So you’ve figured out the goals and targets for your CSR agenda, but how do you move this out of the boardroom to engage your employees, clients, consumers or other stakeholders with your plans?
Taking the first steps toward proactively making a difference and caring about other issues apart from profit – like ethics, social issues and environmental causes – can seem overwhelming and complex, yet a great place to start is by acknowledging that your sustainability story should be about progress, not perfection.
Start With Your Team
The great news is that your best asset, your employees, are ready and most importantly, want to do good in the world, with studies showing there is an unprecedented rise in loyalty for organisations that meet employees' need for purpose (Deloitte Millennial Survey 2020).
If you have teams who actively want to do good, this can be harnessed into simple sustainability action. You might be surprised how quickly this can add up to help showcase the ambition of your business's overall goals.
Building this into workplace practices can collectively create a huge impact, no matter the size of your team. Here at onHand we see an overall engagement rate of 50% of all employees getting involved with sustainability activities or community volunteering.
How do we do it? Firstly, it's important to offer choice. By having a range of opportunities and ways to get involved, there is likely to be something that resonates with every member of your team and also is simple to implement in their everyday.
And that simplicity is important too; it’s the key to success. As you might have experienced with a failed workplace benefit, if it's complex to implement and understand you may end up falling at the first hurdle.
We also believe in healthy competition. If your team can see how they compare against other team members in a leaderboard then this helps drive strong, ongoing engagement.
Finally, it's important to reward. We do this at onHand by planting trees for every single team member based on the actions they take. The more good completed, the more global impact they create; it's a win-win for your team and the planet.
The wellbeing benefits are also extensive. Now, more than ever, wellbeing is intrinsically linked to ESG targets and, simply put, doing good in the world makes people feel good about themselves and feel more purposeful.
The statistics back it up, 64% of millennials consider a company's social and environmental commitments when deciding where to work, (Cone Communications) and 86% of millennials said they would take a paycut to work at a company whose mission and values aligned with their own, (Linkedin Study 2018).
Tell Your Impact Story
Building transparency, reputation and trust can take time. However, the actions your employees take can help you tell this story to the world and also have a huge impact on how others perceive your business.
We are inundated with pictures every week and there is certainly an appetite for employees to share the impact they are making. Savvy businesses use this to their advantage - photos of your team doing good add tangible proof points and can be leveraged to show your overall sustainability ambition and activity. This can be told through social impact storytelling on your website, blog and social channels to engage clients, consumers and other stakeholders.
In addition, live impact reports such as this example from Domestic & General can help create transparency on where you are on your journey and are useful data points for ESG reports.
Interested to see how onHand can help your sustainability journey? Get in touch today.
