The context

We believe that it is more relevant than ever before for businesses and communities to work together for mutual benefit.

There are a number of reasons for this.

First, more companies are seeing the need to understand and tackle the local and global social issues of relevance to their business, such as climate change, health, the ageing population, child protection or social deprivation. These are complex issues and business alone cannot take responsibility for them, but companies embracing "CSR 2.0" understand that they can minimise risk and maximise opportunity by playing an active role to ensure their impact on the issue is positive, not negative.

Our work with O2, supporting their child protection campaign, provides a good example of a pro-active approach to a complex societal issue.

Second, employees - especially ‘Generation Y’ employees - are searching for more meaning in the workplace. Connecting with a cause beyond the core business, interacting with communities and understanding work in the context of society as a whole can turn ‘work’ into ‘meaningful work’.

Learning & development programmes that include modules based on real life charity projects enable participants to look outwards at society and provide a more holistic vision of work. Our work on Gala Coral’s talent development programme provides a great example.

Third, community engagement and social investment is becoming more strategic. The charity partners and social issues that companies choose to embrace can increasingly be linked to business priorities. This means that community engagement is not a ‘nice to do’; in fact, it can become part of core business strategy.

Finally, the recession - caused to some extent by an over-emphasis on short-term shareholder return - has highlighted the need to create value for a range of stakeholders, not just shareholders.

All of this has led to the opportunity for a more ‘values-led’ capitalism, which means balancing the pursuit of profit with the pursuit of value for society.

The business case and the values case go hand in hand; and we’re delighted to be able to help companies achieve the two through tailored, employee-based programmes.