Community spirit

An explanation for the increasing awareness of corporate-social responsibility can be found through commercial realism and the recognition that no business – law firm or otherwise – is an island. Firms are realising that they must nurture and support society and the communities on which they ultimately depend.

By David Worskett, Bevan Brittan LLP

The concept of corporate-social responsibility (CSR) has been moving up the business agenda for some years. This is part of a growing awareness that organisations need to play their part responsibly and constructively in society if they are to retain the trust and confidence of government, the electorate, customers and thus, also retain the right to continue to go about their business with the minimum – or at least a tolerable level – of political and regulatory intervention.

Perhaps because of a sense that, almost by definition, the legal profession is socially responsible, or perhaps because law firms have been slow to evolve into genuinely corporate entities with a sense of brand and corporate identity, the profession has not been among the early exponents of CSR. It is also fair to point out that in many firms there already exists a long tradition of pro bono work, often supporting local and national charities and voluntary organisations.

While attitudes towards formal CSR programmes are now changing, one might also be forgiven for asking if they are changing fast enough.

On 6 May this year, the Sunday Times published its ‘Companies that Count’ supplement. This is essentially a league table rating companies on their commitment to CSR, using a range of objective criteria. Its development over recent years in itself indicates how quickly much of the business world has embraced CSR.

For the legal sector, however, this year’s supplement raises an awkward question. Why is there not a single law firm listed among the top-100 ‘companies that count’? There are several well-known names from the accountancy sector, some government departments and representation from across the economic spectrum. Enterprises that have a direct impact on society and the environment – transport or construction companies, for example – are well represented.

The fact that there are no law firms suggests there is still some way to go in convincing the partners who run them that the adoption of formal CSR programmes is increasingly a necessity rather than a ‘nice to have’ item for the board.

Why embark on a CSR programme?
Clearly, any answer to this question must start with recognition that the activities that fall within the broad definition of ‘CSR’ are of themselves good things to do and quite simply ‘right’ for their own sake. One reason for stating this apparently obvious fact is that the experience of CSR programmes in some organisations has, at least in the early stages, sometimes been greeted with the cynical response from staff that ‘they are only being undertaken to increase business’. Genuine altruism can on occasion be dismissed by groups of employees who have little trust in what management says or does in an increasingly cut-throat commercial environment.

Such a response is depressing but says more about the state of employee relations in some businesses (law firms included) than it does about the real, more complex reasons why CSR programmes make good sense.

Before looking in more depth at the rather more complex mix of reasons why such programmes should be undertaken by law firms, we should perhaps take a step back and remind ourselves what, typically, the ingredients of CSR are.

Top of the list is usually community engagement, which may take the traditional form of pro bono work with local charities, citizens’ advice bureaux and the like, but which may extend to teams of volunteers repainting school classrooms or care homes. At Bevan Brittan we have a programme of activities of both kinds, coordinated and managed for us by the admirable ‘Pro Help’ and ‘Cares’ organisations, which form part of Business in the Community.

Next comes the now high-profile issue of diversity, extending far beyond well-trodden concerns about ethnicity into territory such as religion, sexual orientation and even lifestyle preferences. Again, at Bevan Brittan we seek to apply ‘best practice’ in all these areas, implemented through board-level engagement, colleague consultation and representation, formal training and systematic monitoring.

Third, is the whole area of sustainability and carbon reduction. Some aspects of this are well-trodden – at Bevan Brittan we have had green travel plans for several years. Others are newer and more difficult, particularly when it comes to the energy efficiency of older or shared buildings. Our newest building – Kings Orchard, in Bristol, has an exceptional carbon footprint of only some 40 per cent of the approved ‘benchmark’. In other buildings one is heavily dependent on the mindsets of landlords and other tenants.

Opinions differ as to whether charitable giving falls under the CSR umbrella. Many firms have large amounts of such activity going on at any time, often as a result of efforts by individuals or groups of employees and partners. Of itself that does not seem to me to fall within the scope of CSR. However, the need for a firm to have policies and practices that actively support and facilitate charitable giving, through agreed charitable activities or through payroll giving schemes, should in my view be seen as part of a formal CSR programme. At Bevan Brittan we committed significant amounts of time and effort to our 2007 Charity Ball, which raised more than £40,000 for our chosen charity NCH and we will be repeating this next year. We are about to introduce a payroll giving scheme, with the firm covering the administrative costs.

Making commercial sense
The point about all of these ingredients of the CSR mix is not only that they are ‘good’ in themselves, but that they also happen to make good commercial sense. There are many ‘good’ activities in which individuals or firms might engage, but businesses cannot afford to be charities, and the things they choose to support need to make commercial as well as social sense.

So how do each of the areas outlined above achieve the dual goals of being socially responsible and commercially sensible? The answers lie in an understanding of changing client and employee attitudes and priorities, and of how modern, increasingly complex brands work with both groups.

Clients and prospects
Our experience at Bevan Brittan suggests that there are two levels to the impact of CSR with these groups. For a growing number of clients, notably in the public sector, questions about CSR policies and programmes are becoming another of the gateways through which suppliers and advisers have to pass in order to win work. We recently had an instance in which a public sector organisation moved significant work to us simply because none of the other firms on its panel could tell a decent CSR story.

Another angle, perhaps more applicable to the private sector, is the growing sophistication of supplier and supply-chain management, with major companies increasingly determined to make sure that their suppliers and advisers live up to the same behavioural and ethical standards as those companies themselves. Seen most obviously in the fair-trade movement, the same principles are now being applied to business to business relationships of all kinds.

Recruitment and retention
In the legal employment marketplace, where competition for quality people becomes more intense (and expensive) every year, research has now firmly established that it is not only money that counts. Also, when there is little or nothing to choose between employers as regards money, nor indeed work/life balance (or the lack of it), employees and potential employees look more and more carefully at the social responsibility of firms in deciding whether to join and whether to stay.

In Bevan Brittan’s most recent colleague survey, one of the most prominent areas of concern was over the need to understand more about the firm’s CSR activities and to have reassurance that we were in fact doing enough. Various pieces of publicly available independent research show that among the best graduates, the stance of prospective employers on the main CSR issues can be a key factor when weighing up competing job offers. Seen from the management perspective, recent research indicates that there is direct correlation between employee engagement and the extent to which staff are satisfied with their employer’s commitment to CSR.

Beyond this employer of choice rationale, however, there is also the major consideration that with diversity in particular, failure to embrace best practice may simply have the effect of cutting a firm off from a significant proportion of the talent available for recruitment.

Commercial and competitive reality
So, as well as being important and right in itself, a well-designed and supported CSR programme can go right to the heart of commercial and competitive realities, too. And there is nothing wrong in that. After all, without commercial and competitive survival and success there will be no firm to do ‘good’ in society.

Of course, all of this is actually a new angle on building and maintaining brand and brand reputation. Consumer and service industries learnt many years ago that the way a product or service is perceived is just as important as its substantive characteristics. Offered two products or services of broadly comparable quality and price, other characteristics immediately come into play in the purchasing decision. Reputational capital and positive brand characteristics can create a powerful competitive advantage or even in the short term help to protect a struggling product or service.

So, we need to understand CSR not as a product of the politically correct, soft tonality of the Blair era, but as a hard-headed, 21st century element of brand and reputation management. If we are looking for an explanation as to why the concept has acquired such a following in the corporate world and has become the subject of an annual Sunday Times supplement, it is to be found in intelligent commercial realism, happily combined, nonetheless, with genuine altruism and the recognition that no business – law firm or otherwise – is an island. We all need to nurture and support the society and the communities on which we ultimately depend. ?

David Worskett is director of commercial development at UK firm Bevan Brittan LLP. He can be contacted at david.worskett@bevanbrittan.com