creating opportunities
Corporate Social Responsibility
“FUTUREPROOFING YOUR BUSINESS FOR FUTURE SUCCESS” THE NEED FOR A ROBUST CSR POLICY By James Wright, Managing Director of CSR, Sustainability and Not-for-Profit at Grayling
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magine you were to restart your business from scratch tomorrow. What would you change? Would you change your values? Would your business live those values differently? Would you try to be better corporate citizens? Would you be more ethical, give more thought to sustainable development and environmental issues?
Forget the barriers and the difficulties. How would you make your product differently, deliver your services differently? It is what I call the ‘Stop. Reset’ process. It is this type of exercise that businesses need to undertake if they have ambitions of being leaders in sustainability and corporate responsibility, and to be best positioned for success in the future. Developing strong sustainability and corporate responsibility strategy builds trust with your stakeholders and provides numerous business benefits. It allows you to communicate to groups and organisations that you may have not been able to talk to before, whether this be government, international NGOs or local community groups. It can provide access to new investment and growth opportunities (see table 1). It can save you money through efficiency
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savings. It can help attract and retain talent. It can protect and enhance your brand. Importantly, sustainability is about futureproofing your business, enabling you to meet the needs of future consumers. Strategic communication Sustainability campaigns seem to be the rage at the moment yet it is not a fad or a fashion, and it is certainly not a tool to get some fluffy PR. It is strategic and it’s business critical in future proofing
many cases where the businesses record was actually pretty good. The problem was that neither the media nor the NGO knew what they were doing. The businesses hadn’t communicated it. But sustainability communications is not about waving a flag and saying “look how fantastic we are”, it is about sincere, evidence based communications, whether through media relations, digital channels, investor relations or stakeholder engagement programmes.
“Developing strong sustainability and corporate responsibility strategy builds trust with your stakeholders and provides numerous business benefits” your business and it is important to communicate it. If stakeholders don’t know you are tackling sustainability issues then you are missing a trick and perhaps even exposing yourself to unfair accusations. I have seen many businesses attacked by media and NGOs on areas where they had made significant headway, and in
I am often brought into meetings with new clients that will say they are keen to promote their CSR or sustainability credentials and they will often have their CSR report to hand. The view seemingly that if we just got this document into the hands of the right people then everyone would see how wonderful they are. CSR or sustainability reports are about governance, a management tool to enable you to progress and improve. They provide the evidence of what you are doing, which is all great but they are not a communication tool. The key is to bring to life your sustainability vision and your story in a way that your stakeholders will appreciate and understand. The goal for sustainability communications is to reassure people that your business is a good one. May even make people feel good about your business. Whether that is your employees feeling good about working for you, suppliers feeling good about working with you, customers feeling