Day 13: Friday, June 19

The day began appropriately. The girls donned their skirts (or formal trousers), and the guys put on their jackets and ties. We were ready for business. The theme of the day? “Corporate Social Responsibility and Human Rights in the Labour Market.” On our way to Novozymes, a Danish biotech company and world leader in the production of enzymes and microorganisms for industrial use, Alena, a Danish fellow and current Copenhagen Business School student, was talking about the company’s progressive and socially minded approach to business, an approach that, she said, appealed greatly to the younger generation.

Later, inside one of Novozyme’s conference rooms, Ms. Mette Olsen, a sustainability development consultant for the company, unknowingly agreed with Alena. According to her presentation, “Sustainability and Human Rights,” a company wants to be sustainable for four reasons: because of the company’s long-run responsibility toward shareholders; because doing so makes it appealing to young, potential employees (people like Alena); because customers will want to buy its products; and because investors will want to invest in it. Ms. Olsen’s presentation could very well by summed up in the company’s vision: “We imagine a future where our biological solutions create the necessary balance between better business, cleaner environment and better lives.”

In a later presentation, “CSR [Corporate Social Responsibility] and the Global Financial Crisis,” Mr. Sune Skadesgaard Thorsen pointed out the quantitative discrepancy between Novozyme’s seven minimum standards in the field of human rights, as stated in Ms. Olsen’s presentation, and the 30 articles comprising the U.N.’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Mr. Thorsen asked, How does one cover 30 articles in seven minimum standards?

One such standard is non-discrimination, one that, as the low number of women in top management positions in Denmark shows, is not always adhered to, Mr. Thorsen said. The word “discrimination,” he added, is not part of Danish public discourse. “It’s not at all recognized that we [in Denmark] have discrimination.”
Elaborating on Novozyme’s Department of Human Resources coach Lene Munch-Petersen’s presentation, “Corporate Social Responsibility in Denmark,” Frederik Thuesen, researcher at SFI, the Danish National Center for Social Research, offered a brief historical overview of the Danish, or Nordic, model in his presentation, “Labour Law and CSR in Denmark.” The model, he said, was established in 1899 Denmark and was based on collective agreements between trade unions and employers. Flash forward 110 years, and some of the contemporary challenges to this model, Mr. Thuesen said, are: individualization of the—as well as a multinational and multicultural—labor force and globalization, which, he added, creates less stable social relations, puts pressure on salaries, and conduces to outsourcing to other countries. Like Ms. Olsen, Mr. Thuesen also remarked the difficulty of monitoring outside suppliers’ adherence to CSR principles.

The set of presentations (six in total) concluded on a befitting note. Speaking on “Danish Companies Acting Internationally: Ethics and Responsibilities,” Ms. Birgitte Bang Nielsen, head of CSR at IFU, a Danish self-governing fund associated with the Ministry for Development Cooperation, stressed the necessity of adhering to CSR principles. “CSR has to be on the [corporate] agenda,” she said. And increasingly, she added, contradicting one of Mr. Thorsen’s earlier remarks, it is.
After Novozymes, we headed to KVINFO, Denmark’s Centre for Information on Women and Gender, near Christiansborg Palace. “KVINFO” is the merging of the Danish words for “women” and “information.” The theme there was “The Challenges of Integration and Inclusiveness in the Labour Market: Mentor Programs as the Mean.” KVINFO is a mentor program that matches ethnically Danish women (who act as mentors) with immigrant women (the mentees). The program is mainly sponsored by the Ministry of Integration and it helps mentees get jobs in Denmark. The women are matched according to their background. For instance, doctors with doctors, businesswoman with businesswoman. KVINFO Director Helene Bach quoted a mentee referring to her mentor as her “human GPS,” that is, a guide in unfamiliar terrain, someone who can advise in things such as establishing networks, taking advantage of one’s academic background, and writing applications. The mentees, who number more than 4,400 since the program began, come from 127 different countries, Ms. Bach said. Outside of Copenhagen, there are programs in Esbjerg, Odense, and Århus.

On our visit to KVINFO, we also met Rana, a mentee, and Joan, Rana’s mentor, who have met regularly for the last five years. Rana was interested in starting a business and Joan has much experience in this area. It was inspiring to hear how Joan was able to guide and support Rana without infringing upon Rana's terms and initiative; Rana decided when to meet and what to discuss during the meeting. Joan said she saw her role as mentor as an opportunity to contribute to a positive image of Danes in regards to integration efforts. The idea behind this project is strikingly simple: facilitate the sharing of experience between two women and speed the mentee’s integration into Danish society in the process. Simple but nevertheless effective, this project is certainly worth recognizing, for it is truly humanity in action!

-Luis and Sofie.