This year, Planet Technology Corp., the top player among the nation's core small- and medium-sized enterprises, has handled its corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies even better than many of Taiwan's major conglomerates.

Over the past six years, Planet has at critical moments taken around 3,000 lackluster students under it wing, providing professional assistance so that kids who have fallen behind in their studies or lack family support won't give up on themselves or even start out on an unhealthy path from which there may be no turning back.

Planet has recently extended its public service efforts into the watershed of the Feitsui Reservoir, assisting tea farmers in switching to organic farming practices to help reduce pollution from agricultural runoff in the Greater Taipei water supply.

How is it that one company with operating revenue of less than NT$1 billion can do so much?

"We mostly play the role of resource integrator," Planet chairman and CEO Jack Chen muses.

Chen and his wife, Planet vice president Christine Hsu, have taken their experience in creating an independent brand and surviving in the international market, and translated it into public service action: finding the right partners and integrating resources while also helping establish management systems and following up on a regular basis.

For its remedial education program in elementary schools serving the areas of Sindian, Muzha and Sansia, Planet first found appropriate cooperative partners – a group of committed school principals, administrators and teachers – and began to experiment at a single school, similar to the manner in which a newly developed product design is tested and gradually tweaked before being replicated in mass production.

Planet now has a set of standard operating procedures in place for its Disadvantaged Children's Remedial Education Program, from incorporating the leadership of principals and administrators, to training selected teachers and volunteers and assigning professional psychological counselors to tutor students in need.

And the program doesn't stop with tutoring, as it borrows from Planet's customer satisfaction survey methods in evaluating performance.

The program also includes written documentation of each counseling and tutoring session, and annual summer training camps where participating teachers discuss case studies and avenues for improvement. There is also regularly scheduled tracking of students' academic performance and the effectiveness of psychological counseling. In this way the corporate management cycle of "plan-do-check-act" is achieved.

More than a few of the teachers that take part in this program find themselves moved to tears. Due to their position on the front lines of education, they are aware that the learning difficulties of many kids are anything but innate, only arising because no one has made the extra effort to give them a leg up.

Relying solely on the singular efforts of individual teachers has its limits, but through Planet's pooling of resources a lot of students have been brought back from the brink of troubled childhoods.

The majority of the funding Planet directly invests in the program derives from the 10 percent of the funds raised in its 2004 initial public offering, which it used to establish Taiwan's first educational trust fund.

First Bank's Pinglin branch has also been inspired, and has joined in promoting this institution to assist local disadvantaged kids with remedial education. Other First Bank branches may follow suit in the future. This would provide assistance to even more disadvantaged students.

"If Planet were to stick to traditional methods and get its employees to tutor kids at schools, the effort wouldn't be very professional," Chen says with a laugh, "and a lot of the kids might run for the hills when they saw so many strange faces – forget about making any progress."

Planet has received rave reviews for institutionalizing its public service program, receiving a score of 8.5 in the category of "community involvement" in the 2011 CommonWealth Magazine Corporate Citizen Survey – the highest among medium-sized companies.

Donating money or doing charity work is definitely not the same as a business attending to its social responsibilities, Hsu emphasizes. Instead, it involves using the company's own core capabilities and limited resources to assist those most in need.

Planet has not only shown outstanding performance in community involvement, but its treatment of employees is also an example of SME flexibility.

One product manager that makes his home in Hualian applied for an alternative job site for family reasons. The employee is now allowed to work from Hualian, reporting to company HQ for three days every two weeks. This approach not only allows the company to retain talent but also addresses the needs of employees.

Properly handling corporate social responsibility also benefits a company's recruiting efforts as it naturally attracts like-minded job seekers, Chen says.

Merry's March of Happiness Spreads

Located within the Taichung Industrial Park, Merry Electronics Co., Ltd., a company that started out making ear buds and OEM stereo equipment, is focused on carrying out its own little program – "The March of Happiness." After seven years, the impact of the program has spread from central Taiwan throughout the entire country.

Back in 2004, Merry chairman Liao Lu-lee approached Taichung's classical music radio station expressing his desire to take the many moving stories of ordinary Taiwanese to the airwaves.

The two sides, it turned out, were on the same page. Over the years, several hundred touching tales have been broadcast, three or four per month, each lasting three minutes.

Liao tunes in from his office each time a new story hits the airwaves and is moved beyond words.

From guitar genius Chia-wei Lin, the son of night market vendors who went on to sweep five major European guitar competitions in the past year, to Su Tai-rong, founder of a mobile concert hall that takes fine music to the east coast and villages deep in the mountains, to award-winning baker Wu Pao-chun, each segment touches the heart.

Liao generally gets personally involved with each, offering support.

Having gotten his start making ear buds, Liao is a frequent supporter of musical performances in central Taiwan. He distributes blocks of tickets among his employees, hoping they will be able not only to take in some great performances, but also to hear the "primal sound" of the music, which will in turn help in the design of even better products.

Translated from the Chinese by Brian Kennedy

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About the Survey

CommonWealth Magazine's 2011 Survey of Taiwan's Top Corporate Citizens referred to international indicators and evaluation methods used by the U.N. Global Compact, the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises and the U.S. Dow Jones Sustainability Index to select Taiwan's best corporate citizens based on four major categories: corporate governance, corporate commitment, community involvement and environmental protection.

Corporate governance mainly gauges the independence of the board of directors and a company's transparency.

Corporate commitment considers a company's commitment to consumers, how it nurtures and treats its employees, and its commitment to innovation and R&D.

Community involvement measures whether a company has taken a long-term interest in a specific issue and made an impact in that area.

Environmental protection involves whether a company has tangible goals and strategies to protect the environment and save energy.

The survey was divided into three main categories: large companies, with revenues over NT$10 billion, medium-sized companies, with revenues under NT$10 billion, and foreign companies.

It was conducted in three stages between May 23, 2011 and July 20, 2011. In the first stage, CommonWealth Magazine selected publicly listed companies (including those on the Taiwan stock exchange, the over-the-counter market, and the emerging stock markets) that were profitable for the last three years. Foreign companies in Taiwan were chosen from CommonWealth Magazine's survey of Taiwan's Top 1000 Enterprises or recommended by experts and scholars.

In the second stage, 76 companies (40 large, 18 medium-sized, and 18 foreign enterprises) were chosen as finalists based on responses to a questionnaire provided by the companies. In the final stage, a panel of 14 judges with high degrees of credibility and social standing selected the CommonWealth Magazine Top 50 Corporate Citizens.

The survey was design and conducted by the CommonWealth Magazine Survey Center