Companies are becoming more conscious of their real role within the community. This evolution has been comparable to seeing a child mature. In the early years, a child is quite self-oriented to warrant endurance. Later, a young adult starts to become informed of others and their needs. As the adult matures, it learns to coexist with others, and finally, with warm maturity comes the realization that there is great joy in serving others. Not only does the emotionally mature adult recognize the need for service, but also the advantages that accumulate through giving.
Many of our companies are reaching maturity. Several components are involved to enable organizations to be productive in achieving both prosperous growth and achieving social improvement.
These are:
- The business culture must invoke the need to be of service amongst employees
- The business needs to distinguish specific projects for which they have a level of devotion
- Systems and process needs to be in place to execute identified projects
2020 Corporate Culture
A change in the corporate culture is required that recognizes the needs of others having to come first. If this is not the case, a company would have to thrust the social responsibility issue, like adolescents being told by their parents to spend mandatory time in a nursing home. There is a primary key to this change, and that is being able to recognize the original motivating part of the business and the people involved in it.
Only two top motivators exist – love and fear. Where a company operates out of love, it has a culture of:
- Helping their customers
- Understanding employees
- Preserving the environment
The prime contributors for an organization not taking action towards society are:
- A disregard for consumers
- Employees are treated as replaceable
- No time to think about the ecosystem
An organization will have to experience change from one goal/system to the other, and therefore it may not be as simple as it seems. However, this simple test will provide some evidence of the health of your organization’s culture and its ability to even consider helping others.
The transition is usually prolonged and often starts with a shift in management with his/her prime motivation to be either love or fear. It causes stress for some people who may leave and as an additional responsibility.
Identifying the Right Projects
Knowing the right projects for the organization to choose includes a range of problems that the company needs to analyze. Having an appropriate culture in place before these decisions being made will ensure a democratic process is followed to arrive at a dedicated, company-wide resolution to back one or more projects, possibly in multiple countries.
Once the projects have been recognized, a review of the process is used to arrive at these conclusions that have to be taken into account:
- The level of employee engagement in the decision
- Why these projects?
- Is there a sentimental value attached to the plans?
- How will the projects be executed?
- How will the team assess its success?
If a firm is skilled in carrying out their business activities, we can expect that they can also take on planning and implementing social projects. Likewise, if an organization is having difficulty coping with its workload, we can assume that it will not deal with the weight of additional activities, especially those unrelated to the business. Therefore, the logical projection is that any company must have its operations running smoothly before even contemplating to take on a social project.
