A strategic approach to corporate responsibilityMaximising the value of your corporate responsibility efforts |
Corporate responsibility has evolved from just being an ethical commitment into a new approach in achieving business objectives. To make this switch, you need to rethink your approach to the way you manage, measure and demonstrate your business's social, environmental and ethical performance.
Sixty businesses in the World Business Council for Sustainable Development describe the benefits of this approach as improving risk awareness, encouraging innovation, creating financial value, enhancing reputation, transparency for stakeholders, improving management systems, motivating staff and attracting talent.
Knowing where to start is the first stumbling block for most businesses as there isn’t a single authoritative definition of Corporate Responsibility. Your CR strategy can account for many things such as employee wellbeing, community development, stakeholder involvement and supply chain management. The key is in defining what CR means to your business in relation to your vision, mission and scope of operations.
Key questions to answer when addressing your corporate sustainability strategy
- Do you understand the needs and expectations of your stakeholders?
- Do you have a sense of the relative importance of your business’s social, environmental and economic impacts (both positive and negative)?
- Do you know where your reputation risks lie?
- Are sustainable business practices and communication of these important to your customers?
- Are you looking for additional investors or investment ? Will your investors be making decisions based on responsible businesses practices and associated risks?
- Does your organisational culture and vision clearly capture your stance on corporate responsibility?
- Do you need to work more closely with your business partners and suppliers to ensure your business philosophy permeates your entire supply chain?
Best practice for implementing a corporate responsibility strategy
Once you have identified what’s important to your business, these are the key steps to keep in mind to make implementing the strategy across your business a success:
- Get executive support – Drive corporate responsibility from the top down. Business leaders should be vocal about the business's sustainability intentions and treat them with the same level of importance as other business imperatives.
- Embed into your business - Find ways to integrate corporate responsibility into every area of the business - from performance measurement and decision-making to the way you measure revenue growth, operating margins and asset efficiency.
- Develop a corporate responsibility report – Communicate your intentions with your stakeholders and staff. Although corporate responsibility is more than developing a report, the report is a good tool for establishing transparency.
- Develop supporting processes – Look at making adjustments to your business's processes, relationships and incentives. New processes should help management identify and embed environmental and social initiatives that align with your businesses strategic priorities.
- Give it time - Take small steps and implement slowly rather than adopting an aggressive agenda focused on different initiatives.
- Follow through – Be prepared to walk the talk especially if you plan to publicly commit to corporate responsibility. Unless you ingrain the program into your business you risk losing credibility — and market value.
- Stay balanced - Remember that corporate responsibility is about more than pushing a social agenda or engaging in philanthropic initiatives.