Tick-box political correctness is in danger of undermining CSR, argues Peter Knight
There are five of us in the office, two men and three women – all
pinkish-grey in colour, depending on the season. We recently hired two
more people. The strongest candidates were women, again pinkish. This
means we will fail to reach our diversity target.
I can
hear that scary sucking noise as the researchers at Pensions and
Investment Research Consultants and all the other self-appointed judges
of good CSR practice draw in their politically correct breath.
CSR pundits say we should reflect the diversity of the society around
us. We will fail as a business unless we do. We are, of course, not
alone in our shame.
One of our clients employs thousands
of engineers. These are clever people who all think in a very
methodical way. The sort of chaps who collect War Hammer models, watch
Lord of the Rings repeatedly, and can be seen on dark wet days lurking
at airports and train stations, scribbling on Palms.
Most of these people in the UK are pinkish-grey men. That’s the
reality. An engineering company has very little choice but to recruit
pink men from this, its only serious labour pool.
CSR
judges, such as Pirc, tut-tut and mark down these mono-crop companies
when they rank them in The Times. They do the same if businesses can’t
demonstrate that they engage with their stakeholders.
It’s the same daft PC logic at work. The judges want companies to
provide matrices showing whom they spoke to (broken down by type), when
they did this (dates and times please) and how much they factored in
stakeholder ideas in their business strategy.
Late last
year, Pirc marked down a well-known consumer company (a client) because
it did not publish enough evidence of its stakeholder engagement. The
good people at Pirc seemed to be blissfully unaware that the company
has prospered for over 100 years mainly because it has been fully
engaged with its prime stakeholder, the consumer.
To
criticize such a company for failing to listen to the stakeholders
demonstrates the Tolkien-like world in which so many CSR Hobbits exist.
It’s this naivety that leads them to expect companies –
no matter what their sector – to set and achieve diversity targets that
reflect the social mix around them, not the labour pool reality. It’s
just silly.
This pathetic emphasis on political
correctness undermines the integrity of the CSR community. If the
Hobbits fail to grasp reality, business will call their bluff and all
the progress that has been made over the past few years will be lost.
C’mon Hobbits, get real.
Peter Knight is a director of Context,
a strategy and communications consultancy www.econtext.co.uk
