Why Creating a Positive Impact is Good for Business

When growing a business, it’s easy to find yourself laser-focused on financially-oriented goals at the expense of everything else. But leaders often run into challenges when they skip environmental and social responsibility and head straight for profit; with a University of Washington study finding that leaders who focus primarily on the ends – “profits, happiness and harm” – are only aware of ethical issues when harm is done.?

For society’s sake, businesses of the future should stand for three things: planet, people and a stronger economy. This is because, in the long-term, modern companies will not only be held accountable for their financial results but for the positive impact they generate on society. Fortunately, for the businesses of today, they do not need to choose between their business doing well and doing good. Because, as we’ll come to explore, there’s more than one way to give back, while getting plenty in return.?

Protecting the planet while protecting business resources

Whether businesses know it or not, the impact of the climate crisis has been felt by 48% of firms in the UK, and has cost the EU around €145 billion in the last decade. Part of how businesses can strive for more environmentally sound practices is reducing carbon emissions or helping achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).?

This can potentially include fighting hunger with projects that include cutting food waste, running promotions to use up food stock or implementing more effective inventory management. There are also more practical ways of cutting your carbon footprint, including implementing electric vehicles as part of your delivery fleet or using more eco-friendly packaging. For instance, one of the four pillars Glovo adheres to in order to reduce its own carbon footprint is a commitment to deliver 92% of its orders with sustainable packaging by 2030.?

Meanwhile, initiatives like H&M’s partnership with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, which supports fashion’s progression towards a circular economy, and Coca-Cola’s response to the EU directive about cutting plastic waste, demonstrate a tangible commitment to sustainability that comes at no exorbitant cost to the business. Initiatives such as these are increasingly important. As distrust in institutions grows, consumers expect and demand the brands they buy from to exhibit transparency around issues like climate change. In fact, 94% of consumers show loyalty to a brand that is transparent and approximately 75% of those are willing to pay more for a brand they believe to be genuine.?

Fueling community-backed initiatives

The push for positive impact isn’t just environmental though. When product and price point are similar, people-driven values may well be the deciding factor in a customer’s decision to purchase from a brand. This tracks with recent data from Deloitte that supports a link between purpose-driven brands and business performance: over half (57%) of consumers show more loyalty to those that address social inequities.?

A huge part of any business’s mission should be to give back to the wider community. A route to doing this can be to partner with NGOs, city councils, charitable foundations and social enterprises. This has become even more important given the increased calls for social justice. At Glovo, for instance, we enable NGOs to use Glovo logistics for free through Glovo Access – an initiative that has seen over 3.5 million social meals delivered, and 1,600 tonnes of food waste saved and redistributed to those most in need.?

Another key part of a community is its businesses. Small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) make up 95% of the world’s businesses and are therefore a key part of the wider economy. Yet they can often lack the resources to compete and reach customers. To change this, Glovo launched Glovo Local to help SMBs digitalise and therefore better manage their operations.??

Elsewhere, UK bank HSBC has established a similar partnership with homeless charity Shelter, helping more than 2,000 people open bank accounts, despite having no fixed address. While Visa launched a small business hub to help them adapt to the modern business world, build digital capabilities and meet consumer demand.?

Doing good beyond good business

Doing good is about more than just success inside your own organisation. Crucially, positive impact is about how we leave a positive impact on society as a whole, how your business feeds into the wider ecosystem around it and how it supports those in need.??

There are of course business arguments around driving diversity and social inclusion – with more diverse businesses typically being stronger businesses – but while the outcomes of these initiatives include high motivation, continued commitment and added satisfaction, most importantly, they are the right thing to do.

Our own initiatives include the LeaderSHE programme that helps us to close the gender gap by empowering women in the company to grow their networks, skill sets and leadership potential. But as well as the talent we have in-house, we also make considerable investments in building the female talent pipeline and bridging the gap between university graduates and entry-level roles by building new recruitment processes and investing in training opportunities.?

While Glovo’s Couriers Pledge exists to increase the social rights and benefits available to couriers regardless of employment or work status within the country. A part of this is G-Learning, our online programme of training courses, we are helping couriers gain access to more qualified jobs and achieve the futures they want.

In the US, Johnson & Johnson similarly reacted to internal, and industry-wide, underrepresentation by committing to increasing the number of its Black vice presidents and managers by 50% by 2025. While across its 88,000 employees in 150 countries, L’Oreal created over 80 learning resources to drive diversity and inclusion – with women making up 68% of its own workforce and 61% of its international brand directors.

The need to scale responsibility

To be future-ready, leaders need to scale responsibility as well as scale their business. This ethos informed Glovo’s Impact Fund, which ensures a small amount of every Glovo order goes towards all the initiatives mentioned here, and more besides. The Impact Fund is an all-encompassing promise to double down on our positive impact as the company grows and something that helps us be more resilient as a business at the same time as generating positive local impact.?

Ultimately, scaling responsibility is about thinking beyond profit and understanding that caring for communities is also caring for users, clients and people. Because while it might feel good to bask in the glory of some impressive monthly revenue, this is short-termism. And without considering their long-term impact and footprint, businesses won’t just find themselves unable to give back, but potentially unable to operate.