Month: January 2020

Taking part in sport when young is widely regarded as having a protective effect on health in later years.

Research by Sport England also shows that physical activity is linked to reduced risks of over 20 illnesses, as well as improved mental wellbeing.

At Morningside Pharmaceuticals  we’re keen supporters of Sport in the Community and this year we’re proud sponsors of the Leicester Mercury Sports Awards.

Our mission is to ‘make quality healthcare an affordable and accessible reality throughout the world’, which drives our passion for bringing communities together and supporting learning through sports, healthy living and team work.

Dr Nik Kotecha OBE, Chief Executive of Morningside, said: “We’re delighted to be supporting the Sports Awards because they play an important role in highlighting and honouring sporting individuals and their contribution to our communities.

“The Under 19s Team category is particularly important for us, because we’re keen supporters of sports within education, which can have a positive impact on students’ overall wellbeing.

“We’re also keen supporters of sports in Leicestershire, with our named sponsorship of the Morningside Arena, Leicester, being one of our biggest partnerships. The 5,000 capacity Arena provides leading sports facilities to students from Leicester College, as well as being the home of UK basketball champions the Leicester Riders.

“Under our partnership we’re able to gift good causes use of the Arena’s conference facilities for free, which they then use as fundraising space for their activities.”

Morningside Pharmaceuticals also sponsors the Morningside Medical Centre at Leicestershire County Cricket Club’s Grace Road ground, which is helping the club continue to be at the forefront of sports science and medicine.

Prior to the creation of the Morningside Medical Centre players and visitors were treated offsite for injuries or if they fell ill, which put added pressure on the club and emergency services when treatment was urgently needed.

A blog by our Chief Executive, Dr Nik Kotecha OBE, on setting New Year’s CSR targets and goals for 2020. 

As businesses plan for the New Year it’s vital that all areas of the organisation embrace fresh targets, which reflect their ambitions and financial projections for the forthcoming year.

When setting these targets it’s tempting to take the same approach for every aspect of the organisation, but the old adage of ‘one size fits all’ doesn’t always produce the best results.

This is particularly true for implementing a corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy and setting goals and objectives for measuring its return on investment (ROI).

Many organisations choose to invest in CSR because they believe that it’s the right thing to do and want to make society better, rather than anticipating measurable business benefits.

My company, Morningside Pharmaceuticals, has been investing in CSR for many years and we have found that it’s often challenging to measure the impact, particularly when activity is unconnected to the product or service you are marketing.

For us, CSR is about the ethos and identity of our business, which has been built around our mission of ‘making quality healthcare an affordable and accessible reality throughout the world.’ To this end we feel it’s important that our CSR activity lives and breathes our corporate values.

It’s also important that senior management teams lead on CSR activity and view it as part of a package connected to raising brand awareness, engagement of people, motivating employees and recruitment. These activities then feed into raising the whole image of the company and their KPIs will involve stakeholders throughout the organisation.

With this in mind, it’s perhaps best to separate out an organisation’s CSR targets from the overall business targets. By doing this companies can set measurable objectives for their teams, which CSR will inevitably feed into and support.

My advice would be: By focusing on making society and communities better, businesses will benefit. This is because giving back has wider business benefits, rather than just delivering commercial KPIs.