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Making Skills and Livelihoods Training Count

Companies are spreading their efforts thin, focusing on the entire value chain rather than working in their areas of strength. A collaborative approach, where companies focus on what they do the best and strike partnerships to add value and plug gaps, is the way forward.

Samhita, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Ambuja Cement Foundation (ACF) hosted the second edition of CSR Café Delhi on February 8, 2019, focused on Skills & Livelihoods.

Social sector leaders from 21 companies, and foundations discussed challenges in retaining trainees, sustainability of entrepreneurship-related initiatives, the gaps in current models, aspiration mismatch, quality of training, overlap of efforts by organisations, migration-related issues and so on.

The participants included ONGC Foundation, Philips Healthcare, Apollo Tyres, Walmart, Amway, DCM Shriram, Aricent Technologies, PNB Housing Finance, DLF Foundation, Adventz and National Foundation for India.

Participants agreed that there was an inherent weakness in the current model – companies are focusing on the entire value chain rather than just on their areas of strength. A collaborative approach where companies focus on what they do best and strike partnerships to add value and plug gaps was the way forward.

Key challenges faced by companies:

  1. Monitoring and retention of trainees after training even when the employers are already on board. Hence, impact measurement becomes an issue.
  2. In rural areas, sustainability of entrepreneurship programmes is difficult because of the presence of multiple companies providing support to the same set of beneficiaries through multiple interventions. The government also runs many subsidy schemes which disincentivise people to continue with entrepreneurship.
  3. There is a mismatch between the aspirations of youth and the wages provided by industries. Seldom do skilled workers enjoy a premium over unskilled ones which leads to dissatisfaction.
  4. Counselling of trainees is another big gap which needs to be addressed for scalability
  5. Being a complex ecosystem, there are too many externalities and stakeholders with differing needs. All companies focus on setting up centres and training irrespective of their core strengths, which could be just one step of the value chain such as counselling, pre assessments, mobilization etc.
  6. Self-sustainability of enterprises beyond pilot programmes is another issue as the entrepreneurs start depending on CSR support to create opportunities. It becomes challenging for companies to exit programmes.
  7. Data is available only from the organised sector and is quantitative in nature, with little focus on qualitative information such as the training process, quality of trainers, assessment of trainees, post placement support etc.

Some best practices/solutions to be explored:

  1. Companies, foundations and NGO and SE partners should focus on retention of trainees rather only number of people trained.
  2. A thorough needs assessment and mapping of aspirations should be done before starting a programme, and counselling should be built into the programmes.
  3. Trainees could be enrolled in mentorship programmes where the mentors support them during and post training to address any issues faced by the trainee.
  4. Productivity needs to discussed with the employers to support hikes in wages of skilled workers.
  5. The concept of migration centres could be explored to ease the transition of youth from rural to urban areas.
  6. Programmes for behavioral change/soft skills/vocational training should be incorporated at an early age at school level.
  7. Collaborations should be based on expertise and strengths, instead of the entire value chain.
  8. Different companies working in the same geography could explore shared services.

Next steps:

Going ahead, Samhita, UNDP and ACF will facilitate the following:

  • Map which corporates are working on which part of the value chain in the skill development space and what they do best. This will create a repository of experts across the value chain for strategic collaborations.
  • Engage in discussions and information sharing for collaborations for shared services. This could be done through technology platforms, using services of professional organisations who facilitate interventions and work as aggregators.

Beyond the Boardroom

Samhita and Ambuja Cement Foundation organised the fourth edition of CSR Café in Mumbai on January 31st, 2019. The topic for this edition of the CSR Café was ‘Beyond the Boardroom‘. At the Café we discussed bridging boardroom expectations and ground realities. CSR leaders communicated challenges faced in boardroom engagement, and through discussions, the Café sourced solutions and advice in response to the challenges.

Here’s a brief summary of all the discussions that happened during the session –

We started by asking participants to anonymously communicate challenges faced in boardroom engagement through chits, and then sourced solutions and advice in response to the challenges.

A. Challenge 1
How can CSR leaders convince their boards that CSR is valuable or is needed in a strategic sense, beyond legal compliance? This includes pitching for multi-year funding, investing in CSR, the question of profitability vs CSR and so on.

Solutions
1. Balancing the head and the heart was a recurring theme throughout the session.

  • As pointed out by many, including Ashank Desai, Founder of Mastek,  it is necessary to make an emotional appeal in addition to a logical pitch, since CSR heads and managers are ultimately human.
  • At the same time, as Charlie Bresler of The Life You Can Save and Priya Naik of Samhita advised, don’t leave out evidence, data and expected returns, alignment to business, benefits to stakeholders including employees and so on from your communication to the board.
  • Communicate that you are looking at CSR strategically rather than from a one-time perspective. It is important to communicate that a company may engage in CSR not only for the legal implications but from an intention to do good.
  • Anagha Mahajani of Ambuja Cement Foundation said that as one would demonstrate or promise a much larger than expected return on investment in business, it is up to the CSR team to show that CSR investments could lead to higher than expected impact or returns.
  • Rachana Iyer of IDFC First Bank also explained how they facilitate field and partner visits for board members. The board members started opening upto the partnerships and have even provided the NGOs access to their own personal networks.
  • A mix of above engagement approaches would be ideal.

2. Go offline and build relationships:
Participants also articulated that going the extra mile, engaging individual board members offline, beyond the boardroom, and learning about their perspectives while explaining the CSR team’s views, would be very effective in convincing board members.

B. Challenge 2
Participants inquired about engaging with board members of different nationalities, behaviours, cultures, experiences and professional backgrounds, around CSR strategy and objectives.

Solution

  • For boards that have varied cultures and nationalities and as a result, behaviours, align CSR to a global business/sustainability/CSR strategy if it’s a multi-national or engage the individual on a personal level to understand what makes them tick. Both will help you get easier buy-in.

Here are some of the potential topics for the next edition:

1. Data and evidence across the CSR/project lifecycle

  • For evidence and for decision making
  • While monitoring and evaluating
  • Legal and ethical data questions: for eg, taking data from beneficiaries, what can or should we ask for, how do we ensure privacy and so on

2. Investing in the building blocks of CSR of which benchmarking is an important topic. This can be tied to the data topic above.


3. Technologies that could be used for CSR and the social sector – across facilitation, collection of information, programmatic efficiency, innovative tech and so on.

Creating Impact through Corporate-Government Partnerships

Over the years there have been many successful public-private partnerships that have combined the efficiency of the private sector with government access and scale, to bring about social change. Yet, corporate-government partnerships retain an air of mystery with few frameworks available for those interested in initiating such partnerships or navigating existing ones. To discover best practices in such partnerships, we invited companies and government representatives for CSR Café #2 to explore the theme, Creating Impact through Corporate-Government Partnerships.

CSR Café is a space for senior corporate leaders and decision makers to convene and freely discuss on matters and themes related to CSR and their own aspirations in the social sector. Co-created and hosted by Ambuja Cement Foundation and Samhita, the forum provides stakeholders a space to evaluate successes in CSR, address challenges collaboratively and innovate to bridge gaps. The inaugural session of CSR Café was held on July 4, 2018 around the ‘The Five Ways CSR Heads Can Create Lasting Change.’ You can read more about it here.

This 2nd edition was held on September 7, 2018 at Café Zoe, Mumbai, moderated by Luis Miranda, Trustee – Collective Good Foundation, Chairman – Centre for Civil Society and Chairman – CORO. We invited three Chief Minister’s Fellows, Yash Kirkire, Saurabh Kanada and Shyam Datye to shed light on how government departments worked, the various processes being institutionalized by the Chief Minister’s Office to initiate and facilitate partnerships, as well as some suggestions for easier and more effective project management.

Some of the attendees included senior leaders from L&T Realty, NASSCOM Foundation, JSW Foundation, Swades Foundation, CLP India, Shriram Transport and Finance Limited, Shapoorji Pallonji, Omkar Foundation, Nomura, Mastek, JetPrivilege, and RBL Bank.

Here is a brief summary of the conversation:

Things to Remember to When Partnering with the Government:

  • Approach the Government with Existing Funds: Since the government manages public funds, any spending requires intensive due diligence and auditing. This affects the quality and speed of decision making, making it difficult for companies to receive funding for collaborative projects. In cases where the government is willing to provide funding support, it looks at the extent of existing funding that the project might already have.
  • Partner with Proactive Departments: The extent of bureaucratic and political backing for partnerships, varies among the different departments of the government. Partnerships see the light of day when there is substantial support and initiative to take on and facilitate collaborative projects versus departments with jurisdiction issues, convoluted hierarchies and weak bureaucratic will to push projects.
  • Cooperating with Bureaucrats: Despite instances of significant push back from bureaucrats, they are willing to work on projects where they can showcase their work and successes to superiors. They often have relevant insights to provide of on-ground realities.

Steps taken by Government to Facilitate or Manage Partnerships:

  • Address Bureaucratic Bottlenecks: There are multiple channels used by the CMO to identify and address any existing or potential bottlenecks. For instance, the CMO calls a quarterly meeting of District Collectors, fellows, bureaucrats and office bearers to go over the various partnerships, LOIs, and MoUs which are in the pipeline.
  • Institutionalize Learnings: Ashwini Saxena, JSW Foundation, noted that current measures to enable partnerships were largely ad-hoc, based on individual action rather than systematic change based on previous learning. He asked if new processes for partnerships and takeaways were being institutionalized. The Fellows shared that these learnings were being systemized by the Chief Secretary’s Committee, which follows up on partnerships, tracks LOIs and pursues various other measures to facilitate government partnerships.
  • Categorize Partnerships: Mangesh Wange, Swades Foundation, suggested categorizing all partnerships & MoUs based on certain parameters. This would help analyze aspects such as what worked, why it worked and potential for scale up, among others.

Making Government Partnerships Work:

  • Using a PMU-Model: The Fellows suggested using a Project Management Unit model as an effective method of ensuring successful partnerships with the government. Creating a unit of private sector personnel to sit within government offices and ministries and lead a project, similar to the UNICEF model, would help ensure timely implementation and effective management.
  • Consortium-model for Smaller Companies: Smaller companies with limited budgets could tie up with companies of similar size to create a consortium which could then approach the government for partnerships.
  • Leveraging Political Support: Despite companies avoiding politicians, the CM’s Fellows suggested that leveraging political interests could be an effective and efficient route to initiate and drive partnerships. Combined with a PMU model, partners could keep track of partnerships and ensure progress.
  • Demonstrating Successful Models: Companies and organizations could demonstrate a successful model or pilot, to provide the government with a strategy and pathway to follow.
  • Using Data for Decision Making: Government spending is often based on precedence. Data-based governance could provide much needed clarity based on actual need, and check arbitrary decision making.
  • Sensitizing District Officials: During implementation, engaging district-level officials and bureaucrats, changing their mindsets and sensitizing them were noted as key challenges. One suggestion made was to scope out the various organizations already working with the government at different levels and partner with them.

The Five Ways CSR Heads Can Create Lasting Change

The  inaugural session of CSR Café was held on July 4, 2018 and at Cafe Zoe, and was facilitated by Luis Miranda, Trustee – Collective Good Foundation, Chairman – Centre for Civil Society and Chairman – CORO, The session was focused around the ‘The Five Ways CSR Heads Can Create Lasting Change.’

Participants shared their insights and experiences on managing multiple mandates as a CSR Leader, the struggle with engaging stakeholders, the need for more sectoral research and the potential for collaboration among themselves and with the government. The following is a summary of themes explored:

  • The role CSR plays in addressing social issues has evolved. CSR leaders, the board and other stakeholders must now re-assess their definitions and approaches to CSR, and explore how it can play a role in inspiring change and social action in the wider ecosystem. This re-alignment must become part of both strategy and implementation for CSR to become an effective catalyst for social change.
  • Effectively communicating about CSR can build engagement with internal and external stakeholders, and keep them invested in the organization’s CSR activities.
  • Many articulated the need for continuous, rigorous research that analyzed what was going right, and how to manage what was going wrong. Forums such as CSR Café and a seminal industry publication, are required to share research and explore areas that need research while identifying relevant tools, models and resources.
  • Collaboration is the way forward for many. Of the many forms of collaboration, the following were the most commonly articulated:
  • The Government while being the largest delivery agent for social welfare, struggles to deliver effectively to the last-mile. Companies could bridge this gap by using their expertise and CSR funds to help the government deliver its solutions to the end beneficiary; and help beneficiaries access the government’s social welfare pool.
  • The sheer jump in the number of CSR interventions has led to replication of efforts with little cross pollination or dialogue. Companies, by working together, could increase the scope and scale of their CSR and impact. For instance, small companies can scale up effective solutions, while larger companies can create and sustain stronger grassroots network & linkages.

Follow us on social media to keep updated about the valuable learning from this formidable community of CSR leaders. If you and your company are interested in participating in this forum, do reach out to us at team.comms@dev.samhita.org.

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