Chantal

CSR can be divided into four sections – people, premises, purchasing and promotion:

People – we make sure our staff get the training they need and have the best equipment and environment to allow them to do their jobs. We’re all volunteering with local charities to develop our skills.

Premises – we switch off our lights and computers when we’re not in the office and recycle paper and ink cartridges.

Purchasing – we buy from local suppliers whenever we can and pay them all promptly.

Promotion – we use online marketing rather than printed materials and we’ve published our first CSR report, to generate PR and more content for our website. Click here to read our report on our website.

If you work through these four areas you’ll be surprised by how much of what you’re already doing can be classed as CSR!

So how can you use CSR to generate PR?

To give you some ideas, here’s how we’re doing it:

Email newsletter – you might have noticed that this newsletter is about CSR! It gave me a topic to write about and ideas to share with you.

Blogging – as each of us in our team undertakes a volunteering project, we’re writing about it in our blog. Click here to read about Dianne’s adventures and how her project is improving her confidence.

Website – we’ve added a page to our website, where visitors can read our CSR Report. We did some keyword research to identify phrases that internet users are searching for and we’re working our way up the Google rankings.

PR – the local papers are interested in the fact that we’ve published a CSR Report and that we’re working with local charities.

A new product – we worked with a CSR Consultant to create our Report. We’re now working with her to help other companies compile a Report and then promote it. We turn the Report into a stunning PDF to use on websites and we’ll write a press release to send to the papers.

If you’d like to know about how to get more from CSR and how to use your activity to promote your business (rather than just donating money to a charity to make you feel better!) then click here to read about our new CSR Review and Report service.