The FINANCIAL — “There was a time in Georgia when CSR activities weren’t prioritized by businesses. But this tendency has changed. Nowadays all of the international hotels existing in Georgia pay a great deal of attention to CSR activities,” said Eka Lomidze, Human Resources Manager at the Radisson Blu Iveria Hotel.
“It’s not been long since our hotel first opened and that’s why we haven’t yet managed to do many things. But what we have managed is that we significantly decreased using electro energy, by about 10%. Last year we participated in "Earth Hour'. For one hour we turned off the lights in the hotel and in this way we voted for the earth. This year we have many plans in this regard; we hope to take part in the big, environmental programme "Clean up Georgia" in September, if we will be able to do this,” Lomidze said.
“There are many reasons for making business responsible towards the community. First of all we are responsible towards our staff and guests. We must create a safe and healthy environment for them. Another point is that business shouldn’t be oriented only on profit. Businesses should remember that they are surrounded by people and the community. Therefore they should contribute to their development. At the Radisson, we have our own special philosophy, called Responsible Business, which consists of social responsibility, and environmental responsibility ,” Lomidze said.
“We are all members of society. You should not only think about yourself but the people around you and the environment too. To be socially responsible does not mean only Charity which is collecting money and giving it to needy people. Social Responsibility has many other forms: Training people and helping them to obtain certain knowledge which will help them in their further professions, taking care of old historical buildings and monuments, giving blood, collecting presents, volunteering, this is what we teach our employees during "Responsible Business training” Lomidze said.
“Our programme – Responsible Business, was developed in 2001 by our company Rezidor Hotel Group. It immediately became award winning programme. Today many people pay attention to how responsible a company is and this issue has become very important for us. Companies should create a healthy, safe environment which is most important. Businesses should take part in the life of society. No matter whether it is charity, planting trees or different kinds of other activities directed toward society” Lomidze said.
“When speaking about CSR, environment protection is very important for us. All of us have quite a big influence on the environment. We always try to show our employees why it is important to save energy or water. We teach them why we should sort our trash we produce.
Radisson BLU Iveria Hotel managed to find an organization which takes used paper from the hotel for recycling. Radisson is a member of Green Office. “We have a system of Green recycling and we are very happy that we have found an organization which can take used papers,” Lomidze added.
Georgia generally is considered as a country with lots of water, however, what we some times forget is that in the world there is only 1% of water which can be used for drinking purposes. Therefore, we should take care of what we have. Business influences environment a lot, you will be surprised to learn how much water is consumed during one night in the hotel for example. That's why we teach our employees how to take care of water and have a towel programme for a Guests called "Water, Water" If our guests want to participate in the programme and therefore save some water, they may communicate to us that they do not want their towels to be washed.” Lomidze said.
One part of social responsibility are our employees. We have a Code of Ethic business which we fallow with no exception. It includes statements such as: We respect law, we do not discriminate anybody for any reason, we respect each other. And we really respect our employees and take care of them. We try to create safe and good working environment for them. All our employees have insurance, they always receive their salaries on time, each month we choose Employee of the Month. Caring about staff is one of the most important things for any business
As Lomidze says, with time society has more questions about awareness of CSR. She says that the Radisson has quite big future plans.
“Our hotel over the last year has been more involved in charity. We have two big donations boxes for our guests, one is Red Cross and the other a corporate charity box called Childhood Organization. This is an organization created by the Queen of Sweden Silvia. Our main shareholder, the family of Carlson, is one of the co-founders of this programme,” Lomidze said.
“This programme exists in 14 countries and has about 110 ongoing projects. The motto of the programme is "Give a Childhood to Children". This is very close to the mentality of the Rezidor Hotel Group. They are helping children who have no family, children who are living in different institutions, young mothers and so on. I hope that this organization will some day enter Georgia as well,” Lomidze said.
“We have chosen the shelter house Satnoeba which demands help from everyone. 25 elderly people live there and most of them have dementia, they can’t even remember their names. None of the members of the organization receive any money and so completely depend on charity. Our employees always gather money and take some needed products to them. We are taking part as well in helping a centre for children, with daun sindrome” Lomidze told The FINANCIAL.
“Once a year we always give them different presents at Christmas. We also supported performance of "Cinderella" and "Knight Fewer" by Tbilisi Piano. Many expats participated in those performances. We provided them with free space for rehearsals last year as well as this year. We have a great deal of respect towards those people since all the income gathered from performance is distributed between Georgian orphanages given to orphanages.” Lomidze said.
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