EFD homepage > Information > Corporate Social Responsibility
Corporate Social Responsibility
Our members are increasingly looking to strengthen and develop their work around Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). In response to this the Forum, in association with AccountAbility (a leading professional institute in the CSR arena) has been developing a range of products and services to support members effectively to this emerging sector.
The information on these pages is designed as a resource for Corporate Social Responsibility, Corporate Citizenship and Community Affairs Managers as they begin to address disability. It is also intended to provide another "angle" on the business case for addressing disability for all champions within the business.
The benefits of incorporating disability into the CSR agenda
We believe that it is in the interests of business to address disability as a CSR issue. By doing so, a company will:
- Ensure it manages disability in the most efficient and ethical way in all areas of business
- Exploit the benefits of working with disabled people and respond to growing markets
- Manage financial, legal and reputational risk.
CSR Standards and Codes
The Forum, with the support of Royal Mail, has engaged with standard setters in the CSR arena to encourage them to include disability within leading standards, guidelines and indices, including the United Nations Global Compact, the GRI Initiative, and SA8000.
The CSR Standards and Codes section includes advice on how companies can report on disability in relation to some of the major and most-used CSR systems. These pages are designed to help CSR manages as they complete responses to CSR standards, coes and questionnaires
Each section includes a summary of the CSR standard, the organisation that developed and mentors its use and a breakdown of key points and statements where there is a disability dimension.
For more information please contact Rhiannon Suter, Research and Innovations Manager via email at rhiannon.suter@employers-forum.co.uk
Disability Online for CSR Practioners
The Forum worked in partnership with eight leading CSR organisations to build there website resources on disability issue and to help make their web site accessible to disabled people. If disability is to move up the business agenda it is essential that these influential bodies have the resources to information portals, particularly given the virtual resources they can centralise and the global networks of these organisations
Global Inclusion Benchmark 2003
A company's social report reveals much about its priorities and values, its relationship with its stakeholders and the extent to which an issue is integrated into the way it does business.
Our purpose in developing the Global Inclusion Benchmark is to raise awareness across business and civil society of the importance of including disability in social reporting. By helping companies and CSR experts understand the disability dimension to CSR and its place in quality social reports, we hope to encourage more effective management of disability across every business.
The Employers' Forum on Disability's Global Inclusion Benchmark survey of social reports was launched July 2002 and revealed that disabled people were only truly visible in 10 of the 50 leading social reports examined.