How to Ensure Your Social Engagement is Genuine and Impactful

The issue of corporate sustainability and social engagement is persistently growing in popularity. Long has passed the time when businesses could ignore it and when there were only expectations towards large multinational companies.

It started with governmental pressure and regulatory changes that forced companies to act more sustainably and report their activities. Today, the stakes are much higher. It is no longer about the pressure from sanctions that companies are facing if they do wrong. It is the general public of consumers, employees, and investors that require them to do right.

It’s not just about companies reducing their carbon footprint, air pollution, or energy waste. It’s also about them actively tackling social issues like poverty, disease, and water shortages.

Corporate social engagement is now becoming a function of businesses, large and small alike, in all sorts of industries. In many cases for the most part CSR rankings attract huge public attention and consequently could be detrimental to the corporate image or could boost the brand name.

Many of these rankings are unclear in terms of their measurement methodology and criteria. However, they play a crucial role in shaping public perception of businesses.

It is no surprise that many companies do just enough to avoid negative attention. They may also go to great lengths to appear socially engaged.

What some businesses are only beginning to realise now however is that these bare minimums are becoming increasingly insufficient. Customers are more informed today, employees are more demanding, and investors are increasingly aware of how a company’s social image impacts its prospects. The social side of business has become a key factor in shaping a company’s public perception and success.

The smarter businesses out there are thus starting to incorporate genuine social effort into their operations and strategies. So how do you tell who is only doing it for public attention and who makes an impact? And if you were a business, how do you tell a compelling story about the impact you are making without making it look like marketing?

Here are a few pointers to consider when talking about genuine corporate social engagement:

Impact vs. Numbers

Michael Porter and Mark Kramer, in their paper “Strategy and Society,” discuss how philanthropic initiatives are often measured by the dollars or volunteer hours invested. However, they note that these initiatives are rarely evaluated based on their actual impact. However, what the general public increasingly cares about is the impact indeed, not the investment made monetary or time-wise. Thus if you are genuinely seeking to make a difference and are making an impact, talk about the results of your efforts as confirmation of what you do which is meaningful.

Popular Causes vs. Meaningful Causes

Making an impact starts with relevance. Align your company’s skills with causes that matter for meaningful change.

Companies often try to gain more public attention by getting involved in trendy causes. These causes, however, are often unrelated to the company’s industry or its skills and resources. It just doesn’t make sense. Companies aiming to make a meaningful impact focus on optimizing their contributions. This is often achieved by leveraging the skills and resources they have within their specific industry. Genuine social engagement requires a connection between a company’s business and the social issues it supports. This connection can be direct or indirect but should always be relevant to the company’s focus.

Money vs. Involvement

Most businesses that truly want to leave a legacy and help change somebody’s life understand that it is not just about money. Being able to make a difference requires some funds but the human factor in terms of advice, know-how, and skills is just as important. Businesses that aim to make an impact go beyond just donating money. They actively create and support channels, models, and initiatives to use their resources effectively. This goes beyond simply offering volunteer hours for a worthy cause.

Advertising Spend vs. No Advertising

Years ago the tobacco giant Philip Morris spent $75 million on charitable contributions and then another $100 million on advertising campaigns to make sure the world knows about it. When you realise a company spends more on advertising than on giving, it does make you wonder how genuine the intentions are. It is one thing to tell a story on your website or share achievements on the philanthropy end with your social media community, and completely different to spend millions on advertising about what you allegedly did for society.

People today genuinely care about social engagement, and they generally waste any effort to make the superficial and mediocre seem real. In the interconnected world of today, full of cynicism and access to information about companies’ practices readily available, consumers easily tell the difference. They want to see genuine effort, not PR or CSR directors posing for a photo at charity dinners. And to know about the results, not to read reports on money and volunteer hours spent. They also want to hear stories about how people have changed their lives, not just plain numbers of donated meals.