How Social Responsibility can improve your business – Some tips
Defined as ‘the responsibility of enterprises for their impacts on society’,Corporate Social Responsibility (or CSR) is being embraced more and more by businesses these days.
CSR has many benefits as it can not only enhance a company’s reputation but also increase employee engagement, while providing a significantly higher standard of customer service.
To be truly CSR-focused, organisations should look at their business strategy from the point of view of sustainable supply, or resilience.
This involves six steps:
- CSR Assessment
- CSR Strategy
- CSR Commitments
- Implementation Plan and Actions
- Verification and Evaluation of Results, and
- Refinement.
However, all of this is likely to be ineffective unless the entire company gets behind the CSR plan on a daily basis: and this involves ensuring appropriate communication channels are maintained with all stakeholders.
In many cases, this also involves a great deal of planning and engagement.
Fortunately, once the company has come up with its CSR plan to improve its impact on society, it is then able to seize the relevant business opportunities arising from this involvement.
The benefits are many, including:
- Increased innovation
- Reduced costs
- Brand differentiation
- Sustainability and long-term thinking, and
- Better customer and employee engagement.
Such is the success of CSR that companies to have used and benefited from it include Wal-Mart, UniLever, Pepsi and Coca Cola – making it a proven and valuable part of many businesses.
For more information on how to improve your organisation’s business profile and marketing reach, go to: mikepeetersmedia.com.au
By Mike Peeters
