Institute of Directors Annual Meeting Blog
The event opened with an intriguing welcome speech by Anne Ewing who stressed the importance of integration of social and environmental concerns with business operations and the fact that local firms shouldn’t just give to the poor because they feel they have to, but they should feel a natural duty to base some of their interactions around volunteering and doing work for the community. She also called for governments to respond with bolder policies to nurture our quality of life, protect our scarce resources and to provide a healthy environment in which social inclusion for all can take place. Public-private partnerships (PPPs) were on the agenda as well, with Anne Ewing introducing the idea that PPPs could provide better value for the taxpayer, through the government not investing so much money into a service but the taxpayers still enjoying the same quality of service as a public sector firm would exhibit carrying out the same operations.
The debate opened with moderator Stuart Falla MBE, a man who lives for Guernsey and has been on many committees doing valuable work for the island not to mention being a very successful businessman in his own right, delivering his famous wise cracks to an appreciative audience with lashings of dry wit. It seemed no one was safe and in the light of the recent emergence of the education’s discrepancies, I have to say I am glad Carol Steere was not present to hear the copious amount of jokes poked in her direction. After the laughter quietened down, Stuart introduced each of the speakers brilliantly with pertinent, thought-provoking questions whilst also giving his own informative views on the subjects being discussed.
The first guest speaker was Giles Frost, an Oxford law graduate. Giles spoke about the advantages of PPPs in terms of value to the taxpayer and the apparent need for more cooperation between the public and private sector due to our ageing population presenting the prospect of much higher social costs in the future which can be shared between the government and private firms. He also acknowledged the growing market for PPPs globally, projected at $7.5 trillion annually for 2011 which clearly shows that there is more of an incentive than ever before to include PPPs to a greater extent within our economies. I think there needs to be a PPP set up for Health Care on a global scale as we are living longer and there are more of us than ever before so the costs of health care are going to rocket. I don’t have confidence in governments being able to handle this extra burden properly themselves so a PPP would be a sensible proposal to cover these extra costs. This could be an opportunity for Guernsey to lead the way in providing an efficient, effective model of public-private cooperation to provide an excellent health service, instead of lagging behind and then having to copy everyone else to the cost of the taxpayer.
The next speaker, Graham Parrott, advertised the importance of not-for-profit companies and explained how they work. Indeed, ‘not-for-profit’ does not mean they do not make or seek to make a profit, it’s just that any ‘profit’ (revenue - costs) made is reinvested into the company. Parrott gave examples of the Citizens Advice Bureau and the Guernsey Contraceptive Service, both of which would not distribute any surplus funds to shareholders or owners but internalise the profit to help them achieve their respective goals of avoiding “accidents” through strategic investment.
Next on was Julian Winser, Chief Executive of Schroders Private Bank. Julian argued that Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has to be sustained through the island’s business sector in order to come into alignment with the island’s core values concerning the way we wish to live. Winder also pushed forward the notion that government intervention would prove vital in getting CSR recognised as something all businesses should play an active part in as most business would not voluntarily enter into something that isn’t going to reap a profit. I think that the movement away from the absolute profit incentive and giving to the community in which you do business as a kind of leveller was Julian’s main message. Although, when I asked him if it should be law that companies should have a mandatory CSR plan of action as part of the privilege of being able to do business in Guernsey he stressed the point that if CSR was law then it would then suffer from the vice of becoming boring and a chore to companies, which I suppose is true as this sort of work has to be appreciated as something special as opposed to a mandatory operation carried out because a piece of legislation dictates that they have to.
Lastly Jurat Stephen Jones took to the stage to speak about volunteering. Of course volunteering is vital to many organisations in the UK and around the world but it has never been adopted by the majority of the community. Jones calls for everyone who currently does not volunteer to find those extra few hours a week to help society in some form or another. Jones also spoke about the need to bridge the gap between the private sector and society even more as the greater the degree of cooperation, the more society as a whole flourishes.
To sum up the debate, I think all speakers were very engaging and gave excellent speeches on their respective topics. What we can all take away from this meeting is that we all need to do more for others, whether it be persuading your company to fund local charity projects or volunteering on a Saturday, we can all do our bit no matter where we are in society. Businesses also need value CSR as a vital step in improving the conditions in which live, do business and thrive in as the people they help are potentially future customers and employees so anything the private sector can do to help the community is valued by everyone.
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