Are you a CSR, ESG, or sustainability director?
The business world is evolving, and so are the roles responsible for ensuring companies contribute to a better world. If you're a Corporate social responsibility (CSR) manager, or Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) manager, or a Sustainability director, or something in between, you surely see the growing expectation for businesses to not only create value but also deliver impact.
Each of these roles has its own focus and scope, but they share a common purpose: to use the power of business as a force for good. This blog unpacks each role, speaks to those who are doing this work without an official impact role, and shares the key pillars you need to drive impact, regardless of your title. (I´ve become something of a broken record on one of these pillars that is simply not being done enough, so read on for that too.)
Photo credit: Unsplash, LinkedIn Sales Solutions
CSR managers: Corporate giving and volunteering
Corporate social responsibility managers are often at the forefront of a company's public-facing efforts to "give back." Traditionally, CSR has been associated with philanthropy and community engagement, but modern CSR has evolved to be more aligned with– and embedded into– the business´s strategy.
Core responsibilities
Engaging communities: Building relationships with local and global communities through initiatives like volunteering, charitable giving, and advocacy.
Enhancing corporate reputation: Creating programs that showcase the company’s commitment to social good, thereby building brand loyalty.
This role tends to focus on short- to medium-term impact. Too often, they are one off, but when integrated into the larger company culture and mission success can reach new heights.
Sustainability directors: Guardians of the planet
Sustainability directors focus on minimizing the environmental footprint of a company. More and more, corporate sustainability teams are also tasked with ensuring community wellbeing and resilience.
Core responsibilities
Long-Term environmental goals: Setting ambitious targets for carbon neutrality, water stewardship, biodiversity preservation, or beyond.
Operational sustainability: Implementing energy efficiency programs, waste reduction initiatives, and sustainable supply chain practices to both ensure sustainability-related compliance as well as to meet more ambitious targets.
Reporting: Monitoring and reporting how the company is doing against each of these targets.
This role tends to look at long-term environmental outcomes (e.g., achieving carbon neutrality by 2050). Their work helps businesses anticipate future challenges while building resilience and long-term viability. (Learn more about globally aligned sustainability principles through the UN Global Compact.)
ESG managers: Driving transparency and accountability
The role of an ESG manager is analytical and strategic, focused on how environmental, social, and governance factors impact the company’s performance. They ensure the organization meets investor and regulatory expectations while fostering ethical practices.
Core responsibilities
ESG reporting and compliance: Gathering, analyzing, and reporting data aligned with frameworks like GRI and IFRS´s SASB.
Stakeholder engagement: Communicating ESG goals and progress to investors, regulators, and employees.
ESG managers tend to bridge the short and long term, ensuring that efforts align with both immediate regulatory demands and future investor expectations and that these efforts are measurable.
The jack of all trades
Not every company has the luxury of dedicated CSR managers, ESG managers, and sustainability directors. In many organizations, these responsibilities converge into a single “impact” role, with one leader wearing multiple hats to champion social and environmental impact. If that is you, you will find your people in the Social Impact World slack community and virtual summit.
The secret motor: Commercial and operational teams
As companies are seeing the power of actually integrating impact into the business model, this work is increasingly being birthed and driven by commercial and operational teams.
For instance, sourcing teams see the opportunity to grow their supplier base by actively buying from marginalized or underrepresented groups. And in the wake of Black Lives Matter, some HR teams are working to diversify their franchise ownership.
The necessity of collaboration
Here's the thing: it is not either or. For any initiative to be successful and weather the long term ups and downs of a company´s profitability, impact directors and managers and commercial/operational teams must join forces. This alignment ensures that impact initiatives are not siloed but instead integrated into the core operations of the business.
Impact teams bring the expertise on regulatory and ethical goals and standards, project design, and impact-related partnerships.
Commercial and operational teams intimately know the commercial goals, can embed impact initiatives into everyday operations, and are often the ones responsible for maintaining the initiatives.
This point has become something of a matra from me over the last couple years (you could also call me a broken record). Because we aren´t doing it enough despite the immense power in it.
A quick case study
Imagine a European company with an HQ objective to support farmers in the area the company sources from in Peru. Technically, it is the job of the HQ sustainability team to make this a reality. Where do they start? They reach out to their Peru sustainability manager. Together, they may develop a one-year project that gives some general training to farmers and is quickly forgotten.
But if they also bring the Peru commercial director into the planning, they will likely identify the problem to be solved and the solution. They now have:
Data showing that the mango supply chain is most vulnerable to climate change;
Visibility that a specific subset of farmers in that supply chain are quite interested in building their climate resilience (and this gets confirmed upon speaking with those farmers);
Visibility of 3 specific actions that will most strengthen their resilience; and
While attending a local sustainability event they meet a local NGO that can run the initiative directly with the program.
The result is that the initiative takes off, is successful, brings business returns by ensuring more consistent purchasing despite variable weather patterns, and becomes a core part of the business operations for years.
When impact and commercial/operational roles work together, their collective impact – on efficiency, long-term value creation, and corporate credibility – can be far greater than the sum of their individual efforts.
Here are the three drivers to get to this sum of the parts:
Align around a unified purpose
Establish a company-wide vision for social impact that integrates CSR, ESG, and sustainability goals. For instance, a shared mission of achieving net-zero emissions can involve community tree-planting initiatives (CSR), operational carbon reduction (sustainability), and transparent reporting (ESG).Integrate metrics and insights
Share data and outcomes across departments. For example, CSR programs can provide qualitative stories that enrich ESG reports, while sustainability metrics can inform both ESG disclosures and CSR campaigns.Foster a culture of impact
Break down silos and encourage collaboration.
Increasing scope and expectations without a bigger team?
This all might sound like a lot. And the challenges we face —climate change, social inequity, and economic instability— demand that leaders in every role and department think beyond their immediate responsibilities. As companies step up more and more, small teams are increasingly being asked to step outside their zone of genius to make a difference.
If that is you, ask for the help you need. Maybe it is 2 hours a week from someone on your company´s impact team, to guide you in designing, launching or scaling your initiative. Or maybe your impact team doesn't have the bandwidth to support this way and you look for an external consultant to guide your team through the ins and outs of turning your seed of an impact idea into an up-and-running program (this is one of the main ways we love helping companies) Because you CAN do it– don´t believe me, read here about how your team can drive the change.
Either way, no one can do it alone and you deserve the teamwork and support critical to making business a force for good.
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