Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is the responsibility of everyone in Sabic, and the company’s commitment to corporate social responsibility reflects the way it views all its activities in a holistic sense.

First and foremost there is a need to meet legal obligations, achieving profitability to reward those who place their trust in it financially. But Sabic is also very much part of many other communities; there are many others to whom it recognises obligations.

At every level
The board and senior executive team recognise CSR’s importance and are committed to seeing its principles reflected at every level and in every activity undertaken by the group.
Throughout Sabic there are individuals whose remit includes CSR matters. Their efforts are reinforced, supported and driven forward by a dedicated CSR department itself.
The department offers cross-group co-ordination, a resource of trained CSR expertise, and a network of communications which ensures that good ideas and initiatives get shared around and applied wherever they can bring benefits.
Within and between different units and levels, a continuing dialogue and consultation process helps ensure that CSR principles and objectives are sound, clearly defined, widely shared, and understood in terms of their implications for the everyday actions of every Sabic and affiliate employee.

Healthy Staff
Sabic is a major employer, responsible for providing its 19,000 employees worldwide with a safe and healthy workplace.
Safety is a challenging issue: Sabic deals in hydrocarbons, putting potentially volatile substances through processes of immense complexity and precision. Maintaining safety in such circumstances demands an enormous effort of planning, training and, not least, caring.  But the company applies the most rigorous criteria and insist on meeting the most demanding international standards, in line with its absolute commitment to keeping its people safe and treating them well and fairly at all times.
One of Sabic’s first CSR initiatives  was its efforts to reduce environmentally harmful emissions resulting from the flaring-off of gas at oil wells.
But the responsibilities towards the people extend beyond merely helping them stay healthy and keeping them safe. Sabic believes also in helping each and every one achieve their potential. Again, it believes that fully engaged people, growing and flourishing, are better for business.
The company has numerous initiatives designed to help our people be the best they can: developing their abilities, providing the best educational support, raising career competency, and offering out-of-kingdom scholarship programmes where they can complete undergraduate or postgraduate studies.
This level of support extends beyond staff to encompass their families, where initiatives include a summer internship training programme for employees’ children, an annual picnic for them and their parents, sports tournaments and many others.

Supporting Communities
Within Saudi Arabia, Sabic undertakes and disseminate studies which alert local businesses (and potential businesses) to some of the investment opportunities opened up by Sabic’s activities. Many smaller businesses prosper under Sabic’s wings, generating business opportunities and creating jobs for local people. Sabic wants to play an active role in developing society for the good of all.
Sabic and its employees are also very much part of the kingdom’s wider communities. By its actions, Sabic sets an example.
In 2006, Sabic continued supporting charity and education projects both within Saudi Arabia and elsewhere: cultural, training, and educational scientific programmes; support to universities and other educational institutions, and for the gifted and talented; support for disabled and special needs care societies, and for associations concerned with health care; and efforts and programmes aimed for the protection of the environment.
Sabic also supports the ‘Al-Ber’ fund which assists those in need, both inside and outside the company.  It also sponsors many conferences, seminars and special events that raise awareness, disseminate ideas, and bring together the world’s best brains to consider issues of pressing concern to people. Not just ‘green’ issues, but also cultural, social and intellectual.
Sabic wants to be a catalyst in its communities: supporting human endeavours for good and for self-improvement and for service to the community; getting behind those ideas and giving real, tangible support to the people nurturing them.
The company wants its people, their children, and the wider communities to be not just healthy and safe, but happy, and creative, and living up to their full potential, both drawing on and contributing to the interconnected ‘holistic’ well-being of their societies.
Direct social services activities during 2006 included donations to the Prince Mohammed bin Fahd University; the popular campaign for the relief of the Lebanese people; sponsorship for the fifth ‘Colour their lives’ auction organised by the Disabled Children Association in Jeddah; sponsorship for the Jeddah Economic Forum; sponsorship for the tenth Gulf Engineering Forum; Prince Salman Centre for Disability Research; the Mothers’ Development Endowment, run by Al Nahda Women’s Charity; and to the national project of education and ambulatory outreach organised by the Saudi Red Crescent Society.
In 2006, Sabic Americas donated towards training and research activities, and on causes related to the Rice University Centre for Education, Arab American Community Centre and Montgomery County Interfaith Hospital.
During the year, Sabic Europe donated in support of community services programmes; and there were also contributions from Sabic offices in Asia.

Getting Better
CSR is a relatively recent arrival on the corporate landscape. For the most part it is little more than a systematisation of good business practice: doing business fairly, looking after people well, trying to limit impact on the environment.
Sabic is aware, however, that there are significant benefits to be gained by adopting a more systematic approach: by working incrementally towards a situation where every one does the right thing in any given situation as a matter of course.
Sabic is currently mid-way through a systematic and comprehensive audit and review of its CSR strategy and will introduce a new more comprehensive strategy with a view to becoming recognised as a model of CSR best practice within the industry.