Corporate Citizenship - How To Achieve And Sustain It
What do those grades next to the “citizenship” category on a report card really mean? Now that you are older you may understand that it is indeed an important part of education and business. Corporate citizenship requires being a good role model, teaching children that what they do, both bad and good, has an impact on others as well themselves. Show them that good administration practices, the highest level of integrity and legal conformance are all part of what is needed in order to make their community, locally or globally, a better place for everyone.
After September 11, all big companies are expected to practice good citizenship on a corporate level or corporate philanthropy. Shortly thereafter, companies were asked to produce both social and environmental reports, but only about 1/4 of them have even attempted to do so and even those fell short of the required standards in many cases. There are four areas that are used to track a company’s citizenship rating and they include Operational Transparency, The Workplace, Community Help and Engagement and Sustainability.
Community Engagement is one of the key areas and it refers to how much companies encourage their employees to volunteer and donate their time as well as resources to help with community development programs and health care problems. Another key area of corporate citizenship is Operational Transparency, which includes working to build the public’s trust by being more open (transparent) about all processes, setbacks and progresses. Regular feedback from members helps to monitor the progress.
As you can see, this type of sustainability and citizenship goes beyond the normal scope of finances, as that only really tells one side of the story. Corporate giving includes a strong sense of responsibility to the community and that in turn leads to a higher rated performance.
The third key element is Sustainability, which means, for example, that along with committing to internal recycling, the employees also pledge to give local community help by agreeing to make changes in both their home and work life. This internal sustainability program will be used to support appropriate environmental choices and practices. The last of the key elements in corporate citizenship is the Workplace, which simply put means creating work environments that are conducive to diversity, education and to promote the best environmental choices and practices. Companies can do this by providing courses on leadership to employees, regardless of location and their position with the company.
Tags: community development, Community Help, corporate citizenship, corporate giving, corporate philanthropy, local community help