The clock is ticking, what are you going to do about it?
On January 2016, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists have set the doomsday clock – a metaphor of how close humanity is to destroying the planet (and ultimately itself) – to 3 minutes to midnight, which is the closets it has been to midnight since the cold war days of 1984. The scientists have taken under consideration energy landscape, climate change, and emerging technologies and have concluded that “the probability of global catastrophe is very high, and the actions needed to reduce the risks of disaster must be taken very soon”.
Realizing the devastating effect global risks may entail on all of us, consumers are exceedingly pressuring corporations to implement sustainable and responsible conduct and to assume a leading role in delivering change.
Not at all oblivious to those demands, corporations are spending trillions of US dollars on their Corporate Social Responsibility programs, hoping to advance their brand (71%), retain employees (65%) and at the same time impact society (45%) (pwc). However, despite their enormous contribution, “Traditional Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is failing to deliver, for both companies and society. Executives need a new approach to engaging the external environment” (Mckinsey, 2013).
Indeed, corporations are failing to leverage CSR programs and transfer them from pet projects into a real strategic growth engine that holds shared value for both society and the business. That failure can be demonstrated in the way the majority of corporations are still Implementing CSR, which is by transferring funds to NGOs and reporting it in their CSR annual report. With a neglectable number of consumers reading these reports (5%), and only a small margin of them believing what’s there (35%), corporations totally miss the opportunity of branding.
In this era of high connectivity, social media and shared economy businesses can and should use technology to collaborate with the community directly and create high visibility to their efforts, thus gaining brand engagement and retention of consumers and employees alike.
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To learn more about how forCauz can help you do just that Check us out in forCauz.com and join us in revolutionizing the way social responsibility is carried out.
* The writers are Mendelovich Rachel and Li-Mor Navon, co-founders at forCauz
