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Boardroom briefing with JENNIFER GNANA
Al Bawaba Ltd.
3BL Associates is not your typical company. Siblings Leena and Tariq Al Olaimy, who are behind this enterprise, are urging Bahraini firms to be meaningful capitalists.
Beach clean ups, donations and charitable acts spring to mind when talking about corporate social responsibility (CSR) to most.
Leena Al Olaimy admits to being guilty of the same “marketing driven” approach to CSR, when she began her career in the communications consulting field.
Ms Al Olaimy, who is managing director of sustainability consultancy and think-do-tank 3BL Associates is spearheading a radical approach to make companies and societies more sustainable.
Her brother and co-founder, Tariq Al Olaimy, differs in opinion about what is radical when it comes to marrying profit and sustainability in corporations.
“We are almost conservatives,” Mr Al Olaimy said.
“What is radical is companies thinking that they can continue making profits without caring about the environment.”
“Only mad men and economists think that you can have infinite growth on a finite planet, according to a saying,” said the 24-year-old, who attended and tracked negotiations at the Doha Climate Change conference last year.
“The way we are living at the moment is just radical.”
For Ms Al Olaimy, the journey towards social entrepreneurship began when she was studying globalisation at Dartmouth University in the US.
Having worked with non-governmental organisations, private and public sector companies, she realised that firms and their employees can reach out and be inclusive of communities.
“I knew that I wanted to make the world a better place as generic as that sounds, but I didn’t know where I fit,” she said.
During her first class at Dartmouth, Ms Al Olaimy was drawn to the work of Professor Muhammad Yunus, who won the Nobel Peace Prize together with Grameen Bank for his work in micro-finance in Bangladesh.
Inspired by his social entrepreneurship success, which empowered women in the South Asian country, Ms Al Olaimy devoted herself to reading, learning and applying those lessons to Bahrain.
One of CSR’s godfathers John Elkington’s book The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets that Change the World, first brought the term ‘triple bottom-line’ into prominence.
“I read more about it and it just made more sense,” said Ms Al Olaimy.
“On the one hand, you can’t be an angry activist expecting businesses to not make money and only care about society.
“You still need money to be sustainable and the whole approach really resonated with me.”
When the siblings returned to Bahrain in 2009, the concept of CSR was still very nascent and underdeveloped in the country.
With a global outlook and an empathetic approach to developing communities and individuals, they started 3BL Associates in the last quarter of 2010.
Inspired by Mr Elkington’s triple bottom-line growth strategy, which incorporates social equity, environmental sustainability and economic prosperity, they incorporated the motto as the name for their firm 3BL Associates.
Though 2011, wasn’t a good year, last year presented much opportunity as organisations slowly realised the importance of being socially responsible.
“Even at the beginning of last year, not many people knew what we did or who we were, but we still have a long way to go,” said Ms Al Olaimy.
“We are now at a stage where organisations have started approaching us, rather than us knocking on doors.”
Despite a tough economic climate and resistance from those schooled in traditional CSR, the firm has made much progress.
Mr Al Olaimy, who calls himself a “reformed banker”, has been an ardent advocate of diabetes awareness.
His winning business plan at Global Entrepreneurship Week 2009, which was based on a social enterprise focussed on diabetes education, was initially dismissed by the judging panel as an ‘NGO project’.
Having toured India as an adventurer with The Blue Camels to raise awareness about the disease, he is all set to launch an online education and community platform on diabetes.
3BL Associates, in collaboration with the Bahrain Diabetes Society and the Blue Camels will launch www.diabetes.bh next month.
“Health of staff is important for productivity and saving costs in the long term for companies,” said Mr Al Olaimy.
“Johnson and Johnson created a scheme, where they helped employees to be healthy, tailoring their own fitness programmes and having gyms at the workplace,” added Ms Al Olaimy.
“It actually saved the company $300 million in healthcare costs and they also cut down on absentee days.
“There are a lot of ways you can find what works for your business and is also good for the society.”
Going by the principle of ‘give a man a fish and he will eat for a day but give him a fishing rod and he will eat for a lifetime’, the firm urges companies to empower and build from within.
“We’re not tree-huggers,” said Ms Al Olaimy.
“We are not angry activists asking you to do unreasonable things and make you feel guilty.
“What we are trying to do is help you to be sustainable for your own interest.
“We’ve had conservative clients, who have come round to our way of thinking because we are not asking them to hand out money.
“We ask them not to just donate but empower people.”
3BL Associates, which calls itself a ‘think-do-tank’, involves multi-stakeholder innovation around social impact besides research work that regular think tanks do.
According to the Responsible Business Survey conducted by 3BL Associates, 91 per cent of respondents, who included Bahraini business executives said that there must be incentives given by the government to encourage CSR.
With the global financial industry rethinking traditional approaches to business, 3BL Associates consider themselves to be in the right place and at the right time to do good.
“The financial services industry is undergoing a major introspection,” said Mr Al Olaimy.
“It needs to re-imagine by not just rendering services, but providing meaningful capitalism.” jennifer@gdn.com.bh
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