New CSR ideas should be generated from bottom-up, not top-down

  23 July, 2019      CSRIndustry Insights
New CSR ideas should be generated from bottom-up, not top-down

Kevin Rhone our Head of Social Value and Customer Service, discusses Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) partnerships between contractors and registered providers.

Now more than ever, contractors want to be bolder in their CSR efforts and the days of these initiatives being a tick-box exercise are over.

Contractors recognise the commercial benefits and housing providers have an opportunity to make better use of this. Could landlords and their suppliers be bolder in creating initiatives together? The answer is: absolutely.

Being Bolder with CSR Efforts

If you are still of the mindset that contractors view CSR with cynicism, then you need to look at efforts by the sector outside of contractual obligations.

The construction industry recognises that CSR’s benefits extend beyond just improving communities. For instance, CSR is a fantastic way of bringing staff together and building a positive workforce culture.

As a result, it can help retain talent and inspire workforces.

CSR Initiatives Create Stronger Teams

We have seen CSR projects really drive home these positives in our own teams.

Our charity initiative last year saw us invest £100,000 across five transformational projects around the UK – each nominated by local communities.

The campaign, called the Novus Big Five, galvanised our workforce as well as engaging local people.

It united our colleagues up and down the country under a common goal while also supporting our values as a family-owned business.

It’s also highlighted the benefits of working with communities themselves to generate ideas for CSR.

The initiatives over the year included a range of projects from a refurbishment of a rehabilitation centre for military veterans struggling with addiction to a new ward at a hospital in Brighton for parents who had lost their child during labour, which gives them the space they need to grieve.

The range of worthy projects nominated far exceeded the ideas we would have had alone.

Creating CSR Partnerships

The learning is that landlords and housing associations should create open forums where contractors on the ground and communities feel empowered to generate their own ideas for CSR.

Our workforces are often social landlords’ eyes and ears on the ground in their estates and people living there have an unmatched understanding of the area itself.

Together they have a unique insight into where money could be best spent to solve issues.

In addition, getting early buy-in from the community and contractor workforces themselves can lead to a valuable initial groundswell of support for projects, including additional fundraising.

As partners, we should set ambitious targets too and put as much pressure on ourselves to generate bigger results.

However, it isn’t necessarily about investing more time and money, it’s about making sure that, whatever we’re doing, that it can create a lasting difference.

By thinking about CSR from the bottom up and asking communities and contractor teams on the ground where they see the biggest issues in communities can help social landlords to make much bigger impacts in their communities.

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We launched Sustain in 2021, which offers an end-to-end, fully PAS 2035 compliant whole-house retrofit service from our dedicated team of experts. The service is designed to enable social housing landlords to meet the Government’s target for all social housing to achieve an EPC rating of C and above by 2030.

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