In an era where economic performance remains the primary success criteria for businesses, CSR leaders may find it challenging to gain support from their peers and to fully integrate their plans into business operations. When the integration is inconsistent, it is often due to the absence of a common vision and understanding of value creation between CSR and marketing, communications, product innovation, or HR departments.
Integration: A True Challenge for All Types of Companies
Sustainability is intimately connected to a company’s value chain and operations, and sometimes, companies primarily focus on their pursuit to carbon neutrality. This narrow view overlooks the vast possibilities of engaging employees from divisions not directly related to operations in achieving sustainability goals, such as HR, communications, and marketing.
We also observe significant challenges in informing and mobilizing certain groups of employees with CSR initiatives. This is common in organizations that must adapt to very different realities between office employees and those who work in factories, in retail locations, or on the road, for example.
A Lever for Innovation and Transformation
Social impact and sustainability can become powerful drivers of innovation. Indeed, proper integration of these dimensions and collaboration between teams lead to the creation of value in terms of product innovation, employee engagement, customer experience, brand reputation, talent attraction, and the optimization of their donation and sponsorship portfolio.
Notably, BRP combined its ingenuity with its vision of sustainable development to launch a range of electric vehicles that will hit the road as early as 2024. The multinational company is also exploring new potential markets, particularly in urban mobility.
Another case worth highlighting is Loto-Québec’s sponsorship approach, which supports more than 50 events and festivals across Quebec, not only through investments but also by assisting in the development of sustainable and inclusive practices in event management. Together, they share a mission to make local entertainment even more dynamic, accessible, and responsible.
“For Loto-Québec, sponsorship is more than just a visibility tactic. It’s an opportunity to demonstrate that the state-run organization shares the values of Quebecers and acts as a catalyst for change to advance corporate social responsibility practices in the entertainment sector.” – Benoit Lefrançois, Corporate Vice-President of Responsible Marketing, Social Responsibility, and Public Affairs.
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Towards Successful Integration: The Three Key Steps
Adopting a business strategy that cleverly integrates sustainability and social impact requires a structured and sustained approach. To successfully start this transformation process, three key steps stand out.
Step 1: Revealing Mutually Beneficial Opportunities
Brainstorming with the “oppositive thinking” technique is a good first step to rally teams and identify opportunities for integrating social impact and sustainability into their projects and priorities. This brainstorming technique is interesting because it encourages participants to project themselves into a possible future and to reveal the potential to enhance or transform existing practices with notions of social impact and/or sustainability.
Step 2: Conceptualizing and Preparing a “Business Case”
When high-potential opportunities have been identified, we must translate these ideas into tangible concepts and present them in the form of a “business case.” This approach allows us to link the social impact and sustainability considerations to positive business outcomes, ensuring strategic and operational alignment.
Step 3: Establishing an Impact Committee
Creating an Impact Committee, composed of representatives from different departments and a leader accountable for execution and results, is a good practice to maintain interdepartmental collaboration and ensure the success of new initiatives. This committee must establish an integration and change management plan, communicate integration initiatives effectively to the teams involved, and ensure efficient deployment. Finally, this committee is also responsible for evaluating results and guiding the optimization of efforts and investments over the first initial years.
At Will & Way, we team up with our clients to address this challenge. Whether by facilitating workshops to identify new opportunities, designing concepts supported by robust business arguments, or implementing suitable governance structures, we are dedicated to turning your ambitions into concrete actions.
