Corporate Social Responsibility - Arguments For Including Disability in CSR

Arguments For Including Disability in CSR

In recent years CSR is increasingly becoming a part of a large number of companies. It is becoming an important activity for businesses throughout the globe.

Basically, CSR means that a company's business model should be socially responsible and environmentally sustainable. By socially responsible, it means that the company's activities should benefit the society and by environmentally sustainable it means that the activities of the company should not harm the environment.

But currently what we can see is that there is an outburst of enthusiasm for environmental causes only. For example, controlling pollution, global warming, deforestation, mitigate carbon emissions, etc. Whereas it can be said that the same enthusiasm is not seen for social welfare. This is because most of the social welfare activities of the companies contribute to the welfare of us able bodied people but do not take into account the disabled people who are also a part of the society in which the company exists and who amount to at least 10% of the population. Therefore, disability must be made a part of CSR policies of the companies and people with disabilities must be allowed to become stakeholders.

There should be non-discrimination or diversity management awareness-raising and training for employees in the companies, that include disability treatment. They should include the disability factor in employment/HR indicators (age distribution, gender, contract type, professional categories and/or activity areas, rotation) so that the situation of people with disabilities can be compared with that of other employees. The companies should take into account the characteristics of people with disabilities when managing human resources (recruitment, selection, contracting and induction, promotion, training, prevention of risks at work). Customer care staff training should be carried out by the companies aimed at guaranteeing appropriate treatment of people with disabilities. They should have a policy or directive aimed at considering or favouring suppliers and subcontractors that employ people with disabilities, including Sheltered Workshops.

Thus, carrying out business practice which includes disabled people will help improve the company's reputation and image in an increasingly competitive environment.

Finally, disability is one of the factors that can contribute to "Diversity" and Diversity is a rising value within companies’ management. However, disability is often pushed behind in favour of other diversity criteria, thus disability needs to be specifically included within the CSR.