Following the developments of the financial crisis leading to a social and societal crisis, there is an urgent need to restore confidence and references to citizens and consumers.
The vocational training Hermes-OSR project supported under the European program Leonardo da Vinci had anticipated this need. It aims at supporting the development of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) through a training and coaching offer to the Human Resources stakeholders in SMEs.
After a training needs analysis in several European countries, the HeRmeS-R (HR for Human Resources and SR for Social Responsibility) has rapidly expanded its offering to an OSR (Organisation Social Responsibility) approach, which is modular, flexible and adaptable according to the target groups, cultures, sectors and sizes of organization. Since then, it has been renamed Hermes-OSR.
The Hermes-OSR project focused on the design and the validation of following actions to support the deployment of social responsibility in SMEs and in the whole supply chain:
- to train future auditors and operational staff who will do controls and social and environmental audits in the enterprises;
- to train the trainers/tutors on skills and competences they will need, to manage and implements these vocational action-training sessions in the subcontracting enterprises, so that they implement HR policies and processes taking into account the social responsibility.
4 main modules of training of trainers / facilitators and their tools are available in a training-action mode:
- “Awareness”;
- “Introduction to CSR / OSR”;
- “Training of operators in the CSR / OSR and for deployment”;
- and an “executive MBA in CSR / RSO” module.
The Hermes-OSR project in its final phase delivered pilot seminars (training of trainers) and test seminars (training HR actors in SME by the trainers trained in pilot seminars) in various European countries.
In addition, the project Hermes-OSR in collaboration with the partner FLA (the Fair Labor Association) has come to define a label oriented OSR that goes beyond the social audit and which is also adapted to SMEs. It is a label to empower people who will then enable the SMEs to operate and implement a pragmatic OSR approach, supported by benchmark possibilities.
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Some of the HERMES-OSR outputs
4 main modules of training of trainers / facilitators and their tools are available in a training-action mode:
- “Awareness”;
- “Introduction to CSR / OSR”;
- “Training of operators in the CSR / OSR and for deployment”;
- and an “executive MBA in CSR / RSO” module.
The Hermes-OSR project in its final phase delivered pilot seminars (training of trainers) and test seminars (training HR actors in SME by the trainers trained in pilot seminars) in various European countries.
In addition, the project Hermes-OSR in collaboration with the partner FLA (the Fair Labor Association) has come to define a label oriented OSR that goes beyond the social audit and which is also adapted to SMEs. It is a label to empower people who will then enable the SMEs to operate and implement a pragmatic OSR approach, supported by benchmark possibilities.
Further info: www.hermes-osr.eu (and as well an e-learning repository at http://hermes.learning-cat.eu)