesses such as those arising from contaminated water.
While contributing back to the community and the world is crucial, it is also important to look inwards to see how inclusion and diversity can be constantly improved within the organisation. By 2022, GSK targets to have at least 40% females and people of different ethnic groups in their senior management team. They have invested in ensuring accessibility is taken into consideration at the workplace and are also working towards a focused sustainability agenda including targeted reduction in the overall usage of “Single Use Plastic”.
Skillseed is honoured to have partnered GIC and GSK, multiplying the changes in our ecosystem and communities, in such an intentional manner. We hope that as we continue to learn and grow alongside our partners, you may be inspired to delve deeper into designing meaningful CSR initiatives. Please reach out to us if you are keen to explore possible CSR partnerships!