CSR is More than Just Charity: How HR Leaders Can Contribute to its Success

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) needs to be a priority for businesses today. Finding the right CSR strategy for your organization can lead to various positive outcomes, including:

• A stronger employer brand, so you can attract talented candidates who are interested in more than just collecting a paycheck
• Delivery of a fulfilling employee experience, which will contribute to staff retention and reduce turnover
• Improved workplace morale and productivity
• Benefits to your bottom line

Results like these aren't easy to achieve. To reach high standards in this area, you need a coherent, company-wide plan and a genuine commitment to achieving the goals that really matter to your organization, your workforce and your customers.

Crucially, CSR shouldn't be seen as a 'quick win', consisting only of occasional charitable donations or blog posts on how much you care about certain issues, with little concrete action to back it up.

For your business to truly succeed on this front, the HR department needs to take the lead.

Make CSR part of the employee experience

The HR department is instrumental in defining employee perceptions and expectations of a company and its core principles. These views are shaped from the moment a candidate first comes across one of your job advertisements, and will continue to evolve at various stages of the employee experience.

You can make CSR a fundamental part of what defines your organization by incorporating it into the wording of your job posts, your interviewing and assessment methods, onboarding, training and ongoing performance management.

This will lay the groundwork for something that is essential for your CSR strategy to deliver results: the involvement and commitment of the workforce.

Engage employees in CSR

Your workforce is the most powerful tool you have to drive change and make progress towards your CSR goals, so make sure you're taking full advantage of it and not missing opportunities to get people involved in valuable activities.

Effective communication is an essential part of this. Going beyond expressing the importance of CSR as an element of your company culture, you need to send a clear message to employees that they hold the power to drive your strategy forward and turn your plans into action.

You might also want to invest in training and awareness-raising initiatives, to educate your staff on why CSR is so important to the company, why you have set particular goals and how their contributions can make a real difference.

Other practical steps that could help you get employees more involved in this aspect of your business include:

• Setting specific goals that provide a sense of focus and motivation
• Giving people opportunities to step up and assume responsibility for leading projects, to encourage emotional investment and ownership
• Incorporating gamification

Ask staff for feedback and guidance

As well as being crucial in bringing your CSR plans to life and turning them into tangible results, your employees are a key source of input into whether you're making the right decisions in this area.

Conduct surveys and encourage people to come forward and speak to their managers about the issues that matter to them, what they think the corporate community should be doing differently and their ideas on how your business can step up its CSR efforts.

You might be surprised by the level of interest and engagement you see. Research has shown 93% of employees believe companies should lead with purpose and 88% think it's no longer acceptable for businesses to focus on making a profit at the expense of wider society.

Reflect CSR goals in your HR policies

It's not enough just to talk about your commitment to CSR; you need to show that you're willing to take action and make real changes in how you operate in order to make progress towards your goals.

If one of your top CSR objectives is to reduce your impact on the environment, for example, you could back this up by providing tools and technologies to facilitate remote working, reducing the need for people to travel to the office.

Commitments to goals such as promoting diversity and equality should also be reflected in your HR practices. This might include taking action to make your hiring process more inclusive.

By ensuring the HR department's activities align with the company's wider CSR goals and focuses, you can put the entire organization in a stronger position to make a positive difference to society at large.