In the current climate, ignoring corporate social responsibility isn’t an option for any organisation. Rather than focusing on financial profit alone, businesses everywhere are being held accountable and responsible for their environmental, social, and economic impacts.
Integrating a CSR strategy into core operations has proven a great way to keep your organisation accountable, committed, and on track with all your sustainability, and social impact and social value initiatives.
How could you make the implementation and management of CSR strategies significantly easier?
Keep it Simple
The Impact Reporting platform was born out of a need for organisations to conduct CSR reports in an easier way.
Finding and compiling all of the data needed for these reports is a gargantuan task:
- Gathering different spreadsheets across multiple departments
- Assuming the data is correct
- Praying nothing is missing, or worse, corrupt
Chris Farrell, Managing Director of Impact Reporting, explained, “We think that CSR reporting should be taken as seriously as financial reporting.”
“Without capturing the numbers to make a case for your social value as a company, you won’t get the business benefits of CSR and it’ll forever remain as a nice-to-have bolt-on in your company, only deserving of minimal investment in the good times”
Chris Farrell, Imapct Reporting
“If you are not measuring your social value, it isn’t being managed,” warns Chris.
“By tracking your impact you’ll be able to report it to the board, set goals, and monitor your progress towards them. Just like any other business initiative or commitment.”
“It’s about moving towards a credible reporting standard whereby organisations can have confidence in the outcomes. It’s certainly an ongoing process, and it’s exciting to be part of that.”
“The beauty of impact is that it enables our clients to capture a range of activities from across the organisation in real-time; from volunteering hours, to fundraising, or community engagement to capturing surveys on the wellbeing of beneficiaries.”
“It is very versatile and flexible to allow you to capture both qualitative and quantitative data without the onus associated with traditional CSR reporting.”
Take Stock of Where You Are At
Founder Matt Haworth also offered his insight into Impact Reporting.
“10 years ago, digital transformation really started to hit businesses,” says Matt. “Those that didn’t react, like Blockbuster, got pushed out of business by ones that did, like Netflix.”
“A similar transformation is happening in society today around purpose in business.”
CSR deserves to be thought of as a transformational, cross-business endeavour, not just a bolt-on”
Matt Howarth, Impact Reporting
“Consumers and workers have even greater expectations of the ethics and social impact of the organisations they choose. There’s also an environmental imperative to get this right so we can continue to have a planet we can inhabit.”
If there’s one message they want to get across, it’s how ineffective spreadsheets really are.
“Many companies wait until near their annual report dealing and then trawling through emails to build a spreadsheet. Spreadsheets like this aren’t great, though. They make it all the responsibility of one person to pull the information together from all corners of the business.”
“That means they miss stuff, and as soon as they’re done they become a snapshot. Just like with your accounts, a real-time view that’s fed into by people across the organisation is much better.”
“Software like Impact Reporting can get you set up to do this quickly and easily, taking the headache of social impact measurement by spreadsheets away for good.”
Discover how Impact Reporting can take your organisation’s corporate social responsibility to the next level, by calling 0161 532 4752 or visiting impactreporting.co.uk.
For an additional read, please visit Can You Make A Difference When Remote Working?
