5 Ways Any Business Can Be a Platform for Positive Social Change
Your business is part of a wider community beyond the workplace. Hence, you need to think about how your operations can impact society. There is more to running a business than reaping profits and expanding. Your organization can also be an essential platform in empowering people and cultures to promote social change.
According to Deloitte, nearly three-fourths of Millennials and Gen Z are more in tune with social issues and others’ needs. Hence, most of them make special efforts to support businesses that are doing ways to create social change. By working hand in hand, your business and your customers positively impact your communities.
With that, here are some ways on how to make social change happen through your business efforts.
1. Work towards a specific cause
The world faces countless day-to-day issues such as poverty, social injustice, and climate change. However, attempting to solve everything all at once can only lead to burnout and scattered efforts. It would be more effective if you focus and work towards a specific cause before branching out. After all, how can you implement social changes in a business environment if you don’t know what to change in the first place?
Having a definite goal for your corporate social responsibility allows you to create concrete plans to achieve them. Moreover, it helps you identify and measure the impacts you would want to get out of your endeavors. You can also align your social initiatives with your organizational objectives to fully integrate within your company’s culture.
2. Promote and implement ethical business practices
Your actions will ultimately reflect the social change you wish to achieve. Hence, you must put into practice what you preach. This means promoting and engaging with the appropriate business practices based on your goals.
There are many ways on how to promote social change. Take this, for example. You are a manufacturing company that hopes to fight climate change. You can start by implementing sustainable methods for your manufacturing operations. Likewise, you can utilize environment-friendly materials for your production and make sure that your factories won’t negatively affect the communities near them. It is only when you change internally first can you finally bring social change externally.
3. Collaborate with non-profit organizations
If you want to boost your social impact, you need to have a deeper understanding of the issues you want to tackle and the communities it can affect. The best way to do that is by collaborating with the right nonprofit organizations that share the same mission as you.
By forming strategic partnerships with nonprofit organizations, you can further your cause and reach out to more communities beyond your own. It allows you to combine resources, share ideas, and support each other’s initiatives for the greater good. You can check out these social collaboration software examples from FinancesOnline to find out how you can work together with nonprofit groups.
4. Donate or sponsor charities
As forerunners of social change, you can opt to go behind the scenes and put your efforts behind financial contributions. This can be through donating to charities or sponsoring such events to further your cause. From there, you can use the money you collected to support other changemakers in your community.
A majority of large enterprises make charities as part of their annual activities. They hold events such as charity dinners, fundraising activities, and donation drives. This allows them to give back to their community more directly and instantaneously. However, it is important to recognize that doing charity or donating alone won’t necessarily promote social change. It also needs to be coupled with appropriate actions and commitment to further the cause.
5. Encourage employees to join the effort
As business owners, you must also inspire the individuals within your company to join in your endeavors. Social responsibility should go more profound than the organization level. It should also take root in your employees’ consciousness to encourage them to contribute meaningfully to the cause.
You can start by encouraging your employees to volunteer in activities that have positive social impacts. One example would be going out of the office to do humanitarian works in certain communities. Or if you are focused on climate change, you can hold community cleanup projects where your employees can join on their own accord.
By fully incorporating your cause into your organization’s culture, you can empower your employees to engage with the issues on a personal level. Most importantly, it instills a sense of shared responsibility for everyone in your company.
Making a difference
Your business has the potential to change society—more so than an ordinary individual. You have the resources and workforce to influence systemic change for the better. Hence, it is high time you take up the mantle and promote social change.
Through this, you are also giving your employees a sense of purpose in their jobs. This can boost overall morale within your company and motivate them to work harder to achieve your shared goals.
What are you waiting for? Now is the best time to act for social change.
