DQA highlights importance of CSR for future applicants of the award

As part of its strategy to enhance applicants' ability to demonstrate sustained corporate performance, the Dubai Quality Award Secretariat at the Dubai Department of Economic Development, organised a two-day workshop titled 'How to Design and Implement a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Strategy, and how is it linked to the Excellence Framework'.

The workshop aims at helping delegates to apply this learning and integrate CSR with excellence initiatives in their organisations. The objective of focusing on CSR is to move the application process for the award to the next logical step by presenting the growth of organisations through the context of fulfilling its corporate social responsibility.

The workshop was conducted by Nikos Avlonas, Executive Director, Centre for Sustainability & Excellence (CSE) who gave a presentation introducing the CSR and Sustainable Development concept, future trends and legislation for CSR in Europe and worldwide, and several other modules.

"The DQA Excellence Model is a strategic tool which enables organisations to incorporate the principles of quality into every aspect of the organisation," said Dr. Lway Nackasha, Advisor Quality and Excellence at DED. "Winners of the award need to build on their previous successes by integrating CSR initiatives into their strategies in order to produce an overall positive impact on society. Thus, we hope that CSR issues will feature strongly in all future award submissions of the DQA, especially for the GOLD category applicants." he added.

Dr. Nackasha noted that the Excellence model enables the evaluation of results relating to stakeholders' needs and expectations such as employees, customers, society and key performance results through the application of processes and by focusing on enablers relating to Leadership, People, Policy and Strategy, and Partnership and Resources.

The participants received comprehensive training on providing a structured, fact-based techniques to identify and assess organisation's strengths and areas for improvement relevant to CSR, integration into organisation policy and strategy and creating a common language and conceptual framework for managing and improving organisations.

Representatives were also introduced on how to help people in there organisations to understand the need and importance of addressing CSR issues and how to involve people at all levels and in all units in CSR programs.