What to Learn about Volunteering

Consider your employees to improve

While monetary donations and donated products or services can have a great impact on a worthy cause, many charities and nonprofits have actually noted that corporate volunteer programs have a huge value in the long run. Do you want to know why or how? This has to be with the increasing employee engagement, improving the ability to recruit younger employees, and increasing the company’s visibility in the community. Our today’s post is dedicated to this great way of making social committed activities. You will learn more about each aspect in order to know how your company or brand can also be benefited thanks to volunteering programs for the community your company operates:

Employee engagement

Corporate volunteer activities, projects or programs can drive employee engagement. This means that companies that promote corporate volunteer programs can enjoy greater employee satisfaction and greater productivity and profitability.

Younger employees

Involved employees

Young population just coming out of college for the last several years is committed to changing the world for a better place to work and live. This is very different from the traditional or older models where benefits were almost the only variables that potential employees were interested in.

Corporate visibility

Giving does not mean there will not be clear financial incentives for the company at the same time. A perfect design and created and a corporate volunteer program that promotes employees skills can raise a company’s visibility in the community. As you may know, all this can improve your company’s reputation.

Positive image

However, those three previous benefits are not everything your company or brand can earn through volunteering programs. The following are also some positive aspects your company will enjoy:

• Employee development.
• Encouraging teamwork
• Improved communication.
• Building brand awareness.
• Improved employee retention.



Everyone's invited to participate

• Providing subject matter for corporate content creation.

What Considerations We Take about CSR

Actions to take for CSR programs

As we all know, when thinking about creating social programs or corporate social responsibility campaigns, we have to consider more than simply measuring our positive image or reputation on the market and the society.  This topic is more important than you may think and it is present in almost every committed company or individual with a deep sense and interest on social issues and needs of the different communities where the companies are operating.

Corporate social responsibility is an ethical framework which suggests that any entity - an organization or individual - has the responsibility to act for the benefit of society in different aspects: economy, technological development, education, environment, etc. Social responsibility is a duty every individual has to perform to maintain a balance between the economy and the ecosystems.

About the concept

Covering every aspect

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) can be defined as the economic, legal, ethical, and discretionary expectations that society has of organizations at a given point in time.  The concept of corporate social responsibility means that organizations have moral, ethical, and philanthropic responsibilities in addition to their responsibilities to earn a fair return for investors and comply with the law.

History

The concept of CSR is relatively new - the phrase has only been in wide use since the 1960s. But, while the economic, legal, ethical, and discretionary expectations placed on organizations may differ, it is probably accurate to say that all societies at all points in time have had some degree of expectation that organizations would act responsibly, by some definition.

CSR

Today, the International Organization for Standardization  has the responsibility to encourage voluntary commitment to social responsibility and will lead to common guidance on concepts, definitions and methods of evaluation. The standard describes itself as a guide for dialogue and language, not a constraining or certifiable management standard.

Improving the World

From the Product to the Employee with Sony

Sony's Social Responsibility

The company is one of the leading manufacturers of electronic products for the consumer and professional markets. Sony’s corporate social responsibility activities reflect its philosophy of implementing sound business practices; innovating to realize products, services and content that inspire people; assisting the communities in which the company operates; and helping to shape a better, more sustainable world. Sony believes that these activities both benefit society and enhance corporate value.

Today, Sony promotes CSR initiatives, which sets seven main areas of focus:

• Corporate governance,
• compliance,
• human resources,
• responsible sourcing,
• quality and services,
• environment and
• community engagement

All this with the aim of strengthening its operating foundation and continuously enhancing its corporate value.

Some of the values

Some of the areas mentioned before:

Products responsibility

Responsiveness and Customer Service:

Sony is taking various steps to improve its responsiveness and customer service capabilities in line with its commitment to respect its customers’ viewpoints in striving to deliver product quality and customer service that exceed their expectations.

Accessibility and Usability:

Accessibility and Usability is the key aspect of quality at Sony.

The company creates products and services that more people can use easily.
Sony aims to create products and services that people can use with ease-independent of age and disabilities.

Human resources 

Community engagement

Diversity and Inclusion:

Diversity refers to a variety of characteristics related to race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, beliefs, disabilities, gender, age, birthplace, sexual orientation, viewpoints and work style, and more. Sony promotes diversity thanks to the Sony Group as a key management strategy by ensuring an inclusive work environment and by recruiting, hiring, training and promoting employees from diverse backgrounds.

Rafael Nunez Aponte: Learn How to Measure Corporate Social Responsibility

B Corp

There are some applications that measure the corporate social responsibility of companies. Some websites crowdsource opinions and facts on companies, while other sites use their own set of metrics to estimate social good. We show you below the tools that stand out among the rest, along with two issue-specific resources that can assist you with purchasing decisions:

B Corp

This tool created a ratings system in 2009 to measure the social and environmental impact of small to medium-sized companies. B Corp helps investors and consumers tell the difference between socially responsible companies and companies with great marketing. Certified B Corporations maintain an in-depth legal structure that expands corporate accountability so they are required to make decisions that are good for society, not just their shareholders, according to the non-profit's website.

JustMeans Insights

JustMeans Insights

JustMeans Insights helps investors, the media, practitioners and consumers measure a company's CSR, environmental impact and sustainability performance against its competitors. This toll provides the data visualization tools to compare these companies. They study the number of standards, dig through thousands of historical reports, and then pull all of that into a data visualization tool normalized to financials, employees, etc. The result is that anyone can then compare companies across industries, sectors, geographies along the same normalized metrics.

In addition to these applications, here are two issue-specific tools that can help you make purchasing decisions.

Eat Well Guide: the Eat Well Guide is an online directory of fresh, local, and sustainable food in the U.S. and Canada including farmers' markets, restaurants, grocery stores, family farms and more.

Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch: the MBAq sustainable seafood guide lists the most ocean-friendly seafood options by assessing fish populations in conjunction with fishing and fish-farming methods. You can use their online search tool, downloadable pocket guides, or mobile apps.

CSR

Corporate Social Responsibility of Forever 21

CSR of Forever 21

Corporate Social Responsibility came into use in the early 1970’s after many corporations were formed. Corporate Social responsibly is a form of self-regulation performed by corporations. Most, if not all corporations, have a CSR program developed into their business model.

CSR programs are designed to ensure active compliances with the law, ethical standards and international norms, as well as the environment demands regarding energy and sustainability. The overall goal of a CSR program is to accept responsibility for any actions in which the company may take part in.

Just as a consumer has choices, at Forever 21, they take the business choices seriously, including in the way they obtain the products they sell. At Forever 21, they strive to have a positive impact not only within stores and corporate family, but also upon hundreds of vendor manufacturing facilities throughout the world.

For Forever 21 these choices as part of a work in progress and that there is always more to do:

·         Supplier and Vendor Social Compliance and Ethical Sourcing

Forever 21

Forever 21 wants all of its employees also to work in safe and healthy environments and to provide products to the consumer, which are made by such employees.

Therefore, its Corporate Social Responsibility program includes the Forever 21 Vendor Audit Program. While many of its vendors have worked with Forever 21 for a number of years and are trusted, all suppliers and vendors must provide factory contact information and all factories must participate in the audit program.

The Social Commitment of Pick n Pay

In 1997, Raymond and Wendy Ackerman celebrated the 30th Anniversary of the founding of Pick n Pay. To commemorate the occasion and to honor the name of Raymond and Wendy Ackerman, as well as to ensure the ongoing philosophy of philanthropy, the Board of Directors of Pick n Pay Stores Limited resolved to set aside a substantial sum of money to create a fund for philanthropic purposes. The Ackerman Pick n Pay Foundation was duly established as a Corporate Foundation.

Corporate Social Responsibility

This company thinks in corporate social responsibility in every action they do. Some of the initiatives of Pick n Pay are:

·         Money Boxes

The Pick n Pay money box program is a corporate social investment program and was started in the stores of the foundation as a way to raise much needed funds for various charities. Their overall campaign message is “Your Change can Change Lives” and serves to encourage customers to drop their spare change into the money boxes fitted at the till points in store. The spare change is then collected regularly by the store manager and deposited into the money box fund which in turn pays out the funds raised to the charity organizations. Some of the organizations include the QuadPara Association on South Africa and the Sunflower Foundation.

·         QuadPara Association of South Africa

QuadPara Association of South Africa

The QuadPara Association strives to prevent spinal cord injury, as well as protect and promote the interests of people with mobility impairments by formulating a national policy and strategy, to develop and ensure the full potential and quality of their lives.

·         Sunflower Fund

The Sunflower Fund was formed in 1999 in support of the SABMR and was inspired by Chris Corlett and Darren Serebro’s heroic struggle against leukemia. It was formed by parents whose children had contracted leukemia, and, in some cases, had lost their battle against it. Their aim was to secure financial support in order to increase the number of bone marrow stem cell donors in South Africa.