How your business can improve its Corporate Social Responsibility

Businesses are increasingly looking to bolster their corporate social responsibility in an effort to boost their social accountability.  

Optically, CSR looks great for customers and clients alike, but perhaps the area CSR plays its biggest part is employee motivation, feeling job satisfaction through the work they are doing.

How a business goes about incorporating CSR into the business can be tricky, but also important – the smallest of changes can make a big impact on perception, both with the public and employees.

There are several tools at a business’ disposal to help create a boost.  

Team Building:

Team building is a great method for boosting public image in a way that incorporates an entire workforce. Not only can it be fun, but it can also be a great way for employees to get to know one another.

By organising an exercise, a company can seek to overcome unhappiness and boost team performance – something which can be especially vital in larger companies with multiple departments, when employees may not know each other or interact intra-departmentally.

The Belbin Team Role theory says a successful team is made up of nine different roles:

• Resource Investigator
• Teamworker
• Co-ordinator
• Plant
• Monitor Evaluator
• Specialist
• Shaper
• Implementer
• Completer Finisher

It might be that your business has someone who identifies with all of those roles, however Belbin’s theory says each role must be satisfied to have an effective team. During your exercise, it might well be that some of these roles are found to be missing, allowing for possible recruitment to address the balance. 

Done right, the exercise your team takes part in will be memorable and fun, promoting a culture of teamworking and togetherness.

What other tools can a business deploy?

There are number of other tools a business can seek to use to help improve CSR. Perhaps one of the most useful methods is to work alongside the local community.

Is there something your local community needs? For instance, does the school need to raise funds for equipment? Could the area benefit from litter picking or other cleaning up? Does a local charity need help? In short, if there is something a local area needs that your business can provide, it could be useful to step in. By doing so, you’ll be reminding the local area of the positive stance your company is taking, and will help to increase brand awareness.

Environmentalism is another avenue that can be explored to boost CSR – something which is becoming evermore important as we look to reduce waste and single-use plastics. If your business can show it takes current issues seriously, it will reflect positively on public image.

Using the local community can be something of a shop window to the ethos and values your business. Creating events within the area, such as fundraisers, fetes – even a BBQ – can bring together both employees and customers, and will allow create a positive association between your business and your local area.

A Gallup poll in 2017 revealed just 15% of the world’s full-time working population are engaged at work. This means an astonishing 85% of employees globally are unhappy at work.

Creating a culture of togetherness with employees can be effective to boost morale and motivation within your business, and team building exercises can be great to achieve that. A positive team can go some way to improving social responsibility. 

But by putting your business on display in the local area as well, reminding everyone of your values and beliefs, it can help to reflect positively on the general public.