Many companies are taking up the mantle of corporate social responsibility. According to the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, Corporate Social Responsibility is the continuing commitment by business to behave ethically and contribute to economic development while improving the quality of life of the workforce and their families as well as of the local community and society. There is also the part that only looks at corporate responsibility – in which case only looks at responsible business / corporate aspects – the corporate governance, not necessarily from a social (society) perspective.
The advent of corporate governance and stakeholders’ management programs brought in the need for companies to look at various angles of operations, not just profits. It brought in the need to encompass a wider circle of stakeholders, while still focussing on the interest of the shareholders. Many companies have therefore developed programs planned to meet the needs of their defined stakeholders, which include both internal and external stakeholder.
A key group within the group of external stakeholders includes the general public, or the society within which the business operates. This is an important group as it constitutes sub-groups with varied interests in the company, mainly customers of the business, who contribute to the bottom line, in addition to other members of wider society who are just aware of the business. This group (the public), in addition to other stakeholders, is exposed to communication about the business from various sources. Other stakeholder groups may have specific messages that target them, for example, employees may have an internal newsletter / memo …etc.
As businesses continue to invest in a lot of CSR initiatives, there is a need to communicate about these initiatives. They put money in both the programs and the respective communications. However, in communicating about these CSR initiatives, should companies assume the same approach they use in their business communication (e.g. advertising) and replicate the same when they communicate about their involvement in CSR initiatives? How do they know if the message has a positive impact on their overall brand?
Research has shown a number of factors that businesses should consider while communicating about their involvement in CSR initiatives. Poorly developed communication could lead to not only negative perception developing about the business, but also to cynicism about such involvement. A recent study tested communication from companies and randomly picked some of the initiatives those companies had undertaken. It included publicly available information about the specific initiatives. These were then reviewed in a survey with a random sample through an online study. The respondents were exposed to the messages in the same format as it was when the communication was used.
The study covered companies from various sectors / industries to ensure a wider spectrum of businesses. In addition, this was to cater for the varied interests of the general public and how the view the communication about these CSR initiatives.
One of the key outputs was that such communication on CSR initiative has an impact on the brand. Communication about CSR involvement should be relevant to the customers and how they perceive the business. The study showed that a business may experience high brand awareness and the communication about CSR is also relevant to the society. Ideally, any business aims to have high brand awareness, and on communicating about CSR initiatives, the messages should be relevant to augment the awareness. It was therefore noteworthy to find out companies with high awareness but whose communication about their involvement in CSR was not relevant.
On the other hand, there are businesses that have low awareness, but there communication about their involvement in CSR was relevant to the public. This implies the communication is not only tailored to a given program but also in line with the image of the company. As you will note above, the programs may not be in the same line of operations as the company. Hence, the way communication is tailored for a given program has an impact.
Conversely, there are companies who have a high awareness in the market, but whose communication about their involvement in particular activities is perceived not as relevant to the public. This implies businesses need to be more specific in their target recipient of their communication. It does not imply they don’t get involved in the chosen activity, but rather check if the intended communication is relevant to the public.
The above shows there could be a link between the general awareness of the brand, it involvement with the society and any other relevant communication on CSR only acts to reinforce such perception. On the contrary, a company that is not well known cannot just communicate of its involvement and assume the society will connect with it or find it relevant.
Further, in developing messages, companies should take cue of elements that are in line with their perceived image. Communicating about activities that society thinks are in contrary to the perceived image could lead to people questioning the motive or even being cynical of your involvement. For instance, the above fast food outlet had a noble goal of helping underprivileged children go to school but research showed the communication elicited sarcastic comments.
Further, a business perceived as a family oriented could have its communication on involvement in CSR initiatives with elements that show commitment to activities on family welfare. Hence, having messages around family orientation would evoke better image and probably better meet the objectives of the program.
Overall, business should engage their communication and brand development teams when developing messages about their initiatives. CSR aspects will continue to grow and play a significant role in business. Any accompanying messages should help in developing a positive impact.
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