The Role of PR Practitioners in CSR
Corporate social responsibility, or CSR, has become an increasingly popular topic for PR professionals and PR firms. Despite CSR’s rising popularity, PR practitioners must proceed with caution when implementing CSR. PR firms and practitioners must ensure that their own companies and values meet the ethical standards of CSR. If PR firms and practitioners are not practicing CSR along with values-driven PR, then how can they expect to be credible sources in CSR implementation for other companies? PR practitioners must take on the role of practicing CSR themselves before they can counsel companies on corporate ethics. They must go beyond teaching others about CSR and work to implement and advocate for ethical business practices for themselves and other PR practitioners and firms.
PR practitioners must also remember that their role in CSR is not to use it as a tool, but to use PR as a tool for CSR implementation. Unfortunately, many continue to view PR as just image building and publicity. Due to this, CSR must not become a tool used for publicity as part of a PR program for a company. Instead, CSR must stand apart from PR and become something that is embedded in a company’s core focus and values.
In addition, CSR cannot be used simply as PR to strengthen relationships with key stakeholders. As a result of a company proving through CSR that it seeks to promote and achieve more than its own self-interests, CSR should strengthen relationships with key stakeholders. Moreover, effective PR for a company should be a product of CSR implementation.
PR and CSR both target stakeholders such as employees, shareholders, and customers. Once a company has implemented CSR into its core values and mission, the company can use PR to inform key stakeholders of this. CSR means putting social and other global issues before a company’s self-interest. Thus, CSR implementation should begin before PR about CSR. Otherwise, companies and practitioners are missing the point of CSR: others should benefit from the existence of a company.
Many PR practitioners could learn a lot from implementing CSR themselves (and gain some credibility too).