What is Corporate Social Responsibility?
CSR is an umbrella term that covers different ways that companies strive to do good in their communities. CSR holds businesses socially accountable for their actions. Stakeholders, employees and the public all seek businesses that have strong CSR practises – if a business looks after its communities, it’s more likely to look after its people, too.
Many CSR activities are philanthropic and volunteer based. While these activities can prove to be costly, the benefits are clear. By engaging your employees and the community with your business, CSR helps strengthen bonds between staff and company, while simultaneously boosting morale.
The larger and more visible a corporation is, the more it benefits from CSR. Being seen to be doing good is a valuable marketing asset.
Examples of CSR
There are a wide variety of changes that you can make in your business to improve your CSR output. Some examples of this are:
- Ethically sourcing ingredients/materials for your products.
- Contributing hours of community service in your area.
- Creating college/university initiatives to help further staff careers.
- Building strong links with charities.
- Work with local school programmes.
It’s worth engaging in CSR activities that align with your business ideals. Customers appreciate a logical link, like a pet shop supporting a local dog shelter.
Sustainability & CSR
A huge part of CSR is improving your business’ sustainability. A sustainable business is a win-win for everyone. Sustainability means you’re efficient, and less wasteful. Your business will be more resistant in case of a sudden market shift, and you’ll reduce your carbon footprint. Consumers are increasingly likely to buy into a company that looks after the planet. We recommend getting in touch with sustainability experts who can help save your business money in the long run (and save the planet!).
What does Corporate Social Responsibility software do?
CSR software is designed to help a corporation facilitate social responsibility tasks, while measuring their efficacy and accurately assessing success. At the end of the day, it’s important for a business to quantify the benefit of any practise; CSR is no different.
By utilising software to manage your CSR, you can glean valuable information about your successes and failures, adjusting accordingly. Much of this software will manage, administer, and track any initiatives that you are running. In addition to this, they’re designed to help share your accomplishments with customers, employees, and investors (arguably the most important feature of the software).
How do they work?
The software creates a platform that can be accessed by all members of staff. Think of it almost like an in-house social media, where you can post activities, field volunteering, create your own fundraisers and much more.
The whole point of implementing this software into your workflow is to make the entire process as seamless as possible, saving you a bunch of time and resources! Gone are the days of clunkily organising a fundraiser over emails that have 100s of participants. With the right piece of software, you can easily manage and assess all CSR activities in one place.