Updated 4th June 2020 (Originally published on 20th Jan 2020)
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has many advantages that can apply to any business, regardless of its size or sector.
The benefit of an organisations corporate social investment are:
- Better brand recognition
- Positive and responsible business reputation
- Increased sales and customer loyalty
- Operational costs savings
- Better financial performance
- Improved ability to attract talent and retain staff
- Organisational growth
- Easier access to capital and new investors
Corporate social investment can help a business to build a reputation as a responsible business, this can lead to competitive advantage.
Organisations sometimes favour suppliers that have responsible policies, because this reflects how a customer views them. Today, many customers don’t just prefer to deal with responsible businesses they insist on it and this is borne out by the recent Deloitte 2019 survey.
Costs savings
If your business can reduce resource use, waste, you can help the environment and save money too. With a few simple steps, such as energy saving bulbs, replacing plastic cups with glasses or re-usable bottles, replacing paper cups for re-usable cups, buying fair trade and environmentally friendly products such as coffee, tea, paper, cleaning products you may be able to lower your utility bills and achieve savings for your business.
Attracting talent and retaining staff
Many new staff look for an employer to be a responsible and sustainable business. This may make it easier for organisations to recruit new employees or retain existing ones. Operating sustainably and responsibility may help employees to be motivated and retained longer, therefore reducing the costs and disruption of recruiting and retraining new staff.
Want to find out how CSR can help your business, get in touch Tracy-Anne@tabarkerassociates.co.uk