CSR is important to your business because:
- It makes your business more attractive to customers
- It helps with recruitment and retention
- It actually adds value to your practice.
Now we are going to look at practical ways to embed CSR, how to ensure its continued focus and also how to use it to increase the profile of the practice.
Simple steps to improve your environmental impact
Pick a couple of areas and then ask your team ‘what can we do to improve our environmental impact?’ They will usually have ideas as they will be implementing it in their own lives. Choose one or two for that month and then choose the next one and keep it as a rolling process. Don’t try to do everything at once! Small steps are easier to achieve and maintain.
How to build up partnerships with charities or other community groups
- Choose the charity
The most important thing is to see this as a partnership, not just selecting a charity and donating. The charity that you choose must be one that you and your team know and understand and it is important that the money raised gives a tangible outcome.
Let the team choose the charity as it needs to be something that they are passionate about.
- Make contact
Introduce yourselves to the charity and tell them why you have chosen them. Depending on the charity itself, they will usually be able to guide you about the time commitment (usually 1-2 years), what sort of activities and the amount of money to raise (based on the size of your team and practice).
There may already be an initiative that they are raising money for or it may just be more generic. Some charities will quantify what money will buy.
For example: £200 could pay for volunteer counsellors to answer 50 children’s calls to Childline.
Charities usually have things that they can share with you, depending upon the size of the charity and how much of a commitment you are making. Even just a film of their work and how it makes a difference is useful to share with the team.
It is also worth noting that for a local group or charity they may need volunteers and this may be worth considering instead of fundraising.
- Keeping the team in the loop
Make sure that you maintain momentum by feeding back progress to staff each month.
Should we involve our patients?
This will depend on the practice and what your patient base it like. It may be relatively straight forward to involve patients in things like raffles or sponsored events. You will be able to decide on this based on the relationship that you have with your patients as well as the relationship that you want to build. Building a relationship with your patients increases loyalty.
How do you engage employees or potential employees in the strategy and initiatives?
The key is to involve people as early as possible and without it seeming like extra work to do. Ideally put someone in charge of CSR who is enthusiastic and interested and give them allocated time to do this- just one hour a week is probably sufficient. This gives it a focal point. Then ensure that you have a way of capturing ideas. Show people that their ideas are coming up so that they don’t disengage if their charity isn’t chosen. You need to empower them and even to incentivise by match funding (even a small amount helps). This tells your team that you are all in this together.
Celebrate every achievement and encourage people to be involved. Make sure that you are part of this and don’t expect your team to do things that you wouldn’t be prepared to do. At the end of the day, you want this to be their initiative, you are just enabling it.
Can we use CSR in our everyday marketing?
This is where it works really well. These days people are looking for more an expression of the values of the company. They want evidence of those values and they are selective about who they want to look after them. They want to trust the practice and for a big treatment, although clinical credentials are important, it may well be the CSR that differentiates you from the others.
Closing the loop and the circle of trust
It is really important that you share the result of any activities and particularly if you use if for marketing.
‘We believe that that this is important, so this is what we did about it and here are the results.’ This helps to build the circle of trust that people are looking for.
Marketing channels to use
Your social media or your website can have CSR that shows that you are the sort of people that care. Make sure that you emphasise what the team or individual team member is doing and the charity that you are supporting. Don’t fall into the trap of the quick hit public relations exercise, which can come across as a token gesture.
Create interesting human content and celebrate the team accomplishments: pictures are always really important.
The importance of the ‘Meet the Team Page’
Fact: Beyond the home page and the contact us, the meet the team is the most visited page.
Make it count, have pictures and bios that reflect the kind of people that you are.
The environment and being eco-friendly- Top tips
We can’t talk about CSR without mentioning the sustainability agenda, but how does this relate to your practice? How can practices ensure that what they are doing is sustainable?
The tendency is to focus on waste, but there are other things to consider such as your carbon footprint. Could your practice reduce unnecessary travel? Is it worth considering lift-sharing or using public transport? Are you reducing patient travel by combining appointments where possible?
Other areas that you can look at are:
- Going paperless- Digital communication with patients and digital record keeping.
- Switching energy provider- can you move to a renewable tariff.
- Challenging suppliers- Ask what they are doing to introduce green product lines.
Did you know that Henry Schein has introduced its own range of products to help practices with their sustainability agenda?
- Waste- Ensure that you have mixed recycling in place, and that people separate the waste. Recyclables shouldn’t end up incinerated with clinical waste.
- Refreshments- Ensure that you've got Fairtrade refreshments in the building
- No single use cups - You may think that using a paper cup instead of a plastic cup is good practice, but in reality, both take a lot of energy to produce. What really matters is the number of times that something is used.
- Reduce water usage- Use atomising taps. Grey water recycling is great too if you are able to use it.
Key takeaways
What can people implement today or tomorrow in their practice?
- Talk to your team- is there a topic which has piqued your interest? If so, it’s highly likely that your team have been thinking about it too. Have a conversation with them about it and see if there is something that can easily be done.
- Start small- Gather ideas. If you aren’t sure where to start there is a free guide called the 60-minute CSR plan.
- Build your plan
Simple ideas for the environment
- Save energy- Switch off what can be switched off. Now this sounds simple but if the wrong thing is switched off it could be disastrous. Use a simple traffic light system on your switches so people know that if its green it can be turned off. The important thing is that people don’t worry about pressing a switch.
- Think about procurement and how you can put pressure on those suppliers?
- Think about how you can travel in a more sustainable way? Even if it is just for one day?
There are lots of small changes that you can make which in time will make a big difference.
‘You can start changing the world for the better daily, no matter how small the action.’ Nelson Mandela
Where can we go for help?
There are lots of resources online, but a good starting point is Mark’s website marktopley.co.uk There is a special section for dentists where you can find lots of help, including free downloadable resources.
Find out more information in our upcoming webinar with Mark! Available on demand.