A good communications strategy lies at the heart of any successful corporate social responsibility programme, argues Pauline Ryder
Given the ever-widening spectrum of stakeholder interests that now have to be taken into account if a business is to become sustainable, any organization without a holistic communications strategy will soon find itself out of step with its stakeholders' expectations. This will affect the company’s ability to meet the requirements of the emerging global governance agenda, expose it to a much broader range of risks and could even make its operations unsustainable in the long term.
Communications is a key strategic driver when developing any sort of engagement process. Yet at present the role of communications in social and ethical accounting, auditing and reporting is underdeveloped. This is partly because the field is in its early days, and partly because standard-setting bodies and auditing firms, rather than communications strategists, are largely driving social and ethical accountability practice.
This is a potentially dangerous situation. After all, communications skills are fundamental to the success of any stakeholder approach: what is stakeholder dialogue, if not communicating with stakeholders?
Beyond engaging stakeholders to determine indicators of social and ethical responsibility, communication also plays a central role in making sure that any dialogue develops into a vision with a set of values and strategies that will improve a company’s overall ethical performance. And then, of course, the vision itself has to be communicated to a wide range of audiences.
There are, however, promising signs of a new dawn for communication. The AA1000 standard, for example, uses a stakeholder-centred model and places new emphasis on the value of communications in organizational management. Launched in Copenhagen in November by the London-based Institute of Social and Ethical Accountability, this international standard should encourage new thinking in the discipline.
AA1000 recognises good communication as crucial to the effective delivery of stakeholder dialogue, and that it is not merely a tactical management tool to convey information and obtain feedback. In this new view of an organization, open channel dialogue allows the organization to adapt constantly to its environment.
We must all begin to recognise that communications is the glue holding any corporate social responsibility strategy together. Ultimately, it is the skills of communicators that can help organizations to secure a sustainable future.
Pauline Ryder is principal consultant at Capricorn Communications