Community engagement roadshow – Chapter 3

“I’m back on the road again, and have now officially reached the mid-way point of our 6 community engagement workshops. With all this travelling, I am beginning to feel like a rockstar, only that I can’t sing or play any instruments and the hoards of middle-aged women in the hotel lobby aren’t giggling like school-girls and wanting to take photos with me but rather with the famous Bosnian crooner, Zelko Samardzic, who happens to be staying at the same hotel.

We are back in Bosnia and Herzegovina, at our steel plant in Zenica which is 90 minutes from Sarajevo. The drive there was beautiful, rolling green hills and sunshine, signs that spring had arrived were everywhere (if only it would follow me back to London). Like the previous two sites, the Corporate Responsibility team here has been amazing and the enthusiasm shown by the 30 participants in these workshops has been unparalleled.

The goal of the workshops is to get a large group of employees, from various parts of the site, together in one room to discuss what corporate responsibility means to them and the business and what role they have in the community engagement process. For some people, it was the first time they had spoken about corporate responsibility and, as our facilitator Igor observed, “it seemed as if they were exploding with thoughts and ideas,” which is very satisfying indeed.

As I leave the screaming fans behind at the hotel, and head off to our next destination, Skopje in Macedonia, our team is becoming a well-oiled, travelling community engagement roadshow – we may not sell out stadiums, but we sure are filling up meeting rooms.”

Author: Tobin Postma, CR Communications – Stay tuned to www.arcelormittal.tv to follow the rest of the chapters of this community engagement series!