UEFA host Corporate Social Responsibility Conference

European Football governing body UEFA has hosted a seminar with a central focus on corporate social responsibility (CSR) attended by Europe's national football governing bodies.

UEFA took to Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, in a bid to continue evolving their sport inside a topic that is becoming increasingly prevalent within today's society. Alongside the topic of sustainability, CSR is debatably the most pressing issue on a global scale within organisations as football continues to expand and so participants from national associations along with major stakeholders inside the football world attended the seminar with the knowledge that this is a topic that increasingly requires attention.

CSR is a systematic approach to management whereby an organisation seeks to increase social responsibility throughout all aspects of the corporate body, that is economically, financially, environmentally and socially. Functions of CSR policies are often self-regulating and work in compliance with ethical standards in order to elicit a positive perception of an organisation's activities. CSR work holds the potential to offer extremely positive opportunities in terms of future planning and beneficiaries for the footballing community in the long run. A number of steps could be taken by football associations in pursuit of CSR aims such as:

• Identifiying a strategies/policies main purpose, values and goals. (Economic)
• Identifying senior management hierarchically throughout the organisation to demonstrate responsibility. (Economic)
• Identifying key stakeholders and thus producing specific strategies to satisfy each of them. (Finance)
• Identifying potential costs and benefits. (Finance)
• Adopting efficient communication policies. (Social)
• Identify key 'green' areas throughout the organisation that hold the potential for improvement. (Environmental)

This seminar is not to say however, that governing bodies have not already identified the importance of CSR and it is clear that football associations are continually producing CSR work, the extent to which is often in comparison with the size of the body in question. Countries in attendance offered various examples of social responsibility they had produced already within their governing body. Such an example was provided by the Irish FA, whereby they demonstrated the strategy and visions behind their community-targeted 'Football for All' programme. Such a scheme epitomises the direction in which football must continue to move, in collaboration with it's hierarchical model of governing bodies, if it is to satisfy it's diverse communities and also protect it's integral ethics and values.

The European football market easily distinguishes the need for CSR to be at least in the thoughts of football associations with it's wide range of different cultures, ideas and knowledge. Of course, it is a learning process that most probably, will never end and continuously evolve and it's interesting to see what goes on 'behind closed doors' within UEFA, so to speak. The ability for ideas behind CSR to be shared at least on a European basis and put to best use is a superb use of time.

This is a topic I'm not sure many football fans adhere to, or perhaps understand the importance of in comparison to the need for goal-line technology, but it's excellent to see UEFA identifying one of the worlds most pressing issues at present business-wise, and relaying it's importance to the organisations it governs!

CLD

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