Healthcare: The corporate social responsibility of Johns Hopkins Hospital

Are there any companies or corporations that stand out in your mind for their efforts in corporate social responsibility?

Johns Hopkins Hospital is definitely worth mentioning. Not only do they offer services to help people, they go above and beyond that with their corporate social responsibility. In fact, they were actually named one of the world’s most ethical organizations by the Ethisphere Institute. To be nominated and selected for this, there is certain criterion that needs to be met. This includes: corporate citizenship and responsibility, corporate governance, innovation that contributes to public well-being, industry leadership, executive leadership, legal and regulatory performance, and solid ethics-compliance programs. 

Additionally, Johns Hopkins Hospital just recently started helping other companies develop employee wellness centers. These new centers play a pivotal role in helping the companies maintain reasonable health costs as well as ensuring the health of these corporations’ employees. Some corporations that are participating in this program include: Nestle Crop, Hughes Network Systems, and Nordham Group.

A Smart Communication Plan for CSR

You might have developed an amazing CSR plan, but how do you communicate your plan to those key players? What are some challenges that you might face? How will you convey to the company and all of its departments the significances of CSR? Will you be able to justify to stakeholders and interests groups why it is in your company’s best interest to take on this CSR plan?

Here are some essential things to keep in mind when communicating your plan:

1.       Timing is everything. Be sure to communicate in the beginning what your plan is. Next, once you begin implementing your plan let the stakeholders and employees know what they are responsible for. Lastly, get together with everyone to see how you performed and how you reached your plan’s goals with their help.

2.       Be sure to address the right issues to the right audience. Stakeholders are more concerned about the numbers and financials. Leave those details out of your communications to your employees.

3.       Use a variety of communication mediums. Make sure that your consumers are aware of what you are doing with your CSR plan. Put this information up onto a website where anyone can access it. You should also create more internal and specific information to your employee and stakeholders as well. This way everyone can be on the same page.

4.       Celebrate your success and address your obstacles. You need to let everyone know if you reached your goal to provide good feedback from your stakeholders and consumers. Let your employees know that their efforts are appreciated.

Is there anything else you think is essential to creating a smart communication plan for corporate social responsibility? What helped your company? What are some challenges you faced?

Some of the Critical Elements of a CSR Initiative

Does your company have enough of a competitive edge? How about using corporate social responsibility as an edge? 67% of consumer will most likely buy products from a company that gives back to the community over their competitors that don’t.  Toms is definitely a good example of a company that can back that statistic up with their success.

What are some critical elements that successful corporations use for their CSR Initiative?

1.       Sticking to what they know and using that to help the community. For example, Toms is a shoe company, and they are donating shoes to individuals who don’t have shoes.

2.       Being able to justify the why of it all with solid research. Why should everyone else care about the corporation’s cause, and what exactly is the business doing to solve this issue?

3.       Focusing on one social issue/cause at a time. Everyone knows that if you want to make a big impact and get something done, you need to just focus on it solely instead of trying to juggle multiple things at once.

4.       Don’t be afraid to get help from experts. There’s no point in reinventing the wheel. If there’s an organization/non-profit that is already working towards a cause you want to help, partner up with them and let them teach your company what you can do to make the biggest impact.

Those are some key factors to focus on when starting your CSR initiative. Are there any other elements that you think should be focused on as well?