Interactive Corporate Social Responsibility SME Readiness Toolkit

The EUROPEAN GREAN DEAL, promoting a fair and prosperous society, with a modern resource-efficient and competitive economy, and a climate neutral Europe in 2050, is the European response to tackle climate change and environmental-related challenges. The actions of companies and especially SMEs, accounting for 66% of private sector employment and approximately 60-70% of the industrial pollution in Europe have significant impacts in this regard. This applies to the products and services they offer, but also to working conditions, human rights, health, the environment, innovation, education and training as stated in the preamble of the EU Corporate Social Responsibility & Responsible Business Conduct. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is the strategic, comprehensive and sustainable response from companies to address those issues. Even though CSR has been on the agenda for some years now, the implementation rate in SMEs is still alarmingly low and they are lagging far behind in responding to the justified demands of Civic Society. Many of them still believe, the topic is reserved for large companies, not being aware of the direct benefits but referring to the resources they consider necessary and the existing hurdles.The CSR-Ready project directly responds to the specificity of CSR implementation in SMEs and enables them to develop company specific strategies and measures based on a sound analysis of their specific impact areas and benefits, presented in a clear and easy-to-use CSR Scoreboard and accompanied by specific knowledge and tools needed to implement them. This innovative approach goes far beyond existing offers and initiatives and will lead to a higher implementation rate of CSR Strategies in SMEs in Europe. At the same time, future Entrepreneurs and StartUps are trained to implement CSR Strategies directly from the start – helping them to avoid future transition costs and allowing them to directly create CSR based competitive advantages. The project achieves a sustainable impact by directly supporting SMEs/ StartUps on the one hand and by professionalizing VET organizations, management consultants, entrepreneurship and SME support infrastructures and by providing first of its kind resources to be implemented into their curricula and services. We will build on the existing CSR theory and initially research on challenges and gaps explaining the low implementation rate in SMEs. Transferable studies on this subject area do not yet exist. Based on this, we will develop an interactive App-based CSR-Readiness Analysis Tool, leading to a company specific Scoreboard providing actionable strategy approaches and the specific learning resources. To guarantee the widest possible use, we involve VET organisations, trainers, consultants and support structures (incubators, chambers e.g.) in our work and enable them to update their services and trainings to real world needs.Specifically, we will:1) Identify the most relevant challenges, impact areas and best practices (IO1)2) Develop an innovative VET-Package providing curricula, learning resources and training materials to be implemented into the service provisions and trainings offered by VET, HEI and Entrepreneurship/SME support structures3) Develop an interactive CSR Readiness Analysis Tool Scoreboard (IO3) that enables SMEs to identify their specific CSR-Readiness, the Impact areas and actionable measures and provides the specific knowledge and tools to implement them4) To ensure wide and free access, all produced resources will be adopted as OERs and combined with a large variety of additional information on our interactive knowledge exchange platform (IO4)In doing so, the project addresses the following needs of our target groups and will create sustainable impact for them:a) SMEs and future entrepreneurs gain a profound understanding of the importance of CSR and are enabled to implement specific strategies b) VET organisations, trainers, consultants and support structures (e.g. chambers, incubators) are put in a position to update and professionalize their services and increase their impactc) By enabling companies to meet their social and environmental responsibilities while at the same time sustain their business, we make a sustainable contribution to improve the social, ecologic AND economic footprint of the European SME sector d) Project partners will acquire new strategies, tools and methods for improving the effectiveness of their services. They will improve their own competences in knowledge sharing and strategic relationship building and have a clear understanding of how to sustain and grow the project in the long term.The CSR-Ready project therefore is in line with the goals of the European Green Deal and will impact on the achievement of its objectives by increasing the implementation rate of CSR in SMEs and thus improving the social, ecologic AND economic footprint of the SME sector in Europe.