Beyond the Boardroom: How To Make Your Business Benefit More Than Just Yourself
Many employers start a business because it is the fast track to a fulfilling career, but we have to understand that when we are creating a business, it is a very common consideration that people are now doing it to benefit themselves. It’s understandable because people are looking for some sense of freedom in an ever-constricting world. But we have to remember that our business can be a force for change. And we need to ensure that our business can benefit more than just ourselves. So how do we do this?
Give to Causes You Care About
Charitable donations and numerous corporate giving mechanisms are essential aspects of making companies sit up and take notice of what is going on in the big wide world. Naturally, it’s very good PR as well, but when we are looking beyond the business, we can start to implement more charitable donations that benefit the local community.
For example, you may want to set up an initiative in your business where you allow your employees a couple of days a year to focus on charitable causes that they believe in. When we start to embody this approach, it becomes part of the cultural fabric, which means that there will be more people more inclined to come and work with us.
Contribute to Goodwill
Goodwill in business almost seems anathema to the cutthroat world we live in. But we have to prioritize some sense of humanity. Implementing goodwill in your working environment may seem like some pipe dream. However, we need to dress it up in the right way. Ensuring that we create a business that has a far more effective cultural component that prioritizes goodwill is to do with the underlying ethics.
We live in a world of cancel culture, and we never have to look far to see if a business is operating in an unethical manner. The simplest way to start creating that notion of goodwill is to give more goodwill out. A lot of people don’t like the idea of putting things out into the universe. This hippy approach to thinking may be diametrically opposed to business, but when we start to think about benefiting others beyond our boardroom, we need to remember that good old-fashioned human-centered behavior is the key to it all.
Build a Greater Community
There have been countless businesses giving back to communities over the years. If you want to make a business that is rich in kindness, all you need to do is look out of your office window and see what is around you. A greater community is something that we should all strive for. You may have opted for an office in a cheaper area, but when you start to look at what this area is actually like, you could think about moving on or upgrading for the sake of it, but it’s far better to look after your own patch.
A local community has a sense of homeliness to it. If we want to look after the people in our community, we’ve got to go via the causes that matter to us but also relate to our business. This is not for the reason of promotion, but more the fact that we can use our inherent and innate business skills to give proper support to the people that matter.
If you have employees that have passions beyond their roles (which, of course, everybody will), you need to speak to them and find out the things that are important, especially if they live locally. They will see things beyond what is going on outside. Going and helping local communities in the form of a local fair are simple things, but they will provide a greater foundation for your business location.
Engage Your Employees
If you want to benefit your business, you’ve got to look at the people who are supporting it. If you want to make the business benefit your employees, you need to engage and look after them. Employee engagement is an age-old practice, but it is such an important aspect of being charitable.
We need to remember that our employees give a lot of themselves to ensure that we profit and there are a lot of real-world examples where the top 5% prefer to profit and let everyone else suffer; it’s this terrible approach that is not benefiting anyone. We all like to profit, but if we want to feel richer, we’ve got to look beyond ourselves and really give our employees the things they need.