By Sean Drishner, MD and CEO of Mezuzah Security Services
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives have become vitally important for businesses, enabling organisations across sectors to be more socially accountable to themselves as well as their broader stakeholder groups, including the communities in which they operate. By actively practicing good corporate citizenship, businesses can be conscious of the type of economic, social or environmental impact they are having in areas that affect society.
In order to be truly effective and impactful, a CSR strategy and its resulting activities have to positively contribute towards society and the environment, rather than adding to the negative impact on the environment and societal goals. For this to happen, the CSR strategy must be goal-driven, allowing companies to have realistic and achievable targets while also enabling the organisation’s employees to challenge themselves by thinking bigger, all while remaining accountable to the business’s stakeholders.
Setting these types of corporate responsibility goals cannot be done as a one-size-fits-all approach, as it will differ in terms of the sector, the size of the business, and specific impact that the founders or executive management team would like to have. Aligning these goals with the company’s defined organisational culture, as well as the business goals of the company will go a long way in setting up achieving the business’s firm CSR objectives that speaks to the sector in which it operates and the mission driving it.
For example, at Mezuzah Security Services, we believe in looking after, and giving back to the communities. Consequently, when we provided our staff with new uniforms, as a team we collaborated by collecting all of the old uniforms, removed the branding (for security reasons) and had them professionally cleaned before distributing them in the communities, along with some non-perishable food and household items collected from staff donations.
As a security company, keeping people and businesses safe is our core mission. Our leadership team takes this commitment seriously, and one such initiative is to regularly speak at primary- and high schools, educating learners with safety tips, and inspiring them, through our own life experiences, to help inform better life choices for the learners. If we are to make a positive difference in our country, we firmly believe that we must start with the younger generations by inspiring them and showing them that anything is possible with the right attitude, mindset, and drive.
Tapping into the business goals and organisational culture enables companies to set those impactful CSR goals and create an effective CSR strategy that not only works for the business, and stakeholders, but also results in the type of positive social changes and benefits for the greater community as well.
