How can you make your business socially responsible?
We live in a world where fresh air is no longer accessible. We have to pay money to get fresh mountain water in bottles. What does this signify? It signifies that globalization has brought us to a situation where social responsibility has become need of the hour for every individual as well as businesses.
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This brings us to the question — how can a business become socially responsible? I’ll try to answer this question in this article, hoping that it will help you build a business that socially more responsible than before.
Build a culture of social responsibility
You cannot force anyone to be someone that he or she is not. Can you? In the same way, you cannot inspire people working for your business to become socially responsible unless you have a culture for the same. Instill social responsibility in your business’ DNA so that every person working for it knows that they have to contribute at their level in this mission to become a socially responsible business.
Some of the things you can do to achieve this can include -
1. Sustainable business processes
From carbon emissions to excessive paper and many more, there are plenty of ways in which business cause harm to the ecosystem in which your business unit is located. Think of it as a mission and inspire employees to follow the same. For instance, there are countless examples of businesses that have a paperless work culture to do their bit in environmental protection and sharing social responsibility.
2. Optimal resource utilization
From electricity to water, make it a point to utilize all these resource in the most effective possible manner. The biggest irony in the world is that on one hand we are enjoying the luxury of technology and lavish lifestyle, but on the other hand there are people who don’t have access to even clean drinking water, and electricity. Things that we take for granted are a luxury for them. This disparity can be minimized by using the resources optimally.
3. Join hands with someone for a good cause
Inspiring employees at workplace to work towards making a better society can be just the beginning, there is lot more that you can do. For instance, joining hands with some NGO, and working towards community building activities can be the next step. Everyone likes to work for the good of society, but the irony is that they are either too occupied with their work or don’t know how to begin with it. By joining hands with an NGO you can actually promote the feeling of social responsibility within the team as well.
But before doing all this, set a target!
You cannot achieve anything by going haywire. Don’t start unplanned — set a goal, make a target and then take steps towards hitting that target and achieving that goal just like you do with your projects.
For instance, if you have decided to bring down carbon emissions from your office, then set a target that during the next quarter you will bring it down by 20%. Once you are able to achieve that take it further up. Strategize everything, only then you will be able to achieve something in your voyage to build a more socially responsible business.
What good does it bring to your business?
Apart from the fact that you will be working for making the world a better place to live, there is another benefit that your business can reap out of being socially more responsible. And, that benefit is to use it for marketing.
Studies show that customers are more interested in buying products or services from a business that supports some good cause. So, when you are involved in something related to social awareness, you can promote it on your marketing channels, social media and wherever possible. And, get to see its impact on fetching more customers — the perfect icing on cake it is!
Isn’t it?
In the end, it all comes down to whether we want to contribute towards society or not. There are plenty of businesses that are doing more than commendable job in making the world better. On the other hand, there also others who simply don’t give ear to the problem.
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Vartika Kashyap runs the marketing team at ProofHub — a project management software for teams of all sizes. She is a seasoned marketing professional who is an expert in digital marketing and entrepreneurship. She’s been featured among LinkedIn’s Top Voices for the year 2016. Connect with Vartika on LinkedIn, Medium and Twitter.
Also follow our company page @ProofHub to get the recent updates about our tool, published articles, motivational quotes & presentations.
Originally published on Linkedin.
