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Introduction
The primary goal for most businesses is to turn a profit. However, corporations are becoming increasingly aware of how making an impact on the world has direct benefits for their bottom line. Rising global needs in academics and medicine provide a unique opportunity to participate in the shared responsibility of getting these resources to those most in need. Purpose-driven leadership should be defined by moving beyond corporate social responsibility (CSR) checkboxes. This article will help explore how savvy educational and healthcare initiatives come alive when a company’s values align with its community engagement efforts.
Long-Term Investment in Human Capital by Supporting Education
With the continually increasing costs of formal education, providing lower-income students with the resources to begin, continue, or build upon their education is a strategy employed by companies worldwide. And this assistance can take on multiple forms for each business.
Allocating Scholarships
Providing scholarships means allocating a portion of your company’s revenue to help students cover some or all of their educational expenses. These costs can include things like moving expenses, books, lab equipment, tuition, a computer for remote learning, or on-campus housing rental fees. Bestowing scholarship funds can be especially helpful when paying for students to get certificates or degrees that are in high demand in your industry. Trucking companies may pay for CDL licensure, or hospitals might offer scholarships for certified nursing assistants. Furnishing monetary support for students going into degree or certification programs that increase the number of qualified candidates within your talent pool is beneficial for both you and the student. As the student gets the education they have been looking for, you’re able to grow your cache of qualified, educated prospective employees.
Facilitating Mentorship Programs
In many industries, having a technical understanding of a particular field is only half the battle. Even more valuable is the ability to tap into the wisdom gained by people who have already established their careers in a specific industry. Employees of your business can act as mentors to budding professionals in your market. This is a way to generally give back to the community, but it also enhances the technical education the young person is receiving, while giving the student all the tools they need to be a prime employee should they choose to apply for a position at your company.
Coordinating Skills Development Initiatives
Education doesn’t only have to relate to formal academic and training institutions. People all over the world gain new skills from free, virtual opportunities on platforms ranging from EDX.org to YouTube. Similarly, your enterprise could provide specific skills and learning to your customer base. A property management company could provide training on how to engage in regular home maintenance tasks like checking a home’s foundations for early signs of damage or preventing rodent or insect infestations. A wealth management firm could offer education on how to start investing with smaller amounts of money in order to help people become wealthy enough to eventually be able to use that firm’s paid services. These programs can be ways that you help your client base become stronger customers for your business as they learn new skills to improve their quality of life overall.
Build Resilient Communities by Advancing Healthcare
There are direct and indirect ways to fund access to healthcare and improve the health outcomes of members of a community. Beyond increasing positive health outcomes for community members, improved health means customers live longer and can utilize your services or products for longer. It also means people can be more productive at work, get promoted, and create more revenue for themselves, which can then be spent on their business. From both a CSR perspective and a profitability standpoint, helping people improve their health benefits everyone.
Offset Healthcare Costs
By partnering with local medical centers or health insurance agencies, you can create programs that help you reduce the costs of insurance programs and medical procedures for high-risk populations such as impoverished children, the elderly, or people with rare diseases. Covering costs related to preventative measures would be an example, such as paying for annual gynecological visits for females or yearly eye exams for people with diabetes.
Ease Medical Care Delivery
No matter what kind of healthcare is needed, it has to be delivered in some fashion or another. A fleet management company could offer weekly rides to medical centers for people who don’t have personal vehicles, or even create mobile clinics so that medical professionals can go to the patients in need who may not be well enough to leave their homes or afford recurring in-home care. A tech company could provide the digital infrastructure for telehealth visits so that lower-income patients could still interact with their medical team to coordinate their care.
Even when people may have insurance to help them with their medical costs, being able to access their healthcare providers may still be an obstacle to optimal care. Your company could help bridge that gap.
Offer Medical Benefits Internally
The people who work for you are part of the community you serve as well. Physical and mental health support programs and resources for employees create a stronger team and a healthier work environment. This includes a happier workforce that has a lower rate of turnover and higher productivity.
Integrating Purpose into the Core of Your Business Strategy
It’s easy to make the mistake of seeing these purpose-driven efforts as side projects. But this viewpoint can hinder the amount of focus and effort you put into your education and healthcare initiatives, making them less effective. Instead, incorporate purpose into everything that you do so it becomes an integral part of your business strategy, not a pit stop on the way to achieving your other goals. When these initiatives are treated like publicity stunts, that’s what they will look like to your customers. When you’re seen as putting on a show, instead of being fully invested in an ideal for the long term, that degrades your reputation and perceived integrity.
Your business’s social impact has a direct connection to your corporate goals, company mission, and key performance indicators (KPIs). This is why it’s most strategic to match the type of education and/or healthcare support you provide with your business’s competencies.
For example, a tech company might invest in getting new immigrants the devices they need to be able to communicate with their families abroad, increasing family connectedness and decreasing the stress that comes with less reliable forms of communication. A grocery chain could do regular food delivery or cooking courses for underserved areas of their community, thereby allowing populations in which obesity and various metabolic diseases are common to get access to healthier foods. A car brand could finance repairs that community members can’t afford so they can reclaim their independence and mobility, including being able to go to work or attend school.
Your impact should also be measured with data. How many people are you serving? How have you improved their lives? What is the long-term value of any short-term services or items provided to community members? Tracking and transparency in reporting builds trust internally and externally as team members, stakeholders, and community members can all monitor the good that the business is doing. This also provides you with critical information about which aspects of your efforts are working well and where there could be room for improvement to make each of your initiatives more beneficial for the community at large. Using surveys of people who have participated in your programs is a key part of this data collection, so that you understand how the recipients are perceiving your brand and utilizing your offerings.
Key Takeaways
Leading with purpose means being at the forefront of movements meant to provide value to the community of customers that helps your business thrive. Showing your appreciation for these community members by providing them with support related to their learning and their physical and psychological well-being is important, as these are a couple of the most costly and difficult-to-navigate aspects of everyday life for the average person.
Though it may sometimes seem like the two are at odds, businesses do not have to choose between achieving profits and operating with purpose. When done with insight, integrity, and efficiency, purpose simply amplifies profitability and vice versa. These two components of your company can work together seamlessly to raise the level of success of the entire organization. But this only happens when you put forth a dedicated, strategically sound amount of time and resources into integrating purpose into the way you run your organization on a day-to-day basis.
Treating any initiative like a temporary event means the results and benefits to your company will be temporary as well. Use your enterprise’s purpose as a way to be a leader in your industry and pave the way for other companies like yours to follow suit.