What is corporate community responsibility? 10 ideas to implement no matter how big your company is

Corporate community responsibility

Corporate community responsibility rests with business owners and managers. Being a company owner means that you have two responsibilities, one for your company and its employees and the other for the community in which you work, whether it's your community you grew up in or a community where you only connect your business. After the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals were announced in 2015, people paid special attention to recognizing the role of companies towards societies as the most influential factors in the country's economy.

The term CSR Aand Corporate Social Responsibility, known as corporate community responsibility, has recently been coined, and the World Bank has defined this responsibility as:"The commitment of business owners to contribute to sustainable development by working with their employees, families and community, to improve the standard of living of individuals, in a way that serves both trade and development."

This definition is not much different from that set by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development of Community Responsibility: "The continued commitment of businesses to act ethically and contribute to improving the quality of living conditions of the workforce, their families, the community and society as a whole."

So from these two definitions we see that there is a huge burden on companies in improving the quality of life in societies.

According to scientist and researcher Carol, there are four dimensions or fundamental pillars that if companies follow, they will be able to achieve prosperity for them and for communities. These dimensions are in order according to Carol's pyramid: the economic dimension, the legal dimension, the moral dimension and the human dimension. These dimensions are part of the global goals set by the United Nations body for the prosperity of the people and the land in general.

In 2015, at the 70th session of its General Assembly, the United Nations adopted new development goals, a global sustainable development programme that was set to be "people and for their own good."

Sustainable Development Goals:

1. Eradicating poverty

2. Total elimination of hunger

3. Good health and well-being

4. Quality education

5. Gender equality

6. Clean water and hygiene

This list extends to 17 as shown in the picture.

If CSR is in line with the Sustainable Development Goals, there will be a significant positive change for both companies and communities.

Maybe dear reader, if you're a small business owner, you're asking yourself now: What can my small business do to the community, and I don't have enough capital to make me develop from the company and the community?

10 ideas for community responsibility that all companies can implement no matter how big

1. Establishing youth rehabilitation programmes for the labour market

Your company can allow the training of new graduates and help them enter the labor market or participate in the establishment of courses to explain the basic requirements of the labor market and other ideas that contribute to the creation of a conscious generation that can increase the efficiency and quality of the market in which it operates.

2. Help create development projects and create new jobs.

You can help young people and girls educate them and help them start their own businesses, and they in turn help others by creating jobs for them.

3. Help reduce the effects of carbon and greenhouse gases

You can create initiatives and campaigns to raise awareness of carbon side effects and how to reduce them, such as the Million Trees Initiative.

4. Working to provide jobs for interested people

It is important that your future plan for your company has a commitment to provide a certain number of jobs for interested people and help them participate in different fields of life, this will not only benefit them but also benefit you.

5. Working to reduce inequalities in the labour market

There must be fair internal labour policies that are equal to both sexes and eliminate all forms of discrimination against women and girls.

6. Provide a healthy working environment

Employees in any organization are the key to its success, so providing them with a healthy working environment helps them increase productivity and pay more attention to quality.

7. Health awareness campaigns

Every once in a while, you can do some health campaigns to raise awareness of different diseases and how to prevent them, which will enhance individual health awareness, thereby reducing mortality rates and increasing production.

8. Implementation of the eighth sustainable development goals: decent work and economic growth

This is to give workers decent and unfair wages so that they can live a decent life, provide them with a safe working environment free of risk or at least provide them with means to protect them from these risks if they must. This will certainly benefit the economy and economic growth in general.

9. Encouraging employees not to waste different resources

Encourage recycling and optimize the use of resources to transform into a more sustainable working environment.

10. Adopting environmentally friendly business policies and increasing environmentally and socially conscious investments

Do not harm others for your own benefit and be fair and do not make any investments that would harm the environment, such as polluting drinking water, polluting air, increasing the emission of greenhouse gases or damaging agricultural land and contaminating crops.

The benefits of applying community responsibility to your company

Far from improving your company's business image in the market and increasing customer confidence in your products, these practices have other benefits, the most important of which are:

• Working to increase innovation

Your commitment to business policies that do not harm the environment and society will try to access safer and higher quality products that will enhance the company's innovation process and employees. A good example is what Unilever International has done, creating new hair care products that use less water using the principle of sustainability.

• Working to reduce costs

For example, General Mills International, which was able to save more than half a million US dollars, after seeking to reduce the energy consumed in its operations by 20%, installed power control meters on some equipment in its factories.

• Increase customer interaction with your products

Community responsibility activities help increase better interaction with the public and consumer customers. This was applied by walmart chain stores in 2008, where through a successful marketing campaign was able to raise the awareness of its customers with the consumer options available to them and its role in preserving the environment, and it developed to tell customers about products that are more environmentally suitable and sustainable, thus able to increase channels of communication with consumers and make the process of communicating with customers more valuable.

Some realistic models of community responsibility in large companies

• Starbucks

The company is diversifying its workforce and creating jobs for different stakeholders, and has pledged to hire 25,000 people with special needs or those in need of employment by 2025 as part of their socially responsible efforts. The initiative also seeks to integrate young young people into the labour market by giving them their first job. In addition, the company has joined UNHCR to increase the company's support and efforts to reach refugee candidates to recruit 1,000 refugees by 2022.

• Armani

In 2011, Armani, known for its elegant designs and high-end costumes, focused its attention on the issue of clean water in collaboration with Green Cross International and unicef's Tap Project, with the aim of raising awareness of access to clean and safe drinking water, and by launching the "Water is Life" campaign, which helped every child get 100 liters of clean water every time she bought perfume from the company's perfume group. In five years, supporting projects in 80 countries around the world, it has raised more than 2.3 million dollars, or 92 million days of clean drinking water.

• Walt Disney

Walt Disney Is Committed to Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions by Reducing Its Carbon Footprint, Reducing Waste in Resources and Water Conservation.

In addition, it is working on strict international action policies to protect the safety and rights of employees, but at the community level, the company has healthy living initiatives to promote healthy eating habits among employees.

• Johnson & Johnson

For decades, this leading brand has reduced its negative impacts on the planet, ranging from using wind power to providing safe drinking water to communities around the world. The company is working to provide a renewable economic alternative to electricity, as it continues to look for renewable energy options, with the aim of purchasing 35% of its energy needs from renewable sources.

• Carrefour Group

Since 2000, the group has participated in more than 200 development projects around the world, the most important of which are:

• Support for Thailand's school development program in cooperation with UNESCO in 2001.
• Supported a five-year vocational training program for young people in Argentina in 2002.
• A school care program entitled "Schools of Our Lives" has been launched in Colombia in collaboration with UNICEF.
• Social groceries open in Greece;
• 2.2 million euros for emergency assistance and reconstruction projects in the wake of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake in China.

• Intel Company

The company ranked 12th in the top 100 companies to assume social responsibility for 2011 by the Journal of Corporate Social Responsibility.

The most prominent of these activities are:

• Human Development: About half of the company's employees donated more than one million hours of service in schools and non-profit institutions.
• Concern for the environment: The company is the largest clean energy consumer donor in the United States, with a interest in producing less energy-intensive products.
• Building future generations: The company has invested more than $1 billion to improve the world's educational process in collaboration with state governments.

• Samsung

The digital and electronic device giant around the world plays its social role as follows:

• In social care: The company supports scientific education and creative thinking that encourages leadership and helping children from low-income families by supporting education infrastructure.
• In the academic and educational field: Samsung is one of the main supporters of the Science Olympics for Young People in Korea. In 2001, the company collaborated with the Environmentally Friendly Families Movement to implement "eco-friendly school" models that support increased environmental awareness among children and enable them to take practical steps to protect environmental regulations.

Its role is limited to these areas only, but there are also cultural, artistic and voluntary services.

After listing all these models for global companies and explaining that a positive social and environmental approach helps the company succeed and build a strong brand, the greatest proof of this is what these companies do, and may be an incentive for startups to assume their responsibility to society.

Would you like to consult on the application of community responsibility in your company? Call us.