Who ought to company accountability and sustainability classes be taken from? Some corporations are nonetheless unclear in regards to the idea however latching onto the sustainability mantra anyway, as a result of it has develop into a advertising buzzword for enterprise? Or an organization by means of whose creed and deeds, over the various a long time it has been round, individuals can see company accountability and sustainability lived (first) and preached (subsequently)?
If the above set of questions constituted a query in an examination corridor, it might be one of many best of inquiries to reply. Not one individual would fail it. Exterior the examination corridor, the reply to this query that appears as straightforward and easy just like the query of two + 2 is probably not as straightforward and easy. It might be sophisticated by all of the cleverly organized noise and claims projected at individuals to make it troublesome for them to see and settle for the apparent.
So, it’s incumbent on individuals who know, and care sufficient (like this author), to maintain stating and restating the apparent. That is within the hope that doing so would assist others to take full cognisance of the apparent and never enable themselves to be bamboozled by picture with out substance and rhetoric with out pedigree.
The idea of company accountability and sustainability just isn’t in regards to the intelligent or manipulative use of selling buzzwords by company residents. It’s about influence, web optimistic influence, within the lives of actual, not imagined, individuals by means of the deliberate and well-planned actions of socially-responsible company residents.
Even when historical past is now not taught in most colleges in Nigeria, the data are there. The data present that Nigeria has been blessed to have standing by her, always, a company citizen which understands the idea of company accountability and sustainability.
This company citizen has been standing by Nigeria earlier than the nation’s founding, by means of its amalgamation, Independence and all of the conflicts and crises Nigeria has gone by means of and nonetheless faces. At present, the company citizen nonetheless stands by Nigeria.
First Financial institution of Nigeria Restricted, a lender of unmatched pedigree, a financial institution with a historical past of unparalleled help to Nigeria and Nigerians (proper from the colonial period so far, even serving as Nigeria’s central financial institution at some stage of our nationwide improvement), has been a company citizen like no different.
A model that has backed innumerable groundbreaking tasks throughout Nigeria and past, FirstBank has demonstrated that actual influence that may be seen and felt by all, and never mere advertising buzzwords, is the true measure of an establishment’s understanding of company accountability and sustainability.
It’s incontrovertible that whichever manner company accountability and sustainability is known or outlined, FirstBank is certain to tick all of the containers. Simply identify each parameter for assessing an organization’s efforts in company accountability and sustainability and match every towards what FirstBank has been doing. Is there any parameter that FirstBank has not surpassed?
FirstBank has been residing company accountability and sustainability for many, if not all, of its existence as a going concern. Figuring out it can not do it alone, the financial institution has additionally devoted sources to efforts that may allow it to evangelise or cross the message so different company residents, teams and people will emulate it.
One platform the financial institution has used successfully for this function is its Company Accountability and Sustainability (CR&S) Week. The CR&S Week is a full working week that the FirstBank Group, in-country and the world over the place it operates, dedicates to the promotion, execution and celebration of social accountability initiatives.
The Sustainability Week additionally contains an enormous kindness marketing campaign to reorient residents in direction of the proper values and reignite acts of kindness in society. It’s only one of many some ways FirstBank resides true to its model promise to at all times put clients first.
And the Sustainability Week seeks to ask others (people and company residents) to comply with the financial institution’s instance and start to deliberately create optimistic influence of their quick communities.
From the inaugural version in 2017, the place the theme was “Selling Kindness: Placing You First”, the Sustainability Week has helped to strengthen FirstBank’s function as a nation-builder that’s driving sustainable improvement throughout communities the place it operates. It was a chance for the financial institution to encourage others (people and company residents) to comply with in its steps, even when all they will afford to take are small steps.
Taking small steps might have knowledgeable the selection of theme for the second version of the Sustainability Week in 2018: “Touching Lives: You First”. The financial institution sought to debunk the notion that touching lives in significant methods and making an influence on society require big-ticket tasks, while emphasising the ability within the little issues individuals do and the small steps they take.
In any case, is it not little drops of water that make a mighty ocean, just like the saying goes? And does the journey of a thousand miles not start with a (small) step, like one other saying places it?
Simply check out SPARK (Begin Performing Acts of Random Kindness), a values-based initiative that raises consciousness selling kindness to 1 one other in society, which the financial institution began through the inaugural Sustainability Week in 2017.
Geared toward reinforcing FirstBank’s company tradition of encouraging giving and volunteering amongst its workers and the bigger society, its magnitude immediately and the various type initiatives it has sparked off throughout the nation couldn’t have been imagined when the seed was planted 5 years in the past. Incalculable manhours and monetary sources from FirstBank workers and companions have been contributed willingly.
Kids in orphanages, internally displaced individuals (IDPs) in varied IDP camps, widows and different underprivileged or weak teams have been visited and their challenges alleviated if not completely eradicated. Scores of profession counselling classes with secondary college pupils throughout Nigeria has additionally been organised as a part of the Sustainability Week, which has been the primary of its type in Nigeria’s monetary providers business.
In 2019, the third version of the Sustainability Week with the theme: “Ripples of Kindness: Placing You First” enunciated the values (or pillars) of the SPARK initiative to incorporate Compassion, Civility and Charity. FirstBank believes that these values and the acts of kindness that movement on account of embracing the values are vital to selling and constructing peaceable co-existence and prosperity in society.
Among the many key highlights of the 2019 Sustainability Week was a “Good Feedback Day” that was a day put aside to foster phrases of encouragement, help and kindness to individuals round one, no matter ones’ familiarity or shut ties, in recognition of the instrumental function type phrases play in lighting up individuals’s day and bringing out the perfect in them.
One other spotlight was the SPARK Faculty Engagement that promoted the SPARK initiative in colleges, with the target of embedding the values of SPARK amongst college youngsters at a younger age so the values develop into a part of, and routine to, them as they become maturity.
On account of COVID-19 pandemic and government-imposed lockdown, the yr 2020 witnessed no version of the Sustainability Week. Any try and stage the sorts of actions and occasions that often accompany the Sustainability Week would have been counterproductive, spreading infections and presumably deaths as an alternative of kindness and pleasure that the Sustainability Week has develop into synonymous with.
Nevertheless, FirstBank’s avowed dedication to company accountability and sustainability wouldn’t enable it fold its fingers and simply watch whereas COVID-19 and its debilitating results tried to make residing and studying troublesome for many Nigerians.
Working nearly or remotely and, the place it couldn’t do in any other case, bodily however in strict adherence to COVID-19 security protocols, FirstBank executed a number of initiatives meant to ameliorate the very troublesome scenario in Nigeria then.
The financial institution contributed to efforts to offer palliatives to weak Nigerians, introduced a moratorium on compensation of loans, arrange a particular mortgage fund for companies run by girls, established one other for college proprietors in collaboration with a state authorities and drove an e-learning initiative that sought to maneuver a million college youngsters to a protected on-line studying platform so their academic progress wouldn’t be set again because of COVID-19 restrictions, government-ordered lockdown and the closure of academic establishments for the higher a part of 2020
“Kindness: A Method of Life” was the theme for the fourth version of the Sustainability Week held in 2021. Highlights of actions of the 2021 Sustainability Week, designed to entrench a tradition of kindness, included a practical-oriented coaching webinar for workers to embed a tradition of kindness within the financial institution by driving understanding of how kindness (or the dearth of it) can influence the office, {the marketplace} and the communities through which workers dwell and work.
One other essential function of the Sustainability Week was the “Form Feedback Days” that ran all week to encourage a consciousness of type alternative of phrases and consideration for others. There was additionally a devoted programme in secondary colleges designed to institutionalise SPARK by utilizing college SPARK champions (together with college students and academics) alongside different companions similar to Junior Achievement Nigeria (JAN) and Lagos State authorities to inculcate the SPARK values at school youngsters.
One different function was the ground-breaking ceremony for the Lagos State authorities’s OCAAT (One Neighborhood At A Time) initiative to offer the Main Well being Care Centre at Ijedodo neighborhood in Alimosho LGA. Arrange as an initiative to enhance the well being and welfare of the members of varied communities in Lagos State, FirstBank partnered the federal government on the mission as a part of its contribution to world efforts to satisfy some particular Sustainable Growth Targets (SDGs).
There have been additionally webinars: a basic webinar with the sub-theme: “Schooling: Does Kindness have a Position?”; and a millennial webinar with the sub-theme: “Making the Cyber World a Kinder Place” which sought to proffer resolution to the query of how individuals may develop into kinder on social media platforms.
All of the previous editions of FirstBank Sustainability Week spotlight the longstanding and relentless dedication of FirstBank not solely to proceed to dwell but in addition to evangelise the message of company accountability and sustainability.
Given its unmatched pedigree in company accountability and sustainability, FirstBank has earned the proper to deal with all different company organisations in addition to people and teams on issues of sustainability. The financial institution has earned its proper to the individuals’s viewers.
It’s towards this backdrop that FirstBank’s forthcoming 2022 Company Accountability and Sustainability Week ought to be welcomed by different banks and company residents, regardless of business, as a chance to come back collectively and take classes from Nigeria’s foremost company citizen with regard to company accountability and sustainability.
FirstBank doesn’t take into account itself too massive to take classes from different company residents in areas the place they’ve distinguished themselves. So different company residents shouldn’t really feel too massive to take classes from FirstBank on this space the place the financial institution stands extremely distinguished.
Or can anybody declare to not know that if the idea of company accountability and sustainability have been to be represented by one company citizen per nation on a world map the place international locations are denoted by their foremost company entities, it’s unarguable that FirstBank can be the corporate eminently representing Nigeria on that map?