Top 10 Corporate Social Responsibility Trends For 2021 You Must Know

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What is Corporate Social Responsibility?

Corporate Social Responsibility aka CSR is a term mostly used for self-regulation by businesses, which aims to support them to be socially responsible. The CSR definition entails that companies perform CSR activities in several ways and they contribute to society for driving economic and environmental changes.

Because 2020 forced many businesses worldwide to rethink their business strategies, spending and corporate responsibility, they are constantly looking into new CSR initiatives with new innovative plans and objectives for their business ethics. Having to spend parts of their profits towards the pandemic relief funds, they now should consider some corporate social responsibility examples as shared in this article to prepare themselves for becoming the best CSR company.

Corporate Social Responsibility Examples & Trends in 2021

Let us take a bird’s eye-view of some new Corporate Social Responsibility policies that are likely to trend in 2021 :

1). Skill Creation:

The Covid-19 pandemic has left a strong and adverse impact on the world economy. As a result, there has been a sharp rise in unemployment due to global lockdowns & social distancing guidelines. The lack of required skills, especially digital skills, is one of the key causes for unemployment during and after the pandemic. At this difficult time, companies should give their employees the expertise they need to increase productivity. Hence, spending on skill development and empowering employees with new skills will be a major CSR spending factor in 2021.

2). Managing Employees’ Mental Health:

The year 2020 made us realize the importance of human interaction & bonding with family and friends, as most of the employees worked from home for a long time. A work-from-home routine worked well for both employees and organizations, but it increased the overall working hours of employees leading to a rise in stress levels, lowering the well-being of employees. It happened mostly in the software development companies around the world.  Companies willing to hire full time dedicated developers must give their employees more freedom, such as flexible working hours, or more benefits, such as online yoga classes, which will give employees an emotional boost from the organization.

3). Evaluate Innovative Means of Success:

Companies should look at what their respective countries value the most for people. Whether they are measurable factors like income, education, healthcare, or intangible factors such as happiness, leisure, etc. For instance: small countries like Bhutan consider their Gross National Happiness index as a means of progress for their people. They focus on their citizen’s happiness & wellbeing. It shows that the assessment of the performance of CSR also needs to be in correspondence to the country’s requirements and culture.

4). Acknowledge Most Unsafe Population Group – Children:

Children suffered a lot during this pandemic. Their education was affected as the schools were closed & they were emotionally affected as they couldn’t meet their friends due to lockdowns. It was a huge mental shock for them to stay in isolation for such a long time. Taking care of children should be the new CSR Initiative organizations can focus on. Creating online events like drawing competitions will be the most creative way to boost children’s creativity. Employers can also offer additional childcare within their facilities to support parents with home schooling and boost their children’s online learning opportunities.

5). Collective Social Innovation for the Future:

Besides the priority to promote initiatives such as the development of PPE Kits and the support to unsafe societies, in the future, social innovation will lead to greater collaboration and crowdfunding. Open social innovations denote promoting sponsorships, fundraising and crowdfunding via online platforms.

6). Grow Accountability & Partnership:

Stakeholders may seek clarification and cooperation in the conduct of CSR. More than 85% of people agree that crises have exposed the problems and encourage improvements that are still due. Organizations must change their mindset to work together in partnership and not to compete with each other.

7). Environmental Conservation with Continuous Development:

Joe Biden, the newly elected President of the United States, has signed several agreements to mitigate global warming and climate change. This will increase the pressures on all other countries in the world to adopt necessary measures to reduce carbon emissions. The activities will broadly include the developing countries and these activities will promote more environmental CSR programs.

8). International Philanthropic Endeavours

Companies and countries support charities and philanthropy. Organizations will take initiatives to help vulnerable communities across the world, for example, organizations may offer free vaccines to poor communities & countries.

9). Helping Small Businesses to become Altruistic:

As small businesses were hit hard after the Covid-19 pandemic, non-profit organizations may take initiative to help SMSEs to bounce back to the market and become profitable.

10). Focusing on Public Health Facilities:

The Covid-19 pandemic made us realize that our healthcare facilities are not adequate to cope with any sudden and overwhelming health crises. So, organizations will contribute to CSR initiatives that support development plans for healthcare facilities.

Social Responsibility Brings The World Together

If every country and company in the world takes initiative to address the challenges of corporate social responsibility with the aim of producing more fruitful and prosperous CSR initiatives in the year 2021, the world can recover from the economic crisis the pandemic has caused. But everyone has to play their part in the best way they can.

Author Bio

Harikrishna Kundariya is a marketer, developer, IoT, ChatBot & Blockchain savvy, designer, co-founder, Director of eSparkBiz Technologies. His 8+ experience enable him to provide digital solutions to new start-ups based on IoT and ChatBot technology.