CSR CAN BE VERY SIMPLE

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) or corporate citizenship entails companies behaving in a socially responsible manner, and dealing with other business parties who do the same. With growing public awareness, demand for socially responsible businesses from the government and international buyers, it is little wonder that companies of today take corporate social responsibility into account when planning future socially responsible business operations. However, many companies in Vietnam do know exactly where to start with CSR; plus, many of the SMEs may be short of resources and capability for CSR demands.

Regularly, companies who want to jump onto the CSR bandwagon find that the most difficulty is an effective framework to approach CSR head-on. This article just suggests a three-step simple framework for engaging in fruitful CSR.

A strategic corporate social responsibility framework typically aligns community and charitable giving efforts with core business strategy, company expertise and market needs. In other words, this simple framework is to match the social/community issues with the business core values/resources that are affordable in resolving those issues. It helps to build up a company’s social capital and is likely to bring in returns including goodwill, favorable image, reputation and indirectly, financial returns.

Develop a Value Proposition for the business

CSR practitioners, both in in-house teams and consultant firms, need to sell CSR as a value proposition to its own board or clients. The idea must be convinced in that the company can be both socially responsible and financially viable. The decision makers of the business play an important role in helping to shape and develop the value proposition, especially when the idea is related to performing business governance and operation. A value proposition is a clear statement of the tangible results a customer gets from using the company’s products or services. In short, an insurance company may not sell insurance packages but it should offer a peace of mind to its customers when purchasing its products and services.

A company’s corporate citizenship value proposition, when aligned with a social dimension, helps to provide guidance and direction to utilize the energy and enthusiasm for corporate social responsibility and corporate citizenship.

Build Sustainability by Engaging the Community

Companies should seek social pursuit where the company can be socially responsibly providing solutions to it while improving the long-term competitiveness of its business. This is best served by engaging the wider community with its own set of expertise into the issues resolving. Through this step of the strategic framework, companies should attempt to transform value chain activities to benefit society while reinforcing its core business strategy.

Moreover, identify the company’s publics or stakeholder is one of the important parts of the framework. For many businesses, local customers are an important source of sales. By improving a company’s local reputation, the company may find it easier to recruit employees and lead to a better working relationship with the local authorities. But to others who have a wider ranges of operation sites at national and international scale, beside the local community they also have to be aware of other stakeholders from higher level such as their investors, central government, relevant NGOs or eco-politic groups, etc.

Measure Corporate Social Responsibility Efforts and Results

Unlike many common thoughts that CSR is intangible and immeasurable, it should be more in the same line with the old adage – “what gets measured is what gets done” by applying to business performance management.

It is advisable for companies that engage in corporate citizenship to develop their own CSR measurability tools since CSR measurability metrics and performance metrics is different for every company. The challenge lies in identifying a set of performance metrics that everyone can relate to and agree to. Yet, with a clear metrics companies can place a dollar value and conduct a cost-benefit analysis on their CSR expenditure. It also helps to drive crucial continuous changes in the CSR strategy every time reviewing or benchmarking the CSR program’s performance against the business goal with community aligning.

* The article contains collected information.