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Guiding Principle Of Social Responsibility
WorldBridge International’s purpose in the area of social responsibility is to help generate employment by developing successful and sustainable companies in areas of the world where there is a great need for economic opportunities.
WBI believes that through joining with the people to provide employment, ownership opportunities, and the knowledge of methods for developing sustainable businesses, the people themselves can move out of poverty, build self-esteem, and experience more independence and freedom. Ultimately, this creates self-sufficient, healthy, and environmentally-friendly communities.
Included within these efforts is the focus on maximizing return on capital, profitability, productivity, and efficiency while never losing sight of the customer and its needs or the needs of this planet and its inhabitants.
WBI Global Perspective On Poverty, the Environment and Private Enterprise
One perspective is that poverty has a devastating impact on the environment. This can be seen in the burning of wood, coal, peat, and other fuels to provide heat and cooking fires for much of the world's poorest people. This causes tremendous pollution each and every day.
History has shown us that most methods to reach prosperity have also had a destructive effect on the environment. This can be seen in the fact that the US is the most prosperous country in the world as well as one of the biggest polluters of the overall environment.
Today, developing countries have few choices other than to increase their use of fossil fuels to maximize economic development. This has led many to conclude that the US must decrease its reliance on the use of fossil fuels while the developing countries must search for more environmentally friendly methods to develop economic opportunities for their people.
WorldBridge International, Inc. believes that part of the solution can be realized through private enterprise. WBI estimates that there are $200 billion in job costs being performed in the US that could be offshored to less developed countries at one half (50%) of the current costs. These are from the service areas of call centers, technical help desks, telesales, customer service and other services that can be provided over the telephone, Internet, mail or facsimile. At these positions, attrition normally varies from 35% - 150% each year. The transferring of these functions offshore would occur at approximately the same rate as the current levels of attrition. Thus, layoffs would be at a minimum.
Other examples of service areas that can be offshored are accounting, insurance applications and claims processing, medical billing and coding, medical transcription, purchasing of goods or services, reservations for travel, hotels and car rentals, requests for information, the many credit card and retail banking services and many other back office business processes.
In addition, there are many high-end jobs that can be offshored. Examples of these are computer programming, architectural and engineering design, securities back office processing, financial analysis, pharmaceutical approval processing and telemedicine to name a few.
Offshoring would allow for a number of very positive results.
For the US:
- An ever-increasing amount of inefficiency would be taken out of the US economy.
- The US will export technology and services to support these efforts.
- It transfers the employment opportunities to the perspective employees' country of residence so he or she no longer needs to leave in search of economic opportunities. This will lower the overall annual increase in costs to the US of providing services to more and more residents.
For the developing countries:
- A greater amount of economic growth and opportunities will come in the form of providing services. This will allow development that is environmentally-friendly.
- Employment for offshored services will pay a higher premium than most of the currently available domestic employment opportunities.
- The transfer of knowledge inherent in training and providing offshored services will be a catalyst for growth in other areas.
- A greater amount of foreign exchange will come into the country.
- With an increase in employment opportunities, the so-called "brain drain" will decease dramatically.
WorldBridge International believes that this global perspective is a natural market-driven strategy. It greatly improves productivity and profitability in the US, assists with economic development in the developing countries, and is a boon to the much-needed efforts to improve the world's environment.
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