How Can Businesses Become More Socially Responsible and Why is it Important?

With the advancements in technology, many new trends have been created such as large companies being socially responsible. Social responsibility has become an essential factor for many things such as people choosing who to work for and consumers deciding where to spend their money.

Social responsibility has a huge impact, not only on society but on the businesses that are implementing social responsibility activities as well. As of 2021, since customers and consumers check whether the businesses have any positive influence on society or not,  social responsibility has evolved and has become an essential part of how certain businesses, mostly large corporations, run their operations.

Nevertheless, there are many ways to become more socially responsible as a business:

1. Enhance public awareness and concern

One of the most important and obvious ways to become more socially responsible as a business is by improving public awareness and concern for the cause that you are supporting. You can do so in a lot of different ways but the best way to do so is by supporting and funding promotional communication, which means starting a campaign for your cause. Ben and Jerry also started a campaign that increased awareness about global warming.

2. Support fundraising

Large businesses such as you can also support fundraising by providing huge amounts of funds to organizations such as charities to help them make their ends meet. It is also a good idea to encourage the community especially your customers to contribute to your cause. British Airways started a campaign that helped them raise funds for certain children’s charities by collecting pocket change from their passengers.

3. Support different efforts that are done by other businesses

To become a socially responsible business, you can also support different efforts that are done by other businesses in their respective industry. It is very important to support campaigns that might influence behavior change of the community and industry business practices. For example, you can support the HIV/AIDS workplace initiative, that was started by the Coca-Cola Foundation in Africa, by providing them funds or by starting a similar campaign. Not only that but Best Buy also tried to protect the environment by supporting the recycling of used computers by selling them at a low price.

4. Increase the number of volunteers

Last but not least, large corporations can also increase the number of volunteers, that are volunteering to donate their expertise, physical labor, and ideas to support a certain cause, by promoting volunteerism in society. Although promoting volunteerism is not a bad idea but it is advisable to encourage your employees to help and contribute to a certain cause because encouraging your employees to contribute to society will encourage the majority of the community to do the same.

A lot of businesses have implemented this strategy before and have been quite successful in achieving a higher number of volunteers. For instance, Shell encouraged its employees to help clean the coastal areas to protect the environment.

Benefits of being a socially responsible business

• • Being socially responsible helps businesses create a strong corporate reputation as the community knows these businesses are willing to sacrifice their profit for the betterment of society.
  • It also helps businesses to attract and retain a motivated workforce. Since the businesses are known for being involved in the community and for providing their employees an opportunity to do something for a certain cause and receive recognition by the community for doing so, the workforce is more motivated compared to other businesses that are not socially responsible.
  • Since socially responsible businesses get recognition for what they are doing, they become more popular over time which helps them support new marketing objectives including but not limited to building traffic, creating product differentiation, improving brand positioning, increasing sales, reaching niche markets, and attracting new customers.

• Socially responsible businesses can also build strong community relationships with other organizations that might provide technical expertise. This can help them improve their campaign reach by providing access to the members and donors who also support their cause.

Is being socially responsible feasible for every business?

Being socially responsible as a business and helping out the community sounds good but it is not always possible to do so. Although for large corporations, it depends on the type of ownership, whether the business is owned privately or publicly. For small and new businesses, it is quite difficult to be socially responsible because they solely have to focus on surviving in their respective industry and can’t afford to spend any money for the community. Choosing to do otherwise may bankrupt them, and they might need to hire a trusted bankruptcy lawyer.

It is quite essential to implement all the practices that are mentioned above in order to become a socially responsible business and benefit from them and allow society to benefit from it as well.