Social Responsibility hand in hand with Benefits

Social Responsibility hand in hand with Benefits

Yen Chi is a small-sized private enterprise specialising in making clothes for pregnant women employing 30 workers. In the past, the company had a large volume of waste cloth, about 30 kilograms per day, which cost the company a loss of VND 100 million per year. Since the company has applied profitable social management, the company has reduced its waste when making new products. As a result, the company has bought two new machines and recruited two more staff members in charge of designing and making products from waste cloth. With an investment of VND 6 million, the company can now save VND 206 million per year. The company’s workers have earned higher incomes, working with a higher responsibility and increased productivity.

The application of modern production methods has help minimise losses and waste, increasing productivity and the quality of products. Yen Chi is one of the enterprises which have joined a training programme on profitable social management, an activity within a project on promoting the dialogue on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), which was developed by the Vietnam Business Link Initiative project (VBLI), co-organised by the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) and the German Technical Co-operation Agency (GTZ). Nguyen Quang Vinh, director of VBLI, said that CRS aimed to promote contacts and dialogues, creating a friendly working environment within enterprise.

With five round-table conferences and post-seminar activities, the project is half way through. At the third round-table conference on ‘Utilising certification and audit process as an enforcement tool for compliance in CRS,’ the project stressed the role of the evaluation of implementing corporate social responsibility within enterprises with proposals to encourage enterprises to evaluate and improve evaluation effectiveness.

Trinh Tuan Dung, certification manager of the Vietnam-based BVQI representative office, said that it was a systematic and independent system and documents about it had been built as evidence for evaluating the realisation of agreed standards. One challenge facing Vietnamese enterprises in their application of the system is an increase in production costs, and the complication of the evaluation scale as well as a lack of individuality in requirements on social responsibility. Dung stressed that the evaluaton process was not easy, requiring time and resources. Also, the evaluation should be controlled or it should be implemented within an agreed timetable.

However, benefits from the evaluation are great because it helps enterprises build up self-confidence among their managers and workers, uncovering risks and promoting innovation. It will also help enterprises implement concrete measures on CSR and improve their working environment, thus creating a beautiful image of enterprises within the business community, which is an important basis to increase the competitiveness and  build successful trademarks.

In the coming time, the project will organise two more round-table conferences on ‘How to help Vietnamese enterprises implement social standards at low costs’ and ‘How to increase the awareness of the public and maintain sustainable dialogue’

• Lan Anh