Institute of Internal Communication

Kate Crawford, a specialist in corporate social responsibility (CSR)communications at CiB member company Flag (www.flag.co.uk), says that companies should be bolder when it comes to reporting their CSR achievements.

Good enough?
I recently met a senior manager from a high street retailer. We discussed her board's reluctance to produce a corporate social responsibility (CSR) report. It wasn't the cost or the work involved that put them off. It wasn't fear of exposure as a poor performer - far from it - the company had been running a highly commendable ethical trading programme with its suppliers for years. They simply didn't want to shout about the CSR programme, they just wanted to get on with it because 'it's the right thing to do'.

That's one of many reasons I've heard for not communicating on CSR. Others reasons are not wanting to attract attention from NGOs, lack of demand from stakeholders and reluctance to be seen to be taking credit for a community programme that was initiated by staff rather than the company's management.

Whatever the reasons for this reluctance, executives should recognise that the business benefits of well-produced CSR communications far outweigh the costs.

Managing corporate reputation
Firstly, there's the benefit to your company's reputation. While a glossy greenwash brochure can do more harm than good, an honest, transparent report will support your company's reputation as a responsible corporate citizen. And it won't give NGOs ammunition with which to attack you. Greenpeace targets companies that hide the skeletons in their cupboards and fail to engage with their stakeholders, not those that publish honest, accurate, 'warts 'n' all' information.

Of course, there's little point communicating unless your company is engaging in CSR activities and actively trying to improve performance. But that's not to say you should wait to communicate until you've tackled all your social and environmental impacts - you'll be waiting a long time and missing opportunities to improve your reputation all the while.

Attracting and retaining the right people
Secondly, there are recruitment and retention benefits. A survey by the Cherenson Group found that almost 80% of employees would rather work for a company that has an excellent reputation and pays a salary to meet their needs than a company that would pay a higher salary but has a poor overall reputation. With reputation such an important issue for your potential and existing employees, does it make sense to keep quiet about what you've been doing on CSR?

Investor relations
Publishing CSR information reassures your investors that you're taking responsibility for your environmental and social impacts and that you're unlikely to be hit with a huge environmental liability claim or a customer boycott because you employ child labour. It also encourages your company's inclusion in ethical funds and indices. Tesco was very publicly excluded from the original FTSE4Good index, because it had not communicated its commitment to CSR.

The company rectified this with a new CSR website within a couple of months (to be fair, the site was in the pipeline before the FTSE4Good exclusion was announced) and Tesco was promptly included in the index. With the value of ethical investment in the UK at over £4 billion and rising, you can consider your CSR communication budget money well spent.

Encouragement to do better
Then there are the improvements in CSR performance, and the related financial gains, that occur when awareness is raised not only through the distribution of communication materials, but also through their production.

One of the benefits of producing a CSR report most frequently cited by corporate CSR managers is that the data gathering process requires input from departments that otherwise rarely think about CSR. It is often this process more than any other that puts CSR squarely on the agendas of HR, finance, facilities management, marketing and other departments.

The involvement of these different departments is critical to successful CSR communications as an otherwise excellent CSR campaign can be undermined by an inconsistent message from another part of a company. On a BA flight recently I was impressed to hear that the company was collecting donations for a foreign aid charity.

When I felt in my seat pocket for the collection envelope, there wasn't one - a lost opportunity for the charity to benefit and a doubt cast over BA's commitment to the programme. This could have been avoided with effective communication between the department that decided to run the charity programme and the department responsible for putting items in seat pockets.

Some golden rules
Integration is a key word in CSR communication. Not only is it important to ensure an integrated approach from the various internal departments involved, it is also vital that your communications campaign is integrated across different media and different audiences.

Don't expect to reach all your stakeholders with a single document - it's not going to happen. Identify your key stakeholder groups and tailor communications to each of their needs, thinking about the issues they're interested in, the formats that are most useful to them, the language they'll understand, etc.

Bear in mind that there will be overlap between your stakeholder groups - for example, employees are often shareholders too - so there should be consistency of key messages, look and feel across the different materials you produce, in order to avoid confusion or cynicism.

And don't forget your internal audience - if your employees see an externally focused CSR report when you have neglected to communicate your achievements internally, they'll dismiss what they read as PR that doesn't reflect what's really going on in the company.

What's more, most of the dialogue that your stakeholders have with your company isn't through a printed report or a website, it's through interaction with your employees. If you fail to communicate on CSR internally, you are restricting your employees' abilities to pass on CSR information to your external stakeholders.

This all sounds like a lot of work, and I won't lie to you - it is. But the benefits of effective CSR communication are so great and varied that they strongly justify the time and effort involved.

Kate Crawford (kate@flag.co.uk is a specialist in corporate social responsibility communications at Flag (www.flag.co.uk).