Creating genuine Social Value through CSR

You might be able to tell from my unusual job title that I am the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) person at Reward Gateway. 

This is a pretty new thing for us. I’ve been with the business for a while, and we’ve always donated money to causes, supported our people when they’re fundraising, and volunteered our skills and time to an array of charities. But, this is the first time we’ve put some structure and thought into it. 

I’ve always found the intersection between commerciality and purpose really exciting — as a side project, I co-run a start-up clothing brand called WYNAD Clothing (shameless plug, I know!), which works with Fair Trade suppliers in India to make uncompromising, outspoken, ethical fashion. 

 Corporate Social Responsibility is a model designed to help organisations act in a way which benefits wider society as well as their bottom line.  

Whilst I'm not the biggest fan of the term, CSR is a hugely important model that deserves to be taken seriously. With 64% of millennials stating they wouldn’t take a job if a potential employer doesn’t have strong CSR practices, those who fail to recognise the importance of this area to the modern workforce will get left behind. It’s a “must-have” for organisations looking to make an impact with their employees.  

The most common way to think about CSR is the “three-pillar” model: Community, Environmental and Economic. A good CSR strategy should look to address each pillar in some way. A good CSR strategy should amplify an organisations performance.

The best kind of CSR strategies are ones that have been crafted in collaboration with charities and community groups. They’re the ones developed by organisations who really understand their product, service and people, and can connect the dots to create genuine Social Value. 

And whist not every organisation may have someone dedicated to CSR, it’s critically important to have buy-in at the higher levels of leadership as part of your overall employee engagement strategy.

How we embrace corporate social responsibility at RG

In 2018, we created and registered RG Foundation, a grant-giving charity which supports organisations that are making the world a better, fairer, safer and more equal place to work. The Foundation’s focus is an extension of Reward Gateway’s mission to Make the World a Better Place to Work, which makes it an incredibly authentic way to engage our employees in the company mission in a deeper way. 

In its first year RG Foundation has supported 11 organisations around the world with a total of about ￡326,000 in grants that had been nominated by our own staff.

I was (and still am) part of the Foundation’s operational team, which meant I started having a lot of conversations with inspirational people doing incredible work to tackle some of society's most challenging issues. 

One such example is Working Chance - the UK’s only recruitment charity for women leaving the criminal justice and care systems. We initially met the WC team through one of their employability workshops provided to their candidates as part of the journey into work after prison.

The days are co-ordinated in collaboration between corporate volunteers, prison staff, candidates and the Working Chance delivery team. They usually include a CV surgery; one-to-one interview practice; and confidence-building around disclosures. They're a great example of impactful CSR as: 

• Working Chance’s candidates benefit from an effective program designed to help get them work-ready as well as the opportunity to meet with potential employers in a variety of sectors.
• Our people benefit by developing their “soft-skills” and broadening perspectives of the working world.
• Working Chance benefits by increasing the hiring rate of their candidates, and building genuine relationships with corporations who care about their cause. 

In fact, as a result of our first volunteering day with them, three RG volunteers nominated Working Chance for RG Foundation funding, and two months later they were awarded a ￡40,000 grant and throughout 2019 we collaborated with Working Chance in a number of ways.

This example is one of many, and although this space is fairly new to me, I feel I've learned a huge amount over the last year (whilst of course making plenty of mistakes along the way). With that in mind, here's my attempt at imparting some knowledge with 4 very practical tips for creating a solid and impactful CSR strategy.

Four ways to improve your CSR strategy

Collaborate

When approaching charities and community groups, it’s always best to take a collaborative approach. You might want to use your volunteer days to get your team together out of the office, but what if that doesn’t fit the needs of the charity? What if instead, you have some skills that they could really use like marketing, sales strategy, people strategy or software development?  

Whatever it is, don’t be prescriptive. Approach the conversation from a point of working together and adding some genuine value. 

For more inspiration, reach out to other CSR professionals to spark conversation and ideas.

Lead by example

Like most things you do in your organisation, if you get buy-in from your Leadership Team you’re more likely to succeed.

 I’ve been really lucky in the fact that our re-focused CSR strategy came directly from our CEO.  

The fact that he, and the rest of our LT, are behind it means that I can approach ideas with an air of confidence and in the knowledge that this work is related to our business strategy and ultimately our plans for growth. It also means other people in the business are more likely to get behind the strategy.

If that’s not the case for you though, my advice would be to educate yourself. Get familiar with some of the numbers and data that point to the correlation between successful CSR strategies and more effective organisations. You can relate this to your industry so leaders understand it’s not just about recycling or one “do good” task, rather it should be a core part of your business strategy. (For starters, I love this book with impactful case studies).

Involve your people

While having the Leadership Team backing is important, it’s just as important to include your people in the strategy from the beginning. Their engagement and participation will be where a lot of the value to the business comes from.

If you’re a multi-location, global business (like us) then this one poses a few challenges.

 You can start by identifying champions in each location, who can help you to get a real understanding of the local bandwidth for opportunities, and of course help you to coordinate things on the ground.  

This is a real opportunity for you to become a partner to lots of different departments and teams, wherever they’re based. 

A huge win for us has been to tie the strategy into our company values framework. With values such as “We Are Global” and “We Speak Up,” our teams are already used to thinking about how we can collaborate remotely on projects and vocalise suggestions or ideas clearly to get the best result. However, it makes a lot of sense for us to align our CSR strategy closely with our “We Are Human” value, which teaches us to be kind in our interactions and think about how we can help others even if it’s not related to our job role. 

This year we launched our first ever We Are Human Week, which coincided with the United Nations “International Day of Volunteering” on the 5th of December. The week brought a chance for our teams to celebrate this value together and embrace a culture of giving back whether that be through fundraisers, volunteering, donations or even just simply being more thoughtful of others. 

Get creative

Finally, (and this one’s probably my favorite) get creative in your approach to CSR and open your door to new ideas and ways of working. One of the most exciting things about this space is the potential for interesting projects that can have a real impact. Think about the sector your organisation exists in, and what you do, and work with some of your colleagues to see if your service can bend to deliver more social value.

We recently released a new charitable giving offering on our employee engagement platform, partnering with GlobalGiving to enable our clients and their employees to easily donate to more than 4,000 vetted nonprofit projects and organisations around the world. 

Workers can select the amount they want to donate by using employee-awarded funds or cashback funds earned on the Reward Gateway platform. Because GlobalGiving is seamlessly integrated with the platform, employees can donate peer or manager-awarded funds earned on the platform quickly and easily.

For us, being in the tech space lends itself well to creativity, as products can be tweaked and adapted by our skilled engineers to fulfill changing needs. Alongside the new Global Giving feature, we’ve also been able to use our own platform to communicate things like We Are Human Week, how many volunteering days have been used by our people, or how much money has been donated to causes globally. 

We’ve even started offering a selection of our products to smaller, Mission-aligned charities at zero cost. (If you’re interested, I can help you!

In summary, if you’re not at least looking at CSR, or Social Value or Sustainability (whatever you want to call it) then you should be. If done in the right way it can contribute to more growth, more engaged employees, happier customers and a better world for everyone now and in the future. Surely that’s what this is all about. 

And, if you’re an HR or CSR person that’s looking for ways to bring your people on board with this kind of work then give me a shout. Maybe we can come up with something new together.