“On the road together, stronger together” is the motto behind Socialist Party leader  Caroline Gennez’s weekly Monday visits to businesses  in the Flanders region. She visits companies in many different sectors that distinguish themselves in the area of Socially Responsible Entrepreneurship (Maatschappelijk Verantwoord Ondernemen - MVO) in order to get a good idea of the reality that businesses face and keep a finger on the pulse of business. By doing so, she hopes to be able to transfer new insights and good practise to the political agenda. Caroline Gennez chooses to visit St-Luc

According to Ms. Gennez, she chose St-Luc from among various candidate companies for obvious reasons: "Strong growth in 2009 coupled with good results in the area of a socially responsible staff policy were the reasons behind our wanting to get to know this company better”. As a matter of fact, St-Luc had received 3 HR distinctions in 2009 and 2010: the ADMB Award for exceptional performance in HR in 2009, the provincial Equal Opportunities or "Gelijke Kansen” Prize in 2009 and the Pioneering Diversity "Pioniersprijs Diversiteit” distinction for 2010.

Rewarding Innovation and Socially Responsible Entrepreneurship

Ms. Gennez’s visit took place on 29 March. She met with Managing Director Nico Dhondt, HR head Fanny Dhondt and PR manager Ruth Ameye, taking the time to learn about the company, its products and processes.  She showed genuine interest while talking with a few St-Luc employees about their jobs and gauging the pulse at St-Luc with regard to a number of important issues surrounding business legislation. The Socialist Party leader was noticeably impressed by the ambition of the management team. It was thanks to their well-developed vision based on a persistent strategy within a socially responsible framework that St-Luc gained such positive results. In accordance with this, Socially Responsible Entrepreneurship remains a guiding force behind the redevelopment of various business processes. One thing that Ms. Gennez definitely took away from the various discussions was the need to introduce universally mandatory standards for Socially Responsible Entrepreneurship: "Anyone can say they are applying Responsible Entrepreneurship, but in reality, there are many pitfalls along the way. At the moment it’s still very much a niche, something that is usually one of the first areas to be cut in times of economic crisis, due to a short-sighted vision of doing business. Because there is no standardization, many companies use the Social Responsibility label in order to improve their image, which is unfair for those companies that take Social Responsibility seriously on a daily basis and invest in it.

Ms. Gennez summarized her visit in the following terms: "St-Luc is textbook example of true entrepreneurship in the best sense of the word. It is a family business with focus that still managed to grow and hire new employees despite the crisis. That proves that it pays to innovate and that Socially Responsible Entrepreneurship doesn’t have to be a hollow concept. A company like St-Luc that respects employee diversity and well-being and provides training in-house has a better chance to emerge stronger from the crisis than a company that is only focussed on maximizing profit in the short-term.