Ading A.D. Skopje, Gemak Trade, INET, KPMG, Macedonia Ltd. Skopje, Macedonian Telecommunication – Skopje and TTK Bank AD Skopje, on May 26 2010, in the EU Info Center established the BUSINESS LEADER FORUM of MACEDONIA.His Excellency, Mr. Erwan Fouéré, a Special Representative and Head of Delegation of the European Union hosted the Ceremony for the launch of the Business Leaders’ Forum. 

The six enterprises signed a Memorandum of Understanding, with which they voluntarily agree to integrate a set of social, ethical and ecologic principles to run the business.

THE BUSINESS LEADERS’ FORUM is a platform that shall unite the small-size, medium-size and big-size enterprises, in which the business is run in a responsible way.Within the Business Leaders’ Forum, the member enterprises will receive full support during the processes of planning, implementing, assessing and improving the activities of social corporate social responsibility. The goal is to enhance sustainable business growth, which shall raise the profit of the enterprise, and shall simultaneously generate positive economic, social and environmental effects for the society development, as a whole. 

The Center for Institutional Development-CIRA is the administrator of this platform. Every enterprise that shall agree to apply the principles of the Business Leaders’ Forum shall be able to become its member. Our mission within BLF is tо recognize societal challenges, identify the development needs of the members and promote sustainable business growth. By supporting members to plan, implement, assess and improve their CSR activities we aim to help them increase company profit and produce positive economic, social and environmental effects for community development.

What is BLF

Business Leaders Forum is an international initiative introduced by the Prince of Wales in 1990 with an aim to enhance the contribution that companies can make to sustainable development. Since then, BLF has been spread all around the world and currently is present in 90 countries (www.iblf.org). In the Macedonian neighborhood there are different initiatives that are very much close to the idea of Business Leaders Forum: for example in Croatia this idea is entitled as Croatian Business Council for Sustainable Development (www.hrpsor.hr), in Serbia there is a Business Leaders Forum of Serbia administered by Smart Kolektive (www.smartkolektiv.org/cms/item/csr/en/BLF+Serbia), in Greece the initiative is promoted by the Hellenic Network for Corporate Social Responsibility, a business-driven non-profit organization (www.csrhellas.org) and in Bulgaria through the Business Leaders Forum of Bulgaria (www.bblf.bg).   

The Macedonian model of the Business Leaders Forum as the first initiate of this type is based on the experiences and best practices from the Business Leaders Forum in Slovakia (www.blf.sk).

What is the role of the BLF

BLF is a Platform established by the businesses and for the businesses. BLF members are deciding which form the Platform will have and what are going to be their activities. They are setting their own annual agenda supported by administrator of the Platform (usually a non-profit business driven organization).

BLF provides strategic counseling to member companies by initiating debates, experts’ meetings, workshops, trainings, conferences and etc to enable them to understand and respond to the development challenges that they face, particularly when operating in transition and emerging economies. Additionally, BLF helps businesses to get connected with other organizations and develop successful cross-sector partnerships. In BLF, companies are represented by the TOP management, usually CEO or the President of their Board, but the working meetings are attended by their assign representative (usually Manager for CSR, PR Manager, HR Manager and etc) depending from the suggested topic. 

Members of the BLF are top business and development leaders that are addressing social development issues as part of their core business operations in order to provide more effective economic and social growth. Through networking and cooperating between themselves, BLF members are learning from each other how to improve their business operations, cut costs and increase their profitability and in the same time how to improve their positive impact in the community. They participate on the BLF meetings, share experiences, implement joint initiatives, raise public awareness and promote Corporate Social Responsibility through the annual researches, publications, BLF Newsletter, BLF website, different events, BLF Awards and are raising the national standards for making a business by cooperating with their peers from other BLFs and take benefits from joint membership in different international initiatives as CSR Europe, Business in the Community etc. 

The need for establishing BLF in Macedonia

During the month of September 2009, CIRa organized six info-sessions around Macedonia in order to spread the idea among the businesses. Based on the discussions with around 54 companies that are practicing CSR, the arguments for establishing the BLF have become even stronger. Companies in the local context are faced with the lack of information for the temporary trends and world known best practices of corporate social responsibility; they can’t afford the high fees for participation in different international CSR initiatives; there is a lack of coordination, mutual cooperation and peer education between the Macedonian companies; cooperation with the media for promotion of good company examples is very weak and most of the journalists need additional education and literacy for concept of social responsibility; there is a need for governmental support to foster social responsible behavior (for example one of the criteria for participation in the public tenders to be corporate social responsible of the applicants).

Benefits from the membership

Experiences are showing that BLFs member companies by integrating different aspects of CSR in their operations have improved the productivity, decreased the cost for operations, achieved better effectiveness, increased their competitiveness and improved the image in the public.

BLF creates additional value to its members by helping companies to:

1. Build the trust with different stakeholders as investors, employees, clients/customers and the community by increasing the transparency and fight against corruption.
2. Redesign the business processes by applying the best CSR principles in their work that will generate lower costs, increased productivity, better efficiency and sustainable profitability.
3. Get the first hand information about the trends, standards and world practices on CSR that will enhance the management to make better strategic decisions on future investments.
4. Raise the national standards for running the business on a higher level and set new criteria for competitiveness. 
5. Initiate joint activities for improvement of the business environment. (as changes in the legislation, lobbying, participation in policy making etc).