The government is launching a scheme whereby employers will receive a fee for providing ex-offenders with employment opportunities and then keeping them on for two years or more. (Link)

This will come as welcome news to many in the criminal justice sector, as employment and sustained employment is one of the major hurdles offenders face upon release from prison.

One thing that I truly hope the scheme will provide though is a wide range of employment opportunities for the offenders. Whilst it is true that there are many unskilled and poorly educated men and women within our prison system, this is not true of the total population.

If you’ve seen the Chris Rock film ‘Head of State’ you’ll know that the ‘small man’ on the presidential campaign trail has a light bulb moment where he stops trotting out the prepared corporate line and to the outrageous injustices staring him in the face, shouts loud and clear “that aint right!” Of course with the magic of Hollywood a triumphant election campaign ensues, you can guess the rest.

We’re having our own “that aint right” moment. Trawling back through the wellbeing section on our website we have written about stress, toxic behaviour, messy management and a plethora of factors that contribute to ill health, lost productivity, excessive costs and damaged performance on numerous occasions.

Signal was pleased to attend the first NoOffence! Criminal justice conference yesterday. This relatively new group has, in a short space of time, brought together an impressive cross section of professionals all interested in criminal justice reform.

We at Signal are currently working with NoOffence! on a working group to improve employment support for ex-offenders and potential employers.

Council Houses : Cheats and Victims
Panorama, BBC1,  Wednesday May 4^th
Investigator Richard Bilton

This was one of those programmes that caught the attention as we’re in the midst of recession and some of the largest public expenditure reductions in living memory. Some of the numbers quoted deserve repeating, 5M people on council housing wait lists nationally. 40% plus of the London Borough of Lambeth’s housing is from Registered Social Landlords. 50,000 homes nationally are lost to tenancy fraud each year according to the Audit Commission, which was counterbalanced by a pair of obviously conscientious investigators who were able to recover 28 properties in a year, which we would conclude was a drop in the ocean compared to what appears to be going on in reality. What makes it worse is that some individuals have been getting away with fraud for many years under the watchful eyes of the local authority and housing associations.

We’re delighted to welcome our second guest blogger to the pages of Signal Business Consulting, to talk about Veterans who find themselves on the wrong side of the law.

Lieutenant Colonel Trevor Philpott OBE RM (Retired)

I joined the Royal Marines in November 1963 as a Junior Marine and was subsequently awarded a General List Commission in September 1965. I served in numerous operational, training and staff appointments in the UK, mainland Europe, at sea and the Far East.  

I’ve been giving the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) a lot of thought over the last few weeks.

With the fall out from the global financial crisis dominating the news, it may have slipped some peoples attention that this is the year that ISO 26000, currently a draft standard, is finally published.

Admittedly it will be a voluntary standard, but isn’t that the true essence of CSR? It’s not about forcing corporations to comply, but encouraging them to realise that in the pursuit of a glowing bottom line, their actions can have a wider and altogether more negative impact.

One of the other features about CSR is that it’s not just about reporting your CSR compliance, but living it too. In the early days, when the term and ethos was gaining ground, several large organisations really stood out from the crowd in their openness about CSR reporting. However, whilst the reports looked good, close scrutiny revealed that the organisations weren’t living up to the true spirit of the ethos. A rapid backtrack was witnessed and a few embarrassed CEO’s were forced to admit they weren’t as socially responsible as initially claimed.

Understandably the whole concept has its supporters and its detractors.

In support an embedded appreciation of CSR can influence the following areas.

• Human Resources: In both recruitment, retention and the way employees feel about their organisation. Working for a socially responsible firm just feels better!
• Risk Management: This is heavily based around reputation damage. The perception that the organisation is not socially responsible can do untold damage, very rapidly.
• Unique Selling Point: Although the concept has been around since the 1970’s there are still vast areas of the market place not aligning themselves with CSR. Adopting a positive approach to CSR can act as an effective brand differentiator, in a market where the consumer is increasingly more aware of this area.
• Licence to Operate: Although voluntary in the UK & USA, certain areas of Europe, most notably France do have regulation about the need to adopt and report on CSR. Along with areas such as Diversity, the environment and Health & Safety, if an organisation can convince governments, regulators and the general public it has sound CSR the acceptance of their trading activities are enhanced.

One of the strongest arguments against CSR is that it is incompatible to the aims of business. Most notably the late American economist Milton Friedman argued that an organisation’s purpose was to maximise the return to shareholders and that was the only responsibility they had.

Others have argued that organisations have undertaken CSR to detract from a negative public perception of their activities and in this way are not actually acting responsibly, but engaging in duplicitous activities and spin. The most prominent of these examples are possibly BP and British American Tobacco (BAT).

The debate around the rights and wrongs of CSR will no doubt continue for a long time to come, but in the final analysis, surely we all want to be associated with a successful business that was at heart GOOD.

Profits may not be so high, but there is as yet, no categorical study to prove that adopting a CSR approach is fundamentally damaging to business, and maybe, just maybe, this is the way forward for us all?

Matthew Scott, Dip. Management, Cert. MCE.

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the IIA.