Nowadays, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reports are everywhere. Everyone’s doing it and everyone wants one. But what is CSR? Simply put by Harvard Business Review, CSR is the corporate goal of “contributing to the well-being of the communities and society they affect and on which they depend”. Sounds good, right?
Well, developing CSR reports come with its own set of challenges. I mean, how do you really measure your company’s impact on communities and society? You’ve got a list of initiatives your company has agreed to (and pushed at the last strategic offsite as being a pretty big deal). But how are you actually going to measure success? How are you going to know if your initiatives are working? And do your teams really care? This is where GoSpaces Mobile makes it a little easier for you.
GoSpaces Mobile is a platform that organizes corporate initiatives, creates a way to measure their success, and uses gamification to increase employee engagement. As Michael Hopkins states, “[The] challenge that is more and more being presented [with CSR reporting] is how to embed the ideas of CSR throughout an organization… It is important to develop, through a significant effort for the social arena, a new conceptual model from which harder data can be derived.”
I mean, let’s be real. What’s the point of doing this in the name of CSR if you can’t actually see tangible results and measure employee engagement. Here is a list of the top 5 ways GoSpaces can help.
1. Coordinate CSR initiatives on one platform
The first step in figuring out your CSR game is to audit all your existing initiatives. This includes your workplace programs like teleworking or activity-based working, and carpooling initiatives. Once you have a list of existing initiatives, GoSpaces sorts them into three categories: People, Planet, and Profit. This makes it easy to recognize where your company is focusing its energy, and where you might need to balance things out. To get you started, GoSpaces even has a list of pre-canned initiatives that are ready to go at a flip of the switch.
Once you know your initiatives, the next step is to figure out how you’re going to measure success. For example, with your Planet initiatives, GoSpaces suggests measuring carbon offset and trees saved. These are both digestible concepts and easy to apply within the GoSpaces platform.
Where GoSpaces takes your CSR initiatives to the next level is with our gamified approach.
With GoSpaces, we take your initiatives and turn them into challenges with specific and measurable call to actions for your teams. For example, you’re looking to increase the adoption of teleworking. We would categorize that initiative as “Planet”, turn it into a challenge, “We challenge you to telework once this week”, and award players with Planet points and a real number on their personal CO2 offsets and trees saved. All of a sudden, your team can see how their actions add up and you can see how successful the overall program is in real terms.
2. Align initiatives with corporate goals
At GoSpaces, we believe that the key to your success with developing successful CSR initiatives is to align them with your overall corporate goals, values and culture. We wouldn’t want you to randomly start pushing reusable mugs on your employees when you’re the number one manufacturer of paper cups.
The more your initiatives align with who you are as a company, the better they will resonate with your teams.
With GoSpaces, you can always introduce new challenges and have the points reflect how important they are you to. Your team will catch on to the fact that every time they work from home they’re getting 3 times the number of points as they do for using a reusable mug. And all of a sudden, it’s pretty clear how you feel each challenge measures up – reinforcing your company’s strategic goals.
3. Measure employee engagement
If you’ve got steps 1 and 2 down pat — with or without GoSpaces — you’re in pretty good shape. But now comes the question of ownership. Who is in charge of each initiative, keeping the momentum going and measuring its success? A lot of time we see initiatives start out with a lot of enthusiasm, only to die part way through the year.
With GoSpaces, everything is managed centrally. Data points are collected automatically, providing you with insight into trends and milestones on demand and in real time.
You can see how engaged your team is in each challenge based on participation metrics and overall contribution numbers.
If you see that specific initiative is losing steam, you have the opportunity to turn it around before it fizzles out. With GoSpaces, you can remove or add new challenges and change the point structure as you go.
4. Automate a manual process
Reporting meaningful data on your progress is what CSR is all about, and it’s often the hardest part! As stated by Sarah Volkman and the Global Reporting Initiative, “Data gathering and consistency of performance metrics is a challenge for companies … Sustainability touches nearly all departments, which means that in order to report company-wide data, the entire company must be aligned and organized.” GoSpaces can take care of this.
GoSpaces Enterprise Dashboard is a behind the scenes look at all your data. Data is collected straight from the app, and transformed into meaningful metrics to help you understand the success of your initiatives. With the contributions module, you can see how many employees are actively engaged in each initiative, how their participation trends over time, and where your initiatives lose steam. You can see how much one initiative impacts your overall achievements, and understand where your employees are focusing.
Gone are the days where you manually track participation with attendee lists and email engagement. Now your team can interact in real time and make a meaningful impact in the workplace.
As an employer, you can now report how your team did collectively and repot how many trees were saved, how much carbon was offset, and how many hours were contributed to your CSR program. Talk about having meaningful data for your CSR report!
5. Increase frequency of communications
What’s the point of putting all the effort into building a great CSR program if you don’t talk about it? As Jen Boynton says in her article, “the most common complaint I hear from companies that write CSR reports is that after all their hard work, very few people actually read the report”. The trick is to find a way to communicate your program’s success in a fun, engaging and meaningful way that people want to hear.
With GoSpaces, communications are made a little easier. You can set up your cadence to receive meaningful reports around your company’s progress and overall contributions to give you something to talk about.
The most important part of communication is not actually putting out information, but making sure people are actively listening.
By using gamification, GoSpaces gives your team a way to actively engage and listen. They are given a platform to join in on the fun, watch as points grow and truly understand the impacts of their contributions. There won’t be any confusion or misinformation around what your CSR goals are, and how they are expected to participate because you are continuously and effectively communicating.
Conclusion
GoSpaces Mobile is a solution for companies looking to streamline their CSR programs with meaningful data and metrics. With GoSpaces, you can finally have your programs live and breathe in one centralized place. With pre-canned challenges, established metrics, and data collection, finding information for your annual CSR report is a breeze.
If you’re looking to find out more about GoSpaces and how we can help make your life a little easier, reach out! Click here to leave us a note, or email us directly at support@gospacesmobile.com.
Sources
“Measurement of corporate social responsibility”, Michael Hopkins, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd., https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247831664_Measurement_of_corporate_social_responsibility
“The Truth About CSR”, V. Kasturi Rangan, Lisa Chase, Sohel Karim, https://hbr.org/2015/01/the-truth-about-csr
Sarah Volkman, Global Reporting Initiative, https://www.globalreporting.org/information/news-and-press-center/Pages/SustainAbility-Alignment-of-CSR-with-business-strategy-is-key.aspx
“Why Communication Should Be at the Heart of Any CSR Strategy”, Jen Boynton, https://www.triplepundit.com/2012/07/communications-be-heart-csr-strategy/
Nowadays, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reports are everywhere. Everyone’s doing it and everyone wants one. But what is CSR? Simply put by Harvard Business Review, CSR is the corporate goal of “contributing to the well-being of the communities and society they affect and on which they depend”. Sounds good, right?
Well, developing CSR reports come with its own set of challenges. I mean, how do you really measure your company’s impact on communities and society? You’ve got a list of initiatives your company has agreed to (and pushed at the last strategic offsite as being a pretty big deal). But how are you actually going to measure success? How are you going to know if your initiatives are working? And do your teams really care? This is where billie makes it a little easier for you.
billie is a platform that organizes corporate initiatives, creates a way to measure their success, and uses gamification to increase employee engagement. As Michael Hopkins states, “[The] challenge that is more and more being presented [with CSR reporting] is how to embed the ideas of CSR throughout an organization… It is important to develop, through a significant effort for the social arena, a new conceptual model from which harder data can be derived.”
I mean, let’s be real. What’s the point of doing this in the name of CSR if you can’t actually see tangible results and measure employee engagement. Here is a list of the top 5 ways billie can help.
1. Coordinate CSR initiatives on one platform
The first step in figuring out your CSR game is to audit all your existing initiatives. This includes your workplace programs like teleworking or activity-based working, and carpooling initiatives. Once you have a list of existing initiatives, billie sorts them into three categories: People, Planet, and Profit. This makes it easy to recognize where your company is focusing its energy, and where you might need to balance things out. To get you started, billie even has a list of pre-canned initiatives that are ready to go at a flip of the switch.
Once you know your initiatives, the next step is to figure out how you’re going to measure success. For example, with your Planet initiatives, billie suggests measuring carbon offset and trees saved. These are both digestible concepts and easy to apply within the billie platform.
Where billie takes your CSR initiatives to the next level is with our gamified approach.
With billie, we take your initiatives and turn them into challenges with specific and measurable call to actions for your teams. For example, you’re looking to increase the adoption of teleworking. We would categorize that initiative as “Planet”, turn it into a challenge, “We challenge you to telework once this week”, and award players with Planet points and a real number on their personal CO2 offsets and trees saved. All of a sudden, your team can see how their actions add up and you can see how successful the overall program is in real terms.
2. Align initiatives with corporate goals
At billie, we believe that the key to your success with developing successful CSR initiatives is to align them with your overall corporate goals, values and culture. We wouldn’t want you to randomly start pushing reusable mugs on your employees when you’re the number one manufacturer of paper cups.
The more your initiatives align with who you are as a company, the better they will resonate with your teams.
With billie, you can always introduce new challenges and have the points reflect how important they are you to. Your team will catch on to the fact that every time they work from home they’re getting 3 times the number of points as they do for using a reusable mug. And all of a sudden, it’s pretty clear how you feel each challenge measures up – reinforcing your company’s strategic goals.
3. Measure employee engagement
If you’ve got steps 1 and 2 down pat — with or without billie — you’re in pretty good shape. But now comes the question of ownership. Who is in charge of each initiative, keeping the momentum going and measuring its success? A lot of time we see initiatives start out with a lot of enthusiasm, only to die part way through the year.
With billie, everything is managed centrally. Data points are collected automatically, providing you with insight into trends and milestones on demand and in real time.
You can see how engaged your team is in each challenge based on participation metrics and overall contribution numbers.
If you see that specific initiative is losing steam, you have the opportunity to turn it around before it fizzles out. With billie, you can remove or add new challenges and change the point structure as you go.
4. Automate a manual process
Reporting meaningful data on your progress is what CSR is all about, and it’s often the hardest part! As stated by Sarah Volkman and the Global Reporting Initiative, “Data gathering and consistency of performance metrics is a challenge for companies … Sustainability touches nearly all departments, which means that in order to report company-wide data, the entire company must be aligned and organized.” billie can take care of this.
billie’s Enterprise Dashboard is a behind the scenes look at all your data. Data is collected straight from the app, and transformed into meaningful metrics to help you understand the success of your initiatives. With the contributions module, you can see how many employees are actively engaged in each initiative, how their participation trends over time, and where your initiatives lose steam. You can see how much one initiative impacts your overall achievements, and understand where your employees are focusing.
Gone are the days where you manually track participation with attendee lists and email engagement. Now your team can interact in real time and make a meaningful impact in the workplace.
As an employer, you can now report how your team did collectively and repot how many trees were saved, how much carbon was offset, and how many hours were contributed to your CSR program. Talk about having meaningful data for your CSR report!
5. Increase frequency of communications
What’s the point of putting all the effort into building a great CSR program if you don’t talk about it? As Jen Boynton says in her article, “the most common complaint I hear from companies that write CSR reports is that after all their hard work, very few people actually read the report”. The trick is to find a way to communicate your program’s success in a fun, engaging and meaningful way that people want to hear.
With billie, communications are made a little easier. You can set up your cadence to receive meaningful reports around your company’s progress and overall contributions to give you something to talk about.
The most important part of communication is not actually putting out information, but making sure people are actively listening.
By using gamification, billie gives your team a way to actively engage and listen. They are given a platform to join in on the fun, watch as points grow and truly understand the impacts of their contributions. There won’t be any confusion or misinformation around what your CSR goals are, and how they are expected to participate because you are continuously and effectively communicating.
Conclusion
billie is a solution for companies looking to streamline their CSR programs with meaningful data and metrics. With billie, you can finally have your programs live and breathe in one centralized place. With pre-canned challenges, established metrics, and data collection, finding information for your annual CSR report is a breeze.
If you’re looking to find out more about billie and how we can help make your life a little easier, reach out! Click here to leave us a note, or email us directly at Support@billieapp.io
Sources
“Measurement of corporate social responsibility”, Michael Hopkins, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd., https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247831664_Measurement_of_corporate_social_responsibility
“The Truth About CSR”, V. Kasturi Rangan, Lisa Chase, Sohel Karim, https://hbr.org/2015/01/the-truth-about-csr
Sarah Volkman, Global Reporting Initiative, https://www.globalreporting.org/information/news-and-press-center/Pages/SustainAbility-Alignment-of-CSR-with-business-strategy-is-key.aspx
“Why Communication Should Be at the Heart of Any CSR Strategy”, Jen Boynton, https://www.triplepundit.com/2012/07/communications-be-heart-csr-strategy/Support@billieapp.io
