Every effort must go into monitoring and protecting people’s health
The world is facing a health, social and economic crisis of enormous scale because of the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic. Faced with a challenge of this magnitude, every effort must go into monitoring and protecting people’s health. In this article we look at the part corporate social responsibility plays in the coronavirus crisis.
The situation is felt most harshly in communities already contending with poverty, underdevelopment and inequality. According to health experts and the authorities, all of us must play our part in limiting the spread of this disease as far as we possibly can.
That is why CMI Business School is making a particular appeal to individuals and organisations alike: we must all make the greatest possible effort and give the best of ourselves in the fight against the coronavirus.
We understand that the situation the world is passing through is a global one; it touches every one of us. The only way to face it, therefore, is by working and making good decisions both individually and collectively. As far as business is concerned, we recognise that the complexity and the difficulties this environment can produce are of the highest order. One of the principal challenges is precisely to show our strength in the face of adversity — always putting the health and safety of every person first.
Companies must not set aside their commitment to corporate social responsibility
In the coronavirus crisis, companies must not set aside their commitment to corporate social responsibility (CSR). They should deploy every action and every resource available to them to help other organisations and communities come through this crisis as quickly as possible — going beyond even the funds previously budgeted for social and philanthropic work.
At CMI, from the moment the first measures against the coronavirus were introduced in Spain, we moved all our activity to remote working and online teaching. We also made our e-learning platform available to state education centres needing to run teaching activities by videoconference with their students during those days, and we offered entirely free training content for micro-learning courses.
This crisis therefore carries with it an opportunity for people to show their sense of responsibility, through actions grounded in the values that have always allowed us to progress as a society: fraternal love, compassion and solidarity.
It is important to remember that social commitment should not be demonstrated only at particular moments of crisis, when society calls most loudly for acts of solidarity. It should be shown constantly and naturally within an organisation, as its reason for being, over time.
A company’s CSR does not make sense solely as a way of solving the problems of our own moment; it is simply the right way to do things, ethically and responsibly.
Even if we lived in a perfect world, in harmony, corporate social responsibility would still be necessary, because acting without causing harm — and protecting people and the natural world of which we are part — is the right thing to do.
CMI Business School
