CSR: Sustainability’s Foothold in Business

Businesses today are steadily realizing the positive impacts of integrating sustainability into their structure and practices. This has ultimately led some companies into undertaking Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives, through focusing on sustainability concerns such as taking care of the environment, ensuring employee and consumer safety, and community engagement. As a relatively nascent practice among many companies, many businesses are still struggling to integrate CSR into their structure and operations. To help create more robust CSR initiatives and programs, companies would do well to remember the following:

Integrate Sustainability into Core Business Functions

To create strong CSR programs, companies must first identify the social issues and sustainability principles that they want to integrate into their business plans and practices. Company executives and managers do this by first assessing the context of the communities they affect. They must continuously identify the risks and impacts that come with operations along with the opportunities that come with their CSR Programs such as cost savings, improved company reputations, or preparedness for regulatory risks. These risks and opportunities are most evident in the value chain, both in the upstream and downstream.

The next important step that companies take is illustratrating prospective scenarios from their assessment of the operational risks and CSR opportunities and prepare “measurable short, medium, and long term goals”. These business goals in turn, must be aligned with the companies’ corporate sustainability strategies.

Communicate CSR Plans and Results to Achieve Transparency and Continuity

CSR programs can be established firmly within companies with the help of stakeholder engagement. Company executives, employees, investors, shareholders, customers, and the general public should be involved and contribute to CSR programs with the help of constant communication. Therefore, CSR information must be readily-available and accessible to all stakeholders in the form of annual reports. There is a growing demand for integrated reports or documents that combine financial with sustainability reports. Currently, member organizations of the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) are required to prepare a Communication on Progress (COP), a report communicating companies’ integration of the UNGC’s ten key sustainability principles into their operations and practices. The COP is one example of a report that concurrently discusses business success with sustainability performance.

Additionally, the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) recently released the Integrated Reporting (IR) Framework, an international standard for integrated reporting among companies and is currently being used in 25 countries. Through the rollout of this comprehensive framework for integrated reporting, companies can be more transparent about the positive impacts of CSR to their bottom line and the benefits that sustainability brings to all stakeholders.

The transparency of companies regarding their CSR programs can reiterate the importance of sustainability initiatives, thereby encouraging all stakeholders to engage in and contribute all that they can for the continuity and further improvement of all CSR initiatives.

CSR is Essential to Business Success in a Sustainability-Conscious Society

Identifying CSR as an important part of business will continue to push companies to design effective sustainability initiatives — those that will help them maintain healthy relationships with all of their stakeholders, adapt them to the changing environment, and balance the needs of society and communities in which they operate — all with providing them with healthy bottom lines.

CSR can be firmly established in a company by spurring the engagement of all stakeholders, which in turn, could be facilitated by addressing their information needs through the publication of comprehensive integrated reports.

FirstCarbon Solutions (FCS) recognizes the value of sustainability data and information in the success of CSR programs. FCS has developed a revolutionary approach to managing all of the data that serves as the foundation of dependable CSR reports with the help of unique state-of-the-art software and reliable consulting. By making complete and accurate sustainability performance information available, FCS can help stakeholders of companies and organizations make informed decisions that will ensure the firm integration of CSR into business strategies, operations, and practices. For more information, click on the link below: