Article • 9 min read
How to authentically embody corporate social responsibility
CSR programs can energize and engage employees.
By Patrick Grieve
Last updated May 22, 2023
Illustration by Arienne Gagui
The concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) originated with companies having to clean up after their mistakes.
“It was born from when a company polluted a river, their corporate social responsibility program was how they offset that damage,” says Tiffany Apczynski, Zendesk’s former vice president of Public Policy and Social Impact.
Today, companies are expected to take more proactive stances and resulting actions and to lead the way on important issues.
In a 2020 Porter Novelli survey, 88 percent of employees said it’s not acceptable anymore for businesses to only make money without also positively impacting society. And 93 percent believe that “more than ever before, companies must lead with purpose.”
Some organizations, however, might not know how to rise to the occasion. To live up to the challenge of corporate social responsibility, leaders need to understand everything it entails and how to best exemplify it.
What is corporate social responsibility?
Corporate social responsibility definition:
The duty a company has to hold itself socially and environmentally accountable. Also known as corporate citizenship, CSR can take the form of self-regulating practices, charitable initiatives, philanthropic donations, or employee volunteering meant to positively impact local communities or the world at large.
Simply put, corporate social responsibility is about giving back and guiding a path forward.
That can—and often does—take the form of straightforward, individual acts of charity. Companies write large checks to nonprofits or have their employees help build a public playground. But many businesses, especially at the enterprise-level, feel compelled to take a more expansive, holistic approach.
“Corporate social responsibility exists because of the great responsibility that comes with billion dollar profitability and the influence you have in local communities,” says Apczynski.
Socially responsible companies hold values that inform their public statements on critical social issues, adoption of sustainable business practices, and commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Instead of making one-time donations, these companies strive to form close, lasting relationships with the nonprofits they support that are genuinely meaningful.
“It’s about driving the right internal and external policies that will create long-term change,” says Apczynski.
What is CSR’s potential impact on your business?
The primary aim of corporate social responsibility is to have a positive impact on a local or global community. But the initiatives you take also impact the way that your employees and customers perceive your company.
Laura Shear, Zendesk’s content program manager of Corporate Social Responsibility, says that CSR is hugely important to the company’s growing, diverse, and largely millennial workforce.
“They want to get up in the morning and work for a company that does good in the world,” she explains. “So we do a lot of work within the social impact team to recognize just how crucial this is to the employees.”
Through employee surveys, the team is able to identify which issues the workforce is most passionate about.
Apczynski says that many of Zendesk’s customers have also expressed a lot of enthusiasm for the company’s CSR programs. She credits that, in part, to support teams being a major component of Zendesk’s customer base.
“A lot of the people who make the purchasing decisions around our software are in the field of customer support, where empathy is a core skill set you have to have,” she explains.
Of course, when a company leads, not everyone follows. Taking political stances can prove polarizing for employees and consumers.
Take, for example, Expensify CEO David Barrett’s decision to send an email to all 10 million of the company’s customers asking them to vote for Joe Biden. Though many employees supported the candidate, the potentially polarizing message still sparked a lot of internal debate within the company. Barrett also acknowledged that he received some negative feedback from customers.
Some companies prefer to avoid hot topic issues entirely. In September 2020, when many brands were publicly commenting on widespread social unrest, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong announced that his company would remain intentionally apolitical. When some employees expressed their disappointment with Coinbase’s anti-stances stance, Armstrong offered them a “generous separation package.”
In Apczynski’s opinion, that sort of move represents a lose-lose situation.
“Your employees who have now shown loyalty to you because they want to stay don’t win, because they don’t get any money,” Apczynski says. “And when you just cut checks to get rid of employees who want to be politically or socially active, it doesn’t help your brand reputation.”
The best way to avoid controversy isn’t shirking your corporate social responsibility but instead embracing it with sincerity.
3 best practices for corporate social responsibility programs
Socially responsible companies may share many of the same goals, but that doesn’t mean you should parrot everyone else.
An authentic embodiment of corporate social responsibility requires a unique, thoughtful approach that takes into consideration your company’s own practices, offerings, and employees.
Give remote work more meaning with CSR
Employees care more than ever about whether their employer is making the world a better place. And as more companies become fully or partially remote, an active culture of giving can help make up for the loss of traditional in-office perks.
“That emotional component that volunteering offers—I think that’s especially important to elevate right now,” Apczynski argues. “Those are the kinds of quality employee interactions that you need to foster, because you can’t offer snacks like you used to.”
Company culture can be hard to maintain with a distributed workforce, but it’s always easy to gather around a common cause.
