Corporate responsibility

Barbara Zastrozynski works for a large insurance company in Duesseldorf. She's an IT manager in charge of a team of more than 50 employees. As part of a training program for her company she volunteered to take part in Changing Sides – for a week she's working with homeless people.

"I was very curious about the whole thing," she says. "As an executive you get to view people more and more simply as a resource. So my interest was to get back to seeing people as people, rather than resources that we allocate to this or that job."

For a week she's been helping to hand out food and coffee in a soup kitchen and taken part in counselling sessions. She was surrounded by people and problems she would never have encountered in her own life. She said it was like living in a different world with men and women who have to struggle for survival on a daily basis.

"I was deeply moved by what I've seen. Especially that day I spent with the streetworkers outside – we've been to places I'd never been to before, met people I never had contact with before," she says.

Strengthening corporate culture

The idea behind Changing Sides comes from Switzerland. It was developed especially for to executives, with the goal of strengthening their social skills. Nine years ago, the concept was introduced in Germany. Maria Wrede of a volunteers organisation in Cologne, is head of the local Changing Sides project.

"It's very important that companies realize that they have a social responsibility. And they can fulfil that responsibility only through their employees. The best place to start is at the top, to provide a good example. This will help corporate culture and strengthen ethics within the company," Wrede says.

So far, around 1,000 managers have participated in the program, the insurance company where Barbara Zastrozynksi works sends people on a regular basis to spend a week with the Changing Sides program. Mario Vaupel is head of human resources at the insurance giant.

"It's quite important for the management to see that there are other areas in life where 'managing' is also very difficult," he explains. "The problems and challenges that a drug addict faces are much more difficult and they still have to get by. We are convinced that our management can really learn something from that experience. They see how comparatively easy their daily tasks are if viewed from a completely different perspective."

Vaupel is in charge of selecting and sending the companies managers to take part in Changing Sides. The cost is 2,500 euros per person, but he's convinced that in the end the company can profit from that investment. His goal is that even more of the staff take part in the program so that a growing sense of social responsibility can impact on the corporate culture on a wider basis.

Autor: Leyla Winther (ai)
Editor: Chuck Penfold