This article featured in HR Magazine earlier this year raised an interesting question. Is corporate social responsibility dead?

For many people, that’s a pretty controversial notion. But if you look carefully at what O2 HR director Ann Pickering and VP HR at Unilever Tim Munden are saying, it actually makes a lot of sense. CSR is transforming into purpose.

Be honest. Who hasn’t rolled their eyes upon hearing an announcement about yet another CSR initiative? And who hasn’t felt frustration that they’re expected to do ‘yet another thing’ on top of their ‘real job’ if they’ve been asked to get involved with said initiative?

But at the same time those people would agree that corporate social responsibility matters. The intentions behind CSR are right; the problem has been more in the implementation. As the HR Magazine article acknowledges, many companies have made good progress with corporate social responsibility but for others it’s become a second rate add-on to ‘business as usual’. In worst case scenarios, CSR efforts can be so far removed from the day to day culture, it leads to a sense of jaded weariness that ultimately turns into cynicism about the company in general.

Unfortunately some organisations will always be more concerned with finding ways to be seen as responsible, rather than actually being responsible – and that promptly turns corporate social responsibility into a PR exercise.
But for other more well-intentioned businesses there is a desire to create a genuine corporate conscience. They are concerned with creating and leading a sustainable organisation that looks after the triple bottom line – people, profit and planet.

This matters to today’s employees – particularly millennials – and is a critical part of creating the highly prized sense of purpose associated with engaged workers. Ann Pickering observes that the millennial generation is more socially aware than other generations and when it comes to the workplace research backs this up. But it doesn’t mean they were born that way; every generation is shaped by its environment.

Millennials have grown up with social media tools that facilitate a far greater awareness of the world and social issues than previous generations. This awareness has embedded itself not only as a desire for purpose and mission in the workplace but as an expectation of them. Millennials don’t come to the workplace to be told they must ‘participate in CSR’. They expect it to already be built into the heart of any organisation they work for.

It’s not only millennials who want purpose, mission and social responsibility. But previous generations haven’t had the benefit of the technology and platforms that now help companies to integrate values and purpose with day to day activity. The digital era has enabled communication and transparency and that supports mission and purpose beyond profits. It’s shining an unforgiving light on companies that would previously have used their PR team to cover up unacceptable practices and put a glossy spin on superficial CSR activities.

As a result, companies have the opportunity to shift from formal corporate social responsibility programmes to an all-encompassing purpose that permeates the entire business model and culture. Whether it’s CSR or other issues like engagement or health and safety cultures, they are becoming part of the company fabric. As Munden says ‘It’s about having the purpose of the company clear, really activating that purpose and being true to it. It’s about living the purpose in your brands, your relationships with the world around you and your teams.’