With the increasing emphasis on community participation, corporate social responsibility continues to be one of the best ways for companies and their employees to give back to society. What makes this an excellent objective for your company is the fact that it ends in a win-win situation for all stakeholders and helps to ensure that your employees are happy and fulfilled. For example, LinkedIn employees spare a single Friday every month, dubbed InDay, to give back to their community through volunteering.
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Other benefits that corporate social responsibility (CSR) has for your company include improved PR and brand credibility, a higher chance of organization growth and improved talent acquisition and retention. In fact, a strong CSR strategy has the potential to reduce your employee turnover rates by 50%, according to the Your Cause website. While the extent to which you can exercise CSR will mainly depend on your business’ capacity, there are several ways to make help your initiative successful.
Here are four insightful tips to improve the success rates of your CSR strategy:
Partner With Nonprofits
According to WA Industry Link, a good social responsibility strategy starts with the identification of loopholes in the social or economic sectors of the community. However, the fact that CSR is excellent for a public relationship and building brand credibility makes most companies want to work alone to keep the resulting reputational gains to themselves. However, if you use this mentality, you might end up spending more time researching the right way to give back rather than actually giving back to the community.
Non-profit organizations already have a foothold in the world of social responsibility. They know the pain points your community faces and have enough experience to know how to help. By partnering with such organizations, they can help guide you through the process of making a meaningful contribution in an area that aligns with your goals.
Involve Employees
When giving back to the community, time might be worth more than money. While you have the option to allocate a part of your budget to CSR, try to spare some time from the busy schedules of your employees for them to participate in community service. According to Forbes, this will portray your whole business as one that wholeheartedly supports its cause.
In turn, a day away from the office builds team spirit and enforces mutual trust and stronger bonds among your employees. Employees become more cohesive and productive while your CSR efforts are considered as more authentic by the community at large.
Encourage Innovation
There is no silver bullet on how to approach CSR. Since your employees are your most significant assets, why not use them to come up with new ways to assist the community? Involve them in collaborative brainstorming sessions, and you might be astonished by the creative ideas that they can come up with.
This approach will help to turn your corporate responsibility goals from being just another PR stunt to being part of your corporate culture. As a result, employees will be active rather than passive participants and therefore more engaged in making the project a success.
Start From the Top
Employees and new recruits tend to emulate what is done by the executive leaders in the organization. An organization with a divided top-level leadership on specific issues will most likely fail in achieving whatever its goals. To optimize your strategies, ensure that you start your CSR campaigns by gunning for C-level buy-in.
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Once the executive leaders are on the same page strategies can be put into place to determine the short-term and long-term goals of your corporate social responsibility strategies. Since such individuals have authority within your organisation, they can steer your social responsibility goals in the right direction.
Conclusion
Caring for the community will always reflect positively on your business. By participating in CSR initiatives, you can help to improve your company’s public profile while also enjoying a host of other positive internal benefits. If you’re considering on embarking on a CSR campaign then make sure you consider the above tips to help make it as successful as possible.
