Corporate social responsibility –
a win-win possibility for all
Heikki Seppälä
The Finnish Association on Intellectual and
Developmental Disabilities (FAIDD)
Marburg, May 8th, 2014
People with ID and their employment
in Finland
• The population of Finland: 5 450 000
• 45 000 people with ID, 23 000 are 18-65 years old
• ca. 300 day centers for people with ID around the country,
14 000 people taking part in their activities
– activities for people with severe/profound ID: 3 800
– workshops (assembly and packing of products; textile work and
weaving; wood and metal work; art): 7 700
– 2 500-3000 people are ”outplaced” from day centers to ordinary
workplaces – no job contract, no salary, only a small fee of 5-12€/day
(in addition to disability allowance)
– 350-400 are in paid jobs with normal job contracts
The old system is in crisis, because…
• People with ID are today better educated than before, many have
vocational training  they want real jobs
• The sheltered workshops are full, but more and more people are
coming out of secondary education, looking for work
• The traditional service system based on sheltered workshops is
expensive
• Workshops are segregative, isolated and too much disabilitycentered (instead of being ability-centered)
• Some current practices violate the human rights of users (eg.
working without job contract / salary)
• No other goal than to ”keep them there”? No innovative, goaldirected developments in recent years.
The society is calling for a change, too
• The baby boom generations (born 1945-50) are retiring, new
workforce is needed to fill the gap left by them
• The UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities has
enhanced a major change in the values and objectives of the
disability policy in the country
• More taxpayers are needed to finance the welfare society; people
with disabilities are seen as one possible potential
•  New impulses to open the doors for people with
disabilities to the labour market are needed
A Finnish experiment of corporate social
responsibility
Corporate social responsibility CSR
• Not just giving money to charity, but…
• “A company’s sense of responsibility towards the community and
environment (both ecological and social) in which it operates.
Companies express this citizenship
• (1) through their waste and pollution reduction processes,
• (2) by contributing educational and social programs,
• (3) by earning adequate returns on the employed resources.”
(http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/corporate-social-responsibility.html)
FAIDD and CSR
• Recently, FAIDD has invested a lot of effort to approaching some
big companies, inviting them to discuss issues of social
responsibility.
– A NGO like FAIDD can give companies new opportunities to join social
programs which promote the citizenship and participation of people
with special needs
• Our campaign to promote the employment of people with
intellectual disabilities is one of the first results of this effort
• We wanted to try, if talking about CSR would open new ways to
contact individual employers
– i.e. rather to give employers new possibilities to show their CSR to the
community than to ask them to employ someone with ID
• A motivated partner from the private sector was needed to make
this happen
K-retailers´ Association
• K-chain is one of the two major chains of shops in Finland. The
K-retailers´ Association (KA) has >1200 shopkeeper members
around the country
• As a part of its 100th anniversary 2012, KA wanted to promote
the employment of people with ID in K-groceries, department
stores, fuel stations, hardware stores etc.
– This was the main CSR theme of KA in 2012
– This was decided at the highest level of KA organisation
• KA chose FAIDD to do the actual job, i.e. to transform the big
CSR idea into concrete actions in the communities where the
shopkeepers operate
• (
)
An unholy alliance…
• A project contract between FAIDD and KA was made
– At first April-December 2012, then continued till August 2013
• The role and contribution of each was defined
– KA gave the money (80 000€ altogether)
– KA gave FAIDD the necessary information to contact the >1200
shopkeepers, plus the necessary knowhow about shopkeepers, their
needs and challenges etc.
– KA used its own media and contact networks to encourage the
shopkeepers to join the project and employ people with ID
– FAIDD gave the knowhow about supported employment, defined the
rules (only paid jobs and normal job contracts, only with the support
from local job coaches) and did the actual job
• Continuous monitoring of the project together  mutual trust
One coordinator, a laptop and a phone
• A professional, experienced job coach was recruited to coordinate
the project
• Her main task: to help the interested shopkeepers and job seekers
to find each other, in cooperation with local job coaches
• An information letter by e-mail to every >1200 K-shopkeeper was
sent four times May2012 – Feb2013
– What is the campaign about? Corporate social responsibility.
– Why is it a good idea to employ someone with ID? What could he/she
do in the shop?
– How is it done – some practical advice
– How to proceed?
Then it started to happen
• The e-mail campaign to the members of KA resulted in closer
negotiations with 66 individual shopkeepers around the
country
– … and 60 local job coaches
– … and 15 local employment offices
• 102 articles in newspapers and magazines telling about the
project; 8 times on TV or radio news; a DVD
• Presentations in many seminars and congresses; continuous
reporting also to the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the
Ministry of Employment and Economy
25 shopkeepers hired a new
worker during the campaign:
• many of them operate in the
Helsinki metropolitan area,
where there are both people,
shops and established SE
organisations
• in 8 cases the employee was
the first person with ID in the
community who was employed
with normal job contract
• in every 25 cases the initiative
to hire someone with ID came
from the shopkeeper, in the
spirit of CSR
• many of these employers had
someone with intellectual
disability in the family or in the
neigbourhood
26 job contracts
• 23/26: the local employment office granted a wage subsidy to
cover a part of the salary of the employee
– This helped the employers to take the risk – for many of them this
was the first time to have someone with ID in their staff
• 12/26 job contracts were made for 1 year or longer
– many contracts are now permanent
– 1/26 contract was terminated because of problems; the shopkeeper
employed another worker with ID (with success, this time)
– 25 shopkeepers, 26 job contracts
• 2/26 full time jobs; 24/26 part time jobs, around 20 hours/week
– The possibility to earn money in addition to disability allowance is
strictly limited to 740€ / month; this sets limits to working hours, too
Every process was not successful (41)
• Analysing those cases that did not result in employing someone
with ID gave interesting results 
• Even 14-15 more jobs could have been created, if proper support
for the employer and employee were available:
– The shopkeeper wanted to employ someone with ID, but there was
no SE service (no job coach) in the community (10)
– The local employment office did not want to support employing
someone with disability allowance (7)
– The local services for people with ID did not support their users to
seek for jobs in the open labour market; the local job coach did not
believe in the plan (4)
– Several obstacles of this kind, the process took long and became too
complicated, the shopkeeper got tired and withdrew from the plan (4)
– The local job coach could not find a good candidate for the offered
job (?!?) (3)
• In more than 20 cases the shopkeeper did not want to make a
job contract:
– The shopkeeper had perhaps had for many years an ”outplaced”
worker from the local day center, without job contract, without paying
a proper salary, and did not want to change the status quo (14)
– The shopkeeper contacted the coordinator, but after receiving more
information, withdrew from the project (7)
– The shopkeeper moved to another community during the process (3)
– The shopkeeper hired someone else with special needs than a person
with intellectual disability (2)
• The shopkeeper and the local job coach could not get along with
each other (1)
A guidebook for the shopkeepers
• After the campaign, KA produced (with the assistance of FAIDD) a
guidebook ”Employing a person with intellectual disability” and
distributed the guidebook to all its members and partner
organisations around the country
– The time-limited project led into a permanent good practice
• The guidebook includes a strong recommendation to employ
people with ID to K-shops whenever it is possible and sensible
• Instructions to making a job contract, defining the salary, dealing
with local employment officials and looking for necessary supports
are included.
• This is the first guidebook of this kind in Finland which is published
by an employer organisation!
Inputs and outputs
• 16 months, 80 000 € - what did we get?
• 25 new jobs for people with intellectual disability
– The number is slowly growing even after the campaign ended
• An impulse to develop better SE services in at least 10
communities around the country
– Practical guidance for 60 job coaches and 15 employment
offices
• Huge and positive media publicity, both for KA and K-shopkeepers
and FAIDD and the people with ID
• A guidebook for the shopkeepers
• New contacts to the relevant ministeries, possibilities to contribute
the future employment strategies in Finland
A learning experience
• An alliance between private sector and a NGO can be very fruitful:
– The NGO can support the company in finding a good way to show
social responsibility through eg. a social program
– The NGO has the necessary knowhow to carry out the plan
– Working together with the private sector is very straightforward; it is
easy to make quick decisions and just go into action
– An alliance with such an organisation as KA is a shortcut to new
contact networks that would otherwise be more or less inaccessible to
a NGO
• Corporate social responsibility is another approach to make sense
in employing someone with disability
– It is important for companies ”to do good to look good”
– The main thing is to get in over the threshold
• A nation-wide alliance like ours can give a strong impulse to
developing the service network and its practices
– There are no success stories without the contribution of competent
job coaches
– The local SE service must be goal-directed, independent, flexible and
available
• The shopkeepers and the people with intellectual disability are not
the problem, but the attitudes and out-of-date practices of the
staff in ID services and employment offices
• Supporting the employment of people with special needs into the
open labour market is not the goal of social services and supports –
why???
• The shopkeepers suffer from high turnover of their part-time
staff – they see people with ID as a real possibility to recruit
reliable, motivated and permanent staff
– There may be even more demand for this kind of staff in these
days, when the economical crisis is continuing
• Using creatively media can support such campaigns and
projects surprisingly well
• Employers need practical help and support, it is not always
about attitudes. E-mail and phone are good tools for giving
these.
• The networks change when the goal is set in employing people
in the open labour market. You have to work together with the
local employment officials and step out from the day center to
meet the possible employers wherever they are.
Think big!
• Larger employers and larger outlets are more likely to employ and
are more able to create customised jobs for people with disabilities
• Smaller employers often have limited volumes of routine work and
they can offer only a few hours of work per week
• But it is easier for individual job coaches to approach small
companies and look for new jobs there
• Big companies require different approach at different level –
sometimes by different people, too
• CSR is something that you can talk about with big bosses
• Learn to think big!
Thank you!