Individual Social Responsibility™ (ISR™) is a term coined by the employees of Apeejay Surrendra Group. It describes the process by which the Group has extended the vision and mission of our Corporate Social Responsibility to all individuals in our workforce since 2007-2008 when ISR™ was made into a policy. ISR™ initiatives runs parallel to our CSR and other Social Sector initiatives whereby we encourage new as well as existing employees to devote their skills and time to reach out, beyond their everyday business, into the community around us, individually as citizens and collectively as a corporate.
At Apeejay, we believe that 'Living Responsibly' must be understood and imbibed at the very basic Individual level of the societal pyramid. We believe that if this could be adopted as a value and made part of business process, then the Group, its companies and its people would be able to deliver more to our stakeholders.
Over the years, we have witnessed many positive outcomes of the ISR™ initiative. Different employees, in their own individual ways, took ISR™ to new levels and made all of us proud. From new hires to senior management, many employees have taken up ISR™ as a personal goal. Together across all divisions and cities, the employees volunteer their time and effort to bring about a change in society that they would want to see. |
The key focus area of ISR™ is the concept of skills-based volunteering. The definition of skill encompasses all kinds of skills which include primarily professional skills, but also the basic skills that we have picked up during our course of life, thereby ensuring that the bulk of employees are engaged. The ISR™ program focuses as much on building capacity in our own employees as it does in the NGOs they support. Such a support helps our employees realize that each one of them can indeed “be the change they want to see.”
The program provides them with opportunities to extend themselves beyond their own personal goals, commitments and pressures and helps them align themselves with the larger social realities that exist outside their individual spheres. As we work harder every year to make the program more inclusive, it is the value to community, employees and Group itself that is the most significant. |
