Corporate
Social Responsibility (CSR) is supposed to be an extension of an organisations
strategy and intertwined with its planned sustainable growth – but how many
organisations today take CSR seriously?
It’s
not just a matter of how much money an organisation contributes to ‘social’
causes or the ‘flowery’ rhetoric found on websites or in annual reports since
CSR is supposed to be a focused, integral part of your organisations strategy
for sustainable growth. Which means if ‘money’ is being donated to seemingly
worthy causes the organisation should be ensuring that those funds are being
used to really add-value to their community and be able to articulate the real
benefits that have been achieved by their donations.
The
global financial crisis has brought misery to millions and in some cases has
‘encouraged’ or even ‘forced’ people to look after ‘number one’ – which makes
solid, social sense, since you can’t help others if you have to worry about
your own basic month-to-month survival.
At
the corporate level – big profits are still being made and as many believe
extortionate bonuses being paid for some pretty poor performance achievements
in some sectors. The argument by big business is that they have to pay the
bonuses to keep their talent – but some may argue whether they are sure this is
the actual talent they want to keep for long term sustainable growth.
CSR
has always been about finding the strategic and budgeting balance that allows
an organisation to ‘invest’ in improving its local community and its
environment. It’s about having a real plan that is both long-term and
consistent that can be tracked on a month-to-month, year-to-year basis to prove
that the CSR strategy in practice is adding real value and having a positive
measurable impact on their community.
There
is a danger that your organisation has ‘lost the plot’ with respect to your CSR
strategy and maybe it’s time to revisit it and re-focus your efforts based on
real human and environmental needs, that will make a tangible difference to your
community for the long term.
CSR
is not a ‘nice to have’ and is a genuine strategic imperative in our global
economy. Those that ignore it, as an unnecessary expense, do so with a purely
short-sighted view of their business environment. Poverty and pollution are two
key economic drivers that will affect medium to long-term business success –
ignoring them now, for short-term benefit is not only a dangerous it’s blindly
arrogant (and ignorant).
Faced
with a complex business world some leaders approach it as visionaries, with an all-encompassing
view of their business environment, appreciating that their communities hold
potential customers and employees for the future. Where a secure, safe and
‘happy’ community infuses its way into an organisations culture – just as much
as a deprived, unsafe and unhappy neighbourhood will eventually start to have a
negative influence on employees, talent retention and business performance.
Other
leaders feel overwhelmed by stakeholder demands and prefer a blinkered approach
to their surroundings – where they can ‘con’ themselves into believing that if
they can’t actually see the suffering in their communities then it doesn’t
exist and can feel content maximising whatever profit they can in the
short-term confident that this will keep them safe and secure until they can
save up enough to a point where they don’t really care what happens to their
tenure – as they can retire to some out-of-the-way place and live happily
ever-after avoiding the ‘chaos’ they have left behind.
All
organisations should have some form of value adding CSR strategy that adds real
long term, sustainable benefits, that can be measured and celebrated. It’s not
just the CEO’s responsibility – it’s down to the board and all stakeholders not
just to ask, but to demand a genuine cohesive CSR strategy that is results
driven.
There
are a lot of people suffering in ‘our’ world and since we aren’t able to choose
how and where we are born – we can at least choose how we want to help and
support the communities we live in. Many people who are suffering aren’t doing
it out of choice and are desperate to find work – and we should be trying to
help – as a healthy community, breeds a healthy economy.