Summary of the main findings

Interviews revealed that most of the case companies recognize the importance of corporate responsibility, but relevance of CSR to an individual firm was found to depend on its perceived impact on business. The focus areas of CSR varied among the case companies, and different aspects of social responsibility were emphasized depending, for instance, on the industry and product offering. The social and environmental aspects of CSR were given the most emphasis, particularly in terms of themes relating to safety, compliance, and supply chain management. Furthermore, many of the explicit motivators for companies to adopt CSR were external, relating especially to regulative requirements, increasing demands of stakeholders, corporate reputation, or previous bad experiences.

Nevertheless, several company-related benefits were also identified and discussed, thus revealing a more strategic role and meaning of CSR. In most firms, the most evident advantage seemed to be related to risk management and compliance, which was also considered as being in interest of the company management. The other business-related benefits included cost savings and operational efficiency, improved sales performance and support, innovative product offerings, employee attraction and motivation, long-term profitability, as well as better competitive position against industry rivals.

In general, most of the companies seemed to have a formal way of managing and coordinating social responsibility, apart from few companies that were in the early stages of developing a more organised approach to CSR. The nature and level of CSR management ranged from merely defining the concept and the main focus areas, to a more calculated implementation of specific CSR-related objectives. Moreover, it became clear that businesses do not have the need nor resources to contribute to each and every element of CSR. For understanding the social demands and outlining the suitable areas for CSR engagement, many of the companies were said to conduct stakeholder dialogues and materiality assessments.

Interviews also showed that some companies seemed to manage CSR more strategically and with more target-orientation than others. Few of the firms were in the phase of developing objectives for CSR engagement to begin with, while others had already outlined the positions they want to take in terms of social responsibility. In some cases, these were also strongly related to the general strategic objectives of the business. Many of the interviewees also underlined the importance of setting concrete targets for business units, factories, or even individual employees. Some of the companies had additionally

outlined more detailed indicators and goals for their CSR including, for instance, number of accidents or sick leaves, amount of CO² emissions, or gender distribution of personnel.

Implementing CSR commitments and strategies was clearly a topical subject for many companies, and several respondents stressed the need of integrating CSR into existing operations and making it a concrete part of daily work. In most cases, this appeared to be in the hands of local business units, and middle managers were seen as having a vital role in carrying out the work plans and processes related to social responsibility. One of the key dilemmas in terms of CSR implementation seemed to be the organisation and the people responsible for it. For one thing, the need for someone to coordinate the different aspects of the company’s social responsibility was emphasized as being necessary for efficient management of CSR. On the other hand, some of the interviewees highlighted that CSR should be diluted into different aspects of the organisation, and that it should be owned by the business rather than managed solely by a corporate CSR team. It was also argued that a separate CSR unit could actually hamper the strategic nature and successful integration of CSR, as a result of the topic being outsourced to experts.

The most common challenges of CSR management seemed to derive from the scope and diversity of the concept, the changing stakeholder demands, justification of the business case, measuring and quantifying the impact of CSR, as well as communicating it – both externally and internally. Moreover, most of the stumbling blocks appeared to be related to embedding CSR to the minds and actions of the people working in the organisation. In particular, low awareness, understanding, or interest of employees towards the topic, as well as the distance of the CSR concept to everyday business were seen as major barriers for integrating social responsibility into the organisation.

Altogether, internal CSR communication was acknowledged to be an important topic by all of the interviewees, regardless of how they felt about the concept of corporate social responsibility in general. This can be seen to reflect the overall need and importance of implementing and executing the strategic decisions and plans made by the senior management. However, the interviews did not necessarily show signs of conscious and target-oriented planning or execution of internal CSR communication. In other words, participants did see the link of communicating CSR to employees in order to get them aware and committed to the common social responsibility goals, but the concrete actions supporting these views were missing. The interview data also indicated that the topic of CSR communication was often seen from the viewpoint of external reporting and marketing, and not so much as a tool that could be utilized to create employee awareness,

engagement, and enthusiasm for CSR. Especially CSR reporting was considered to be higher on the priority list of CSR professionals compared to the efforts or time directed to employee communication. Nonetheless, companies seemed to consider internal CSR communication as something that they would need to improve and develop more in the future, in order to commit their employees in social responsibility.

In terms of the functions and persons responsible of communicating CSR within the company, the interviews indicated that the practices were often divided between the CSR unit or team and the Communications function of the firm. Moreover, many of the participants explained that the substance and content of what is being communicated was mostly developed by the CSR experts, and after that it was usually the Communications people who were in charge of delivering the message by using suitable methods and channels. In terms of the focus of internal CSR communication, interviews indicated that the message content was often related to specific educational themes rather than on the general communication, for instance on the objectives or focus areas. In one case, however, sustainability-related cases and stories were also published internally.

The channels used to communicate CSR to employees included emails and newsletters, company intranets, interactive social media networks (Yammer Facebook and Twitter), sustainability-themed blogs, engagement events and conference calls related to CSR, as well as online and face-to-face training on the topics. Especially intranet was seen as an inefficient and problematic way to communicate, due to its limited accessibility and reach, as well as the excessive amount of information that it can contain. Some of the case companies also relied on traditional face-to-face communication, and different engagement events were brought up as ways to involve employees in CSR. Few participants also highlighted the importance of a two-way communication and the need to participate employees already during the planning of the company’s CSR strategy.

The motives and drivers behind internal communication of the companies seemed to be especially related to the external requirements and expectations towards CSR. Moreover, the importance of ensuring employee compliance with the policies and regulations of the firm, as well as their role in representing the company externally (either to friends and family or in the customer-interface) were particularly emphasized in the interviews.

Therefore, internal communication on CSR was often linked to the desired behavioural change of employees. In addition to seeing the significance of internal communication in getting individuals to behaving according to the industry or corporate rules (and thus avoiding the risks of unwanted behaviour), the more value-driven approach was also

distinguished by few interviewees. According to this point of view, CSR was seen as a useful method to streamline corporate values and culture in line with the views of the management.

To understand the business case for communicating and involving employees in social responsibility, the interviewees were asked about the potential company-related benefits that employee CSR awareness and engagement may bring. In addition to the viewpoints concerning employee compliance, favourable corporate image and shared understanding of company values, the benefits regarding successful CSR strategy implementation, employee commitment, motivation and attraction, as well as better opportunities for innovation were also discussed. Internal CSR communication appeared most of all to be an important tool to clarify the link between individual actions and the corporate CSR policies and commitments, as well as motivating employees to take ownership for the realization of social responsibility in their company.

Nevertheless, the complex nature of CSR communication and the scale and diversity of the workforce, amongst other things, seemed to pose challenges for the case companies.

Especially themes relating to the low awareness and interest of employees towards the concept, the difficulty in linking CSR to everyday business, the sheer amount and scattering of employees, as well as the lack of time, planning and resources seemed to be the biggest challenges in regards of internal communication of social responsibility.

The factors influencing the effectiveness of internal CSR communication mostly appeared to be about the message content as well as the different methods and practices of employee communication. The “tone from the top” and the consistency between the words and actions of senior managers were particularly highlighted. It was additionally stressed that effective CSR messaging should be continuous, coherent, and concrete, relating mainly to treating it as a constant process, ensuring a clear and consistent message, and showing relevance and connection of CSR to daily work. In terms of using the specific terminology related to corporate responsibility, the interviewees had differing opinions. In some cases, the use of specific terms and CSR jargon was found to be appreciated by employees, as in some, it was said to alienate people from the topic.

Communicating the actual impact of CSR on the company, to specific customers, or to the society as a whole was also said to make it more concrete and interesting to employees. Nevertheless, interviews indicated that very few of the companies monitored the effectiveness of their internal CSR communication, apart from couple of firms that had integrated CSR-related questions into employee engagement or commitment surveys.