Most socially-conscious businesses will already have a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program in place. At the same time, the natural aim of most businesses, whether large or small, is to pursue growth.
When these two aims – greater profits and greater good – clash, and decisions have to be made about where to allocate the company’s resources, a common temptation is to let the CSR program stagnate while more time and money is dedicated to profit. After all, you can just work on it after you scale up your business, right?
It’s possible to do it that way, but smart companies will know that expanding their CSR program at the same time actually helps their business grow more quickly and sustainably. Doing good for environmental and social causes, and having a rock-solid CSR and employee-giving program from day one, smooths out and enhances the growth process by:
- Confirming, and reinforcing, positive company values. Having a robust CSR program in place with shared values offers a reference marker, a concrete set of goals to achieve, that help guide your growth.
- Attracting, and retaining, the kind of employees you’ll want on your company’s journey. CSR programs promote employee engagement and reward them for giving, boosting happiness and morale. They also attract candidates who also share your set of company values and will be more likely to stay with you for the long haul.
- Broadcasting, and sharing, your company culture with your customers. The new generation of customers is more engaged than ever before with the problems our world is facing, and they’re ready to do whatever it takes to help fix them. These are the customers that will help drive your company into the future, and if you don’t have an up-to-date CSR program, how will they know that your company is on the same page as them?
- Making the world a better place. The major goal of a CSR program is, of course, to improve both local and global communities. But don’t forget that this has an impact on your growth too. A healthy planet, with a thriving economy, strong social equality, and happy population will provide your business with many more lucrative opportunities.
The Right Way to Grow Your CSR Program
Another reason for growing your CSR program alongside your profits is a purely practical one: it avoids inefficiency and wasted resources. Instead of trying to play catch-up after you’ve expanded the business, and trying to adapt an outdated CSR program to a suddenly larger company, it’s much less work if you pay attention to it as the business grows.
You can do this by:
- Solidifying your company values with a mission statement that encompasses future growth. This should be aligned with the particular strengths, capabilities, and target market of your business. Refer to this mission statement frequently and let it guide both your growth and your contributions to the community.
- Sticking to your mission statement. While it’s important to be flexible as social movements change, completely rewriting your message as you grow will quickly pull a CSR program into different directions and fragment it.
- Investing as many resources into your CSR program, and your employees, as you do for pursuing profit growth. This includes your HR department, your giving programs, and social innovation projects. A greater (yet still sustainable) investment will pay off with greater dividends in the long run.
- Keeping an eye on your progress, by monitoring key metrics in your CSR program, preparing regular reports for key stakeholders, and adjusting if necessary to achieve the maximum benefit for the wider society.
- Engaging with the community and listening to them. Do your research into what matters most to your community and your customers, and listen to them - you will be rewarded! Don’t forget to engage not just with current customers, but with the future customers that will arrive as your company grows.
- Involving the whole company. So much of business growth is driven by the employees and key stakeholders of the business itself. By involving them in the decision-making process as your CSR program grows, they’ll feel happier and more engaged and contribute more willingly to the success of both your program and your company.
Any business with its eye on the future needs robust CSR tools that can grow alongside it. If you’re looking to scale up and give more, Copalana is the perfect partner. Find out how the ecosystem works here.
