As the nature of businesses these days is to go global, we have to do more than give workers a paycheck. Individuals now have access to remote work options, online entrepreneurial ventures, and even self-publishing opportunities. All of this lets individuals in most countries develop their own skills and businesses in an online and/or brick-and-mortar setting. Then they are able to advertise online and in-person for pennies, all thanks to an increase in knowledge from - you guessed it - globalization, thanks to the internet. Now what do you next to position your company as the best place to work? By being socially responsible.
About Corporate Social Responsibility
Millennials are the up and coming age group that make up the largest majority of the planet. They bypassed the previously biggest group, the baby boomers, in 2018 according to the Pew Research Center. The boomer generation consists of those adults born from 1946 to 1964 and who were in their early retirement age of 52 by 2016.
The millennial generation is adults born from 1981 to 1996 who were between 20 and 35 in 2016. To best appeal to the millennial workforce as an employer, you need to rethink your social responsibility. While you might think of social responsibility as being charitable or offering volunteer hours at your local soup kitchen—it goes well beyond that. As a business, you are held to much higher standards. You will need to develop a plan and policies that establish organizational and operational standards that are based on social responsibility.
This is called corporate social responsibility or CSR and includes all social efforts companies develop to improve the company, as well as the community. According to Garratt Hasenstab, who works for the Verdigris Group, being a carbon neutral business for more than 12 years is one way to achieve CSR. Check out the other ways Verdigris Group is establishing social responsibility and offering services to spread this knowledge.
CSR at Verdigris Group
Verdigris Group, with locations in Chicago, IL, as well as Denver, Summit, and Vail, CO, offers consulting services. The company consults with enterprise-level clients on matters pertaining to environmental and social stewardship. The consultation services provided include:
- CSR
- Green building
- High-performance real estate design and development
- Organizational sustainability
- Project management
- Sustainability consulting
The goals of these services are to help improve brand equity, boost market leadership, and provide strategic differentiation—while also being an eco-warrior of a company. The services that clients at Verdigris Group are utilizing to make the environment sustainable are based on:
- Carbon reduction management
- Developing renewable energy strategies
- Waste and recycling management
One route to take when developing social responsibility starts with these three areas. Carbon emissions reduction, recycling, and finding more efficient energy sources are essential for any enterprise just starting out in this area. From there you can develop employee education and training programs, as well as policies for sustainable development that keep everything intact.
Hasenstab said, “Verdigris Group is focused on being a leader in the area of corporate social responsibility. We have developed and established a comprehensive set of sustainable business initiatives that facilitate our triple bottom-line approach to operating our business.”
Furthermore, according to Verdigris Group and Hasenstab, “Improved environmental performance leads to improved shareholder value, thus good environmental management is a good proxy for management in general, then profitability.” However, it goes a lot farther than this, which is where millennials come in.
Millennials and Corporate Social Responsibility
Why does CSR matter so much to millennials? As the Georgetown University Center for Social Impact Communication at the School of Continuing Studies points out, millennials make their money "walk the talk" so to speak when it comes to sustainability.
The 2015 Nielsen Global Corporate Sustainability Report states that 66 percent of global millennials were paying more money for products from a brand that was sustainable or from an environmentally conscious company. In fact, nearly 75 percent of millennials are spending more on this type of product. That is an increase of 25 percent from previous year.
With their estimated $1 trillion of spending power - a number exponentially increasing every year - there is a huge need to attract millennials, both as clients and as employees. You want to focus your social responsibility, therefore, on both the brand image you portray as well as within the operational policies and systems you have in place.
How to Position Yourself in the Job Market
Everything needs to be socially responsible in order to provide the most authentic experience for your employees. After all, if your company is doing one thing, such as promoting eco-friendly practices, and saying another behind the scenes, such as using child labor, then it’s not going to help you to maintain those millennial assets you need for your enterprise to scale up successfully.
Millennials want to be affiliated with companies that are doing good economically and socially. As an employer, those people who work for you do more than just work. They also become your brand ambassadors and ensure your company is capable of expanding in the future. If you fail to meet their expectations in this area, they are more likely to simply jump ship over to your competitors who are providing the social responsibility they expect.
Once you've adapted your plan and policies to include CSR, you have to establish them. That means documenting and delivering this information to your employees, and that's where we come in. The GT Platform helps you get this content into the hands of potentially global, distributed - and oftentimes working from home - employees, from as early on as onboarding and throughout their tenure as a long-term member of the team. Ready to get started?
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