How to Prove You Are a Socially Responsible Company
No longer optional today, it is an integral part of business routine to have a well thought-out, corporate social responsibility strategy. Due to detrimental effects that consumerism imposes on our lives, people strive to buy products from companies taking into account their actions. This means the do-no-harm businesses take the lead in the market. Let’s discuss some of the creative ways to prove a company’s social responsibility to the global community.
The concept of a socially responsible company
Corporate social responsibility pertains to the ethical behavior of a business organization in relation to social, economic, environmental, and cultural issues. By promoting responsible business conduct, a corporate sector encourages respect towards the norms of global citizenship.
Why company social responsibility is important
Businesses that reject harmful behavior not only build a great reputation but also establish favorable socio-economic benchmarks. In the modern, oversaturated market, the products and services that companies provide are rarely unique. That is why, to magnify recognition, smart business owners invest in socially responsible initiatives.
Making corporate social responsibility a part of your business model helps take your revenue sky high for several reasons:
- companies with CSR have stronger partnerships;
- positive missions make businesses more attractive to clients;
- social activities drive innovation and collaboration.
What makes your company socially responsible
So, what is company social responsibility and how do you enable it in practice? To reach a single formula would be hard if not impossible in this case. However, there are some essential steps that a company can take to increase its CSR:
- Tap into problems. No one asks you to solve all earthly problems to prove a company’s social responsibility. Focusing on the issues that your industry handles would be perfect enough. Find out what situations or problems your industry generates in relation to its surroundings and then think of solutions. Even a minor change that each business initiates can make the things better.
- Hire a socially responsible team. People are the ones who leverage change. If you manage to hire the team of mindful professionals whose interests rise above their paychecks, you’ll be halfway to success.
- Consider both the inside and the outside. Some businesses make the mistake of being a socially responsible company only through external campaigns. To maintain smart CSR, it’s critical to balance both internal and external engagement through the implementation of sustainable designs or projects and enabling positive interaction with clients.
How to prove company social responsibility
A company that has corporate social responsibility has more value for both prospective and existing clients. However, some businesses are still in the dark about how to turn into do-gooders. We’ve collected three juicy ideas that can help companies enable an excellent CSR:
Fundraising campaigns
Making a donation is the most common and easy way of proving social responsibility. Demonstrate your engagement by setting up a creative fundraising event with an entertaining program for guests, empowering speeches, and contests. Make sure that your event attendees know the key mission and inspire them with the idea of donating the collected resources. To stretch the effects of the fundraising and integrate the idea with your CSR strategy, you can also make a philanthropic action a part of your buyer’s trip. As an option, provide your event attendees with special offers that they can use during the next month after the event and spend the part of the gained resources as a donation.
Project awards
If you can’t find a mission that your company could support, encourage it to create one. Organize project award campaigns that ask people submit their social initiatives and ideas to promote a meaningful change in the industry. Let’s say your company produces office furniture. Launch a project competition in which clients would develop ideas for animal-friendly office spaces. The best solutions could be integrated afterwards with your company advertising to promote the idea to the target community.
Creative contests
Talking to the target audience about your CSR-centered products day and night isn’t a good example of company social responsibility. Instead, focus on making your clients talk and express themselves. You can develop a fun creative contest in which people have to design ads or promotional campaigns for your new product that carry strong social messages. You can set the direction like poverty or energy saving to create a targeted SR campaign. To capitalize on the attention, post the contest online and enable public voting to raise awareness.
The best examples of socially responsible activities
From a large corporation to a startup, modern companies have good records of CSR activities integrated into their business models.
The Ukrainian pharmaceutical manufacturer, Farmak, has recently won the CSR Story of Your Company award competing with the other businesses that have a strong social responsibility standing. The contest encouraged businesses to submit photos reflecting their social initiatives to promote CSR across pharmaceutical businesses. This is a great example of a CSR initiative organized at the industry level.
Xerox uses a CSR-centric recruitment approach. The corporation encourages employees to invest their time in different volunteering activities assisting at local schools, orphanages, and hospitals. This is a smart solution for a company that doesn’t only act as a good doer, but also converts people into “do-gooders.”
Mobile Cause Fundraising Thermometer
It’s an effective strategy for a company to infuse a business meeting with a fundraising initiative. Mobile Cause offers a smart digital fundraising thermometer for companies that want to encourage event attendees to make in-house donations.
Conclusion
A company that has social responsibility gains much more value from clients than those that don’t care much about “good deeds.” With engaging initiatives like fundraising and creative slogan or project contests, you can encourage your clients and attendees to make your business offering more valuable by imposing meaningful social change. To automate your company awards, get started with Judgify.