Cisco CEO Chuck Chuck Robbins doesn’t think corporate social responsibility will be a pillar of business for much longer.
“I think we’re going to move to a place where you’re not going to talk about CSR anymore, you’re just going to talk about what you do as a company,” Robbins said during a panel Monday at the Coins2Day Global Forum in Toronto.
The panel was a part of a discussion about inclusive growth in business, alongside Royal Bank of Canada president and CEO David McKay and Dale Ponder, a national co-chair of Toronto-based business law firm Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt.
“I think that increasingly people recognize that this is good business, and it’s great when good business coincides with the right thing to do,” Ponder said. “I’m not saying that that’s always the case, but I think people increasingly expect this of our corporate icons.”
“There is a lot of empirical proof—we’ve studied ourselves, linking your corporate purpose and engaged employee-base can help performance in the marketplace,” McKay added.
Speaking on the importance of diversity, Robbins said: “The great news about that discussion is we’re not having to even convince employees anymore that it’s important or help them understand why it’s important.”
“A decade ago it was like, ‘Well, it’s the right thing to do,'” Robbins added. “Today it’s still the right thing to do but now people understand the underlying value that you get from having a diverse team.”
