MIA – TOOL (MATURITY INTEGRATION ASSESSMENT)

With the goal of assisting businesses to incorporate Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) effectively into their strategy and operation, CSR HELLAS offers its members a new value-added service. It offer businesses the opportunity to improve their maturity levels, in a comprehensive and effective way, preparing them to confront emerging risks and to manage oncoming challenges better, as well as opportunities that may arise in relation to the management of responsibility and sustainability.

Today, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and the general management of sustainability constitutes a criterion for the measurement of corporate value. At the same time, it is also an assessment criterion on the side of investors, who are increasingly directing their capital into businesses that have effectively incorporated CSR and sustainability into all business levels and functions.

In this framework, businesses are adapting their management systems, strategies and structures accordingly, recognizing that their comprehensive understanding and response to CSR integration will be the basis for the improvement of their competitiveness.

While this new reality has a decisive effect on the transformation of businesses, sectors and markets, it is observed that management often gets absorbed into everyday business operations and short-term issues, which distract from the need to build a sustainable future.

The Maturity Integration Assessment (MIA) tool has been applied to a large number of CSR Europe’s corporate members, such as Enel, Solvay, Canon, Danone, Toyota, Bridgestone, StateStreet, Michelin, Unipol and ΤΙΤΑΝ, and has now also been made available in Greece by CSR HELLAS, as a new service.

Goal of the MIA tool is to support Greek businesses to respond to the new demands stated in the Directive 2014/95/EU of the European Parliament regarding the publication of non-financial and diversity-related information, which has now been incorporated into the Greek regulatory framework through Ν.4403/2016 and the interpretive leaflet nο.62784/06-06-2017 that followed, significantly broadening the scope of application in relation to the Directive’s prediction.

Implementing the MIA tool can give rise to various benefits, such as:

• The possibility of anonymous, comparative assessment with other businesses on a pan-European level
• Documentation of the business’ maturity level regarding the management of sustainability and its incorporation in corporate processes, in the whole range of activity
• Identification of gaps in the measurement process and planning of focused mobilization for taking action
• Preparation and support of internal processes to ensure compliance with specific standards of management and with the national and European regulatory frameworks
• Strengthening of internal collaboration and securing of inter-department participation in the design of a corporate action plan for sustainability
• Improvement of internal communication between different departments concerning the understanding of the areas to be improved, by means of a shared language for sustainability
• Identification of exclusions in the incorporation of corporate responsibility amongst subsidiaries or between functional units or mobilization in more than one area
• Identification of substantive expectations of stakeholders and their incorporation into the strategy of sustainability management in all separate departments of the organizational structure
• Reinforcement of communication with stakeholders as a prerequisite for developing focused programs for the implementation of CSR.

The MIA tool also offers the opportunity for application on a sectoral or regional level, with the aim of documenting the level of incorporation of CSR and sustainability, particularly for those issues that are recognized by now as meaningful by corporate members of the specific sector or those that operate in a specific area.

Given CSR HELLAS’ goal to facilitate the adoption of the tool by the largest number of businesses possible, we offer privileged, discounted charges to our members. For more information, interested businesses or other bodies can get directly in contact with CSR HELLAS at ak@csrhellas.org.