Several organizations tend to invest dearly in CSR aka Corporate Social Responsibility programs as a gesture to give back to the society. Active donations, awareness campaigns, plantations, training camps for the underprivileged, etc. are few ways through which a company seeks to maintain its goodwill while also helping its employees be a part of the bigger and noble responsibility. While CSR is a management-level initiative, here are five key ways in which HR can drive a company’s CSR efforts on the right foot. Yes, human resources personnel play a pivotal role in assisting an organization attain its CSR goals.
1. Identifying the need for CSR: Corporate social responsibility activities are cumbersome. They require extensive planning, investment, resources and time. Hence, HR and management need to be fully aware of what they are getting into, since a CSR activity also entails lot of media attraction and one wrong move can land a company into serious PR crisis. Besides goodwill and branding, CSR activities help in growing the internal goodwill and employee engagement making them loyal.
2. Planning and adopting a campaign: Once the need is identified, HR can start finding causes to support. Here, they can take help of social media and be a part of ongoing campaigns like ALS challenge, Equality at workplace or adopt a complete different campaign that would be long lasting like plantation, funding education, etc. The management, HR and team leaders can come together and discuss what they want the outcome to be and plan the campaign accordingly. Why HR? Because they are the very first point of contact for employees bridging the gap between them and the management.
3. Execution: As mentioned above, CSR is a cumbersome process and HR as well as other management personnel already have a lot on their plate. For this to be a huge hit, HR needs to form a committee comprising of itself, management and representatives of employees. Planning and executing will be taken care by them along with involving everybody thus, ensuring that everyone in the company stays on the same page.
4. Measuring the results: Success of every campaign depends on the outcome and the same goes with a CSR activity. Results ought to be evaluated and communicated to all the involved parties and shareholders. Results can be favourable or not and it will only help determine the future course.
5. Planning for long term: CSR activities tend to run for long term. Hence, the committee can plan and aim for long-term results. As years go by, HR will get stronger with every CSR campaign.
Takeaway
It is time HR gets out of the comfort zone and sits at the core of a company’s CSR strategy. Almost every element of a CSR program involves people i.e. employees and thus, HR becomes the mainstay here.
As we know that HR have a lot on their shoulders right from recruiting to onboarding and compliance to employee experience, they find it difficult to spare time for other strategic chores like CSR and engagement of employees. We at Pocket HRMS understand this and are here to off-load a number of routine chores for your HR thus, letting them focus on things that matter the most, in this case, the CSR objectives.
Reach us here to know how Pocket HRMS can help your HR.
