An Inside View Of Corporate Responsibility
Originally published on Fast Company
After years working in the field, Tim Mohin reflects on the incredible challenges of bringing a conscience to the corporate structure, and what the future holds for the job.
By Tim Mohin
Today, corporate responsibility is a growing profession with a career ladder extending into the executive suite of the world’s largest companies. This is a relatively recent change and the knowledge, skills, and abilities for this emerging field are still being defined. The CR role cuts across almost all business functions and is housed in a wide variety of corporate departments. Similarly, there is enormous variability in the job responsibilities, ranging from the art of communications, to the technically demanding field of environmental management.
Corporate responsibility is, in fact, a real job with real responsibilities, unique pressures, and serious demands. While rewarding on many levels, the job of a corporate treehugger can be frustrating, because you will always be something of a “stranger in a strange land”--meaning that many of your colleagues will not understand what you do or how your work adds value to the company. When you work in this field, you will have to perfect your 30-second “elevator speech” about what is corporate responsibility, and how your role enhances the company brand and its attractiveness to employees and investors. At times you may feel like a metronome--vacillating between the euphoria stemming from your laudable accomplishments and the dejection from the feeling that your role in the corporate power structure sits somewhere between superfluous overhead and oblivion. There have been many moments in my corporate treehugger career when I was on top of the world and many other times when the late comedian Rodney Dangerfield’s catchphrase summed it up well: “I get no respect.”
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