Nestlé India: Creating a new CSR strategy

Nestlé India: Creating a new CSR strategy

Introduction

Nestle India limited is a company that deals in Health, nutrition and wellbeing state of a company. It operates in business and transactions that aim at bettering the lifestyles or rather livelihood of the communities of the places where it operates in. It was established in the year 1912 as the Nestle Anglo-Swiss condensed milk company (Pratap & Asia, 2011). It was known for the production of Chocolate, a wide variety of food and beverages, and even instant noodles. In 2011, the government of India introduced a consultation document that aimed at making changes on the companies act. This proposed that the companies should spend 2% of their profits run a long a period of 3 years on the schemes of CSR. This act was implemented and made into a law in 2013 and it was stated that all companies needed to take the action in the financial year that followed. This demanded the senior vice-president of the company to take plan how to adopt the act and make it working. This article analyses how nestle adopted the scheme and the challenges it faced during the process.

Risks faced by Nestle

The organization faces risks of supply challenges, due to climate change and unpredicted risks that lead to issues with the supply of agricultural raw materials. This is the main challenge that is faced by Nestle. The company faced risks of lossess being made at the farm which would make nthe farmers opt for different tasks. The operation cost is too high to a point that adoption of the scheme stressed the company.

Stakeholders

Their stakeholders range from all the people they work with who are in public positions and with a capability of influencing their activities. This includes, their employees, consumers, government, suppliers, non-governmental organizations, communities, academia and even trade associations.

Focus of Nestle’s CSR Activities.

The fact that a larger population of India is invested with malnutrition, water stressed with inadequate drinking water and the fact that the poverty level is high, the company ought to give a helping hand to the community. This involves formulation of activities that will ensure that the community benefits positively. This includes poor living standards in rural areas, malnutrition challenges and water and sanitation issues. The company therefore should formulate the best techniques which will focus on the rural areas where people are below the poverty level. This defines the introduction of a report that aimed at evaluation the company’s social initiatives called company’s corporate social responsibility report (CSR). This is a report that outlined the company’s social activities in development in rural areas, nutrition and water (Patnaik & Sahoo, 2012).

CSR, CSV, and sustainability

The senior vice president of Nestle Company together with his team evaluated the initiatives of the company’s social activities and produced a report that was aimed at improving the social activities of the places where the company worked. This included water, nutrition and rural development. This coincided with the government’s act that required all companies to give a contribution of 2% towards building CSR.

The concept of creating shared value on the other hand contained the requirements that the company had objectives on that coincided with those of the society.  This were water, nutrition and rural development. When the three attributes are compared to those of CSR, there is a relationship (Biswas, Tortajada, Biswas, Joshi & Gupta, 2013). They are coinciding objectives that both the society and the company are aiming at. CSV is a technique that

Sustainability is the ability for both the society and the company to start the objectives, carry them out to the point of success and ensure that they keep on running. It refer to the ability of making the objectives to succeed and ensuring that they are adopted by the society. This involves carrying out civic education on the objectives, how to attain them and giving a helping hand.

Nestle CSR activities

Basing on the amendment by the government, Nestle had to come up with ways and techniques that ensured that it gave its 2% to CSR activities. The activities included:

Nutrition: Basing on the fact that India had a large population being invested with malnutrition, Nestle should give a helping hand to curb this problem. This involves creation of public awareness about nutrition, better cooking techniques, the importance of physical activities and hygiene among the kids. The company should aim at reaching the children with an access to the internet and engage them in learning activities that teach them on the best nutrition activities.

Water and sanitation; Currently India is considered to be among the regions that is water stressed with inadequate safe drinking water (Davidson, 2009). The organization should improvise a technique that aids the farmers so that they reduce the amount of water that they in agriculture. This basically involves creation of public awareness in water conservation techniques and giving an access to sanitation and water.

Rural development; rural development involved environmental conservation, giving relief fund, and involving employee volunteering programs (Ward, Wilson & Zarsky, 2007). In collaboration with NGOs the organization should device ways that enable the rural areas to conserve their environment, engage with the children from the rural areas, and contribute funds that will aid the rural areas to develop.

Nestle CSR’s plan for the next year

The main ways of implementing the activities and ensuring that they meet the success point is through involving the government, NGOs, expert agencies and the community by partnering with them. This activities are considered to be annexure and therefore they are critical. They involve the efforts of the community that are literate. They should therefore cooperate with the stated organization to ensure the success of the activities. In a scenario where the implementation technique is through external implementing agencies, the organization should control and monitor the implementation process.

The implementation of this activities is through cooperation and joining of hands between the government and the society, this therefore means that the company will be aiming at satisfying the same task as the society. This therefore means that the tasks in CSV and CSR should be merged together rather than stopping the CSV. This is because the community depends on them for the supply of milk, and other foods and beverages bearing in mind that their main objectives is to help the consumers to get, maintain and sustain a better health, wellbeing and nutrition.

Conclusion

This analysis of Nestle outlines how the company adopts and the techniques of adoption of CSR. It shows the adoption process of the scheme and the way they should relate with the society to make sure that CSR is a success. The fact that CSR ought to be done in the rural areas where the residents are illiterate means that a lot of public awareness and education needs to be done. This is the best way to make the system yield fruits. Nestle needs to combine the ideas found in CSV and those in CSR and execute the best ideas without undermining any of the two.

Bibliography

Pratap, S. and Asia, M., 2011. Trade union repression in India. Research Paper, Asia Monitor Resource Centre.

Patnaik, B.C.M. and Sahoo, P.K., 2012. An empirical study on consumer behavior towards Cadbury’s India Ltd. and Nestle India Ltd.(A case study of male and female of Cuttack and Bhubaneswar of Odisha). Trans Asian Journal of Marketing & Management Research, 1(1), pp.1-11.

Biswas, A.K., Tortajada, C., Biswas-Tortajada, A., Joshi, Y.K. and Gupta, A., 2013. Creating Shared Value: Impacts of Nestlé in Moga, India. Springer Science & Business Media.

Davidson, K., 2009. Ethical concerns at the bottom of the pyramid: Where CSR meets BOP. Journal of International Business Ethics, 2(1).

Ward, H., Wilson, E. and Zarsky, L., 2007. CSR and developing countries. Sustainable Development Innovation Briefs, 1, pp.1-8.