The world is changing, and more opportunities are available. Information and resources are more available and accessible than ever before, and it's all at your fingertips businesses can harness.
While this is true, there are many compounded hardships that we currently face, so we owe it to ourselves to mobilize and be a force for change by changing the way we think and do business, with the notion in mind that we are not selling a product or service, but rather we are solving a problem.
ln so doing, we directly change our communities and their standard of living. We have to think about how best to serve the future when it comes to:
1: People
2: The environment
In this article, I briefly discuss business sustainability in terms of organizational behavior, embracing a diverse workforce, and the impact of customer perception as it relates to corporate social responsibility in terms of the environment.
1.PEOPLE
Think about your employees and colleagues as human beings and not robots, think about your communication techniques and your treatment of people.
After a long day of them working towards your financial benefit, send them off to their family with the belief that the business gives them a healthy state of mind.
But why is this important you may ask?
It allows people to show up as their best selves when home with their loved ones and others in their environment. As a result staff morale and attitude towards work and colleagues are better received. This is reinforced when there is a positive workplace environment.
It reduces the risk of high business financial costs, if this is not addressed, will, in effect, result in the compounded employee turnover with the added fact that new staff needs to be trained more frequently, backlogging pending work.
Reasons for low morale vary greatly, however, the topic of workplace diversity impacts this greatly. As companies shift towards different landscapes, bringing with its globalization, workplace diversity is inevitable.
Top Companies see the need to hire a culturally diverse workforce because it brings with it a rich pool of different skill sets, insights, and perspectives which is a representation of the customers and community as a whole. It must be stressed, however, that when hiring a diverse workforce, the environment will bring with it, unconscious and conscious biases, stereotypes, and microaggressions which are subtle forms of discrimination. Therefore companies should advocate for mitigating these risks.
Companies can begin to do this by influencing company culture, embracing, celebrating other cultures, and establishing team building sessions for the purpose of cross-cultural integration. It is a good business practice to diligently create discrimination policies, encourage employee feedback, use compliance training, conduct lawful hiring, implement discipline and performance reviews, while also considering all employees in the evaluation process, promotions, and succession planning of the company. While this weighs heavily on the performance and motivation of employees, it too impacts the company's brand perception which I will discuss below.
2.ENVIROMENT
If you own a business, think about your product packaging and how best you can serve the environment. This ties in with the materials you may use in your production process that go to waste or aren't disposed of properly. While you may think that caring for the environment as a corporate social responsibility principle has no impact on your clients' perception of your business, I argue otherwise.
"Put simply, brand perception is the sum of feelings a consumer has about a brand. These thoughts and feelings happen when a consumer is aware of the brand, and what follows when that consumer hears, sees, or interacts with the brand and its product."
If you're considered not to be empathetic or considerate to the environment in your business, then chances are, the overall perception is that you neither value the employees and other stakeholders. . "Three-fourths of people (75%) are likely to start shopping at a company that supports an issue they agree with." according to Clutch.
Take into consideration the amount of paper you use at work. Cutting down decade-old trees for a page used for 1 or a few more days, but never again to touch, almost seems like a total disregard of nature. If you have an alternative to use less or recycle, then do so.
This is not only good for the environment, but it also saves your business on stationery costs, while this may not seem like be a big deal, the higher the frequency of consumption, the higher the costs. We can all do a lot better when we have the extra cash on hand to better serve other needs such as investing in training courses for ourselves and employees to better up our game or donate to a cause with impact.
While there are many ways to reach sustainability, honing in on your customers and your workforce's pain points and wellbeing are important factors to consider when your objective is long term sustainability within your business.
So with that said, I leave you with this, get creative and see the world with new eyes and new perspectives. There are challenges ahead but find ways to eliminate, workaround, or through them to better serve not only yourself but all those around you long-term.
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