Víctor Guedez: Through education we build social capital

Education must be joined to other factors in order to achieve the transformation of society. “The premise is to understand that education by itself cannot build social structure, but at the same time, without education we cannot build it”.

Yudeima Sotillo

The relevance given to education by a society acquires a strategic dimension to raise its development levels. However, it needs to be complemented with other factors in order to build a better society.

For Víctor Guedez, president of the Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility Consultants (Cerse), the premise lies in understanding that education by itself cannot build social structure, “But, at the same time, without education, we cannot build it”.

This CSR scholar believes that education is the factor through which social capital may be built, but there is no way to do it unless all effects are joined, such as the media, public institutions, corporations and any agent that has power over society. “For that reason, I believe that families, the media, corporations, are education agents, whether explicitly or implicitly”.

This means that the efforts of the entire society are required to build social structure. In this sense, Guedez talks about the five factors derived from “social capital”, that are to be sought in order to achieve change in our environment: Understanding (of the other), trust (in others), critical conduct (to see ourselves from within), associative capacity (relation with peers) and ethical behavior (being in peace with ourselves). These are the factors that construct social structure. In the corporate area, this idea is equivalent to the idea that, for a corporation to do fine, it must be fine with itself first.

A few years ago, Guedez wrote, in the University Research Magazine, that for a society to stop being an addition of individuals and to become a structure of reciprocities, correspondence, equities and good government, it requires an interactive and cooperative disposition focused on the collective wellbeing.

 

Places to learn
Nowadays, the means to education are not only the schools, but the corporations, because the workplace is place to learn. Currently, most organizations offer training and/or updating programs to its employees. And this is not strange, because it has been shown that most knowledge is acquired in the job environment.  

In these lines, Guedez states that the so called “50-30-20 Law”, which provides that 50% of what a professional knows was learned at work; 30% through reading and the relation with other colleagues and professionals; and 20% through formal education.  Then, it is easy to conclude that the instructional power of work is much more significant than formal education, all of which grants an important meaning to education in the workplace.

Issues dealing with training have several scopes and it must be clear that there are differences between knowledge, generating knowledge, orienting knowledge and increasing knowledge, says the specialist. Also, he points out that transmitting is different from transferring, “I transmit when I make sure you have understood. And companies today are moving within those lines”.  

An example to follow
According to his recollection, Víctor Guedez affirms that the experience of Empresas Polar is one of the most successful in matters of education and creation of values among its employees.

He is working on a 220 academic hour program, with 9 Corporate Social Responsibility courses. At the end of the program, participants will present a CSR project to the company.

Though this initiative, Empresas Polar is developing competency at managerial and personal levels. “This is a competent, socially intelligent corporation that handles the ethical instrument and CSR just like the other companies”, says Guedez.

The participants of this program learn tools and reinforce values that they can practice later not only within the organization but at their own homes, thus contributing to the improvement of society.