Corporate citizenship is a big term. Rosenberg Communications is a small (but growing!) shop. But I’m finding that being a corporate citizen supports my bottom line without costing me much.

For a long time I’ve understood corporate citizenship, or corporate social responsibility (CSR). The Hitachi Foundation, one of our clients, is a leader in the field. We’ve worked with the Foundation, the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship, and Net Impact, to create the blog, corporatecitizen07.com. And we’re managing the rollout of the State of Corporate Citizenship 2007, the only survey of executives’ attitudes and behaviors that includes small, medium, and large businesses. The most important finding? Action trails behind talk when it comes to CSR.

I was one of those — a good talker, not much of a walker. But I figured, “I’m small. Just keeping afloat is my biggest contribution!” I’ve since learned that being a good corporate citizen doesn’t cost me much at all, and has some immediate payback.

Here’s what I’ve done:

1. Treat employees well. One line in our mission statement reads,”Rosenberg Communications is a place to make a living and grow professionally and personally.” We pay for one training conference, class, event, etc. for each employee every year. I insist they use it. I gave every employee a small video I-pod so they can show off our work whenever, wherever they are. (The other music and videos they put on it, that’s up to them.)

2. Contribute. At the end of this year each employee was asked to designate one charity of their choice. The company made a contribution to each.

3. Care about the environment. I’m insisting that our building get on track on recycling. And we are making carbon offset purchases for every trip we took this past year and will do so for every future trip. We’re doing it through LiveNeutral.org.

It all adds up to a rather small investment. And, admittedly, it’s easy for me right now because the Lord has blessed us with some really good years. But I can tell you this much, it’s bought me real loyalty from employees and some easy word of mouth PR. We hired a new guy about two months ago. He told me this quick story:

Friend of new guy: How’s the new job going?
New guy: Great. I’ve been there two months. I got an end-of-year bonus, my boss gave me a video I-pod, and the company made a contribution to a chariity I chose.
Friend of new guy: Are they hiring?

Not a bad payoff, if you ask me: talented new guy already loyal, at least one person (and I suspect more from other employees) hearing what a good company we are.

Just call me Citizen Blogenberg!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 26th, 2007 at 2:13 pm and is filed under Communications, Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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