Companies in central Europe can use the economic crisis to turn corporate responsibility from philanthropy to systemic management practice, says Robert Braun

In central Europe, the economic crisis has been good for corporate responsibility. Budgets may have been cut, but here CR has come to mean just philanthropy and charity – very little systemic CR is done.

In Hungary only 10 companies published GRI level B reports last year. In Romania and Poland the total is less than five, while no company reports on sustainability in Bulgaria. But while companies are now cutting budgets, they are asking consultants what to do.

The advice is clear – make CR programmes systemic, have a business case and engage with your stakeholders in some fashion to get the best value for money. Look at it as investment and not as PR.

Not just box-ticking

This might sound trivial in London, but it is something brand new in central and eastern Europe. CR here has been driven by multinationals, with most company chiefs having make sure this box is ticked when reporting to their headquarters on annual performance.

And they did not care much what they did. Giving to an orphanage, a sports club or a breast cancer march would do – and the PR department would take care of it. Now they are asking questions: if we have to do this anyway, why not get some benefit out of it?

Tesco Hungary, Nestlé Hungary and Coca-Cola HBC Hungary (the bottling arm of Coca-Cola) have begun a series of stakeholder dialogue programmes. CEOs and CFOs are surprised to see lots of attendees, and a depth of knowledge and interest in engagement from social players that have previously been on the attack.

John Aston of AstonECO management ran a workshop on Accountability’s new engagement standard in Bucharest in front of a packed room full of communications directors wanting to learn. 30 companies signed up for Good CSR, a programme on writing and publishing GRI level C short reports, in Poland, Romania and Hungary. This is a breakthrough in sustainability reporting in the region.

Stakeholders wake up

However, you can only do so much with corporate leadership trying to tick the box. Real breakthrough will take place only when stakeholders realise the power they have to make companies operate differently.

In this part of the world corruption, workplace inequality and work-life imbalance are the norm rather than the exception. Changing this will take time. And there is an opportunity now for companies to ask the question: what can we do better to increase our sustainability performance and stakeholder reputation?

Good news: Budimex, one of the biggest Polish companies, has embarked on the challenging road to develop a full fledged CR strategy. Others will follow because the crisis last year proved that philanthropy and charitable giving does not help with stakeholders when crisis hits.

Systemic engagement and dialogue with key organisational stakeholders may do so – a lesson that’s being learnt in central and eastern Europe.

Robert Braun is CEO of B&P Braun & Partners, a regional strategy consultancy offering branding, CR and reputation management services, based in Budapest, Hungary.
robert.braun@bpbrandaktiv.com
www.bpbrandaktiv.com