Corporate Social Responsibility
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is more than just PR fluff – it’s a vital aspect of any successful organisation. Of course, CSR means different things to different people but broadly it is about Corporations acting as good corporate citizens. That means upholding the highest legal and moral standards as they conduct their business and interact with society – be it relationships with people, other corporations, local authorities, central government and those bodies that may regulate their own specific industry.
This simple notion of corporations acting as citizens can make it easy for all of us to understand why CSR is so important. As individuals we understand that we have responsibilities and corporations are no different. Successful corporations understand their responsibilities and go to great lengths to make sure that all of their stakeholders – employees, suppliers, customers and so on – all understand them.
Good CSR does not simply mean nominating a charity annually or allowing employees time to engage in community activity (although these are good and great aspects of CSR). It means really examining your supply chain and making sure that, for example, your organisation is not working with those suppliers unscrupulous enough to exploit child labour or source illegal materials. It means making a high level and published statement of policy that every single employee can understand and adhere to.
But CSR is not all about controlling what organisations can’t or shouldn’t do, or even about implying what they could, instead, be doing. No, CSR brings huge benefits to organisations and ultimately means that they are more profitable, sustainable and engaged with their stakeholders.
Who wouldn’t want to do business with an organisation that operates with complete integrity instead of one that does not?
Who wouldn’t prefer to work for an organisation that says “we do things the right way around here” instead of one that does not?
Who wouldn’t prefer to supply their goods and services to an organisation that behaves fairly, instead of one that does not?
That’s why CSR is good for every business.
If you are reading this and thinking “well, I have no idea what my organisations attitude to CSR is” then there are only two possibilities…either your organisation has a CSR policy tucked away somewhere along with its Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Policy or its Sustainability Policy, none of which really have any bearing on the organisation behaves, or you don’t have a policy at all. In many ways this is good news…you could make a huge amount of progress really quickly.
Either dust down that CSR policy and start asking some questions about what it really means or attend Maguire Training’s Corporate Social Responsibility course so that you can learn how to bring CSR right into the centre of your organisational development programme. Or if you still need a bit of an introduction to Corporate Social Responsibility, we have created a short eLearning module that can be accessed at any time on our eLearning platform, giving you flexibility of learning.
Even if you work for one of the many forward thinking organisations that already understand the importance of CSR within their corporate governance framework you should still take time to pause and reflect on what more can be done. It really will make a difference to how your organisation behaves and how people feel about it.
