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Impactt was in Brussels last week to attend the GTZ conference on “China, Germany and Europe: Joint Solutions for CSR in the Global Value Chains”.

The conference was split into two main sessions. During the first one, key speakers from the WTO China and the Chinese ministry of human resources and social security gave their views on the latest happenings in the CSR arena in China. They reinforced the message that CSR was very much in line with the Chinese idea of building a “harmonious society”. The presentations focused on how Chinese business often uses philanthropy as CSR, on the challenges faced by Chinese factories and on government efforts to push forward the CSR agenda and enforce labour & environmental legislation.

During the second session, the attendees were split into two groups. In our group, 4 companies shared their CSR programme with the attendees. Impactt was particularly interested in the Tchibo model. Tchibo supports 40 factories across China, Thailand and Bangladesh. They work on strengthening their human resources systems and improving productivity by training key factory staff. Their programme showed some very interesting results with increase in workers’ wages and reduction in working hours.

It is really good to see that the increase in numbers of companies working in this way -  We have been taking this approach in China  and elsewhere since 2001, and will shortly be publishing the key lessons we have learned in how to make sure that productivity and HR initiatives provide real benefits to workers.  Watch this space!