CSR implementation is a sequence, and the exam tests the order as much as the content. Every scenario here is a step attempted out of turn.
The five steps, in order
- Develop a business case
- Obtain executive approval
- Select recipients
- Identify and analyze performance indicators
- Recruit and organize participants
Developing the business case is first. Recruiting and organizing participants is last.
What is not a step
Publishing an annual sustainability report, appointing a chief sustainability officer and setting a carbon reduction target are all common CSR practices, and none of them is on the BASK's list of implementation steps.
Working the scenarios
- A volunteering program with no business benefit analysis and no executive sight of it: develop the business case, then seek executive approval. Funding a pilot spends before the case is made. Polling employees on charities is a version of selecting recipients, which comes after approval. Setting indicators jumps ahead of the two steps that precede it.
- A documented business case, and someone proposes launching quietly in one region to avoid the approval discussion: obtain executive approval before selecting recipients. Launching first skips the step entirely; selecting recipients or recruiting participants to build momentum each starts a later step and commits the organization before approval exists.
- A year in, and HR can report only hours volunteered: identify and analyze performance indicators tied to the program's objectives. Raising volunteer hours grows an input without showing effect, satisfaction surveys measure enjoyment rather than performance, and expanding to more sites scales a program whose results are unknown.
- Approval and a defined objective exist, but nobody is signed up and managers do not know whether participation is permitted in work hours: recruit and organize participants with clear terms for taking part. Outsourcing to a nonprofit removes the employees whose volunteerism is part of the point, shrinking the objective avoids staffing it, and making participation a performance-rating factor compels rather than organizes.
Carry this in: never move to a later step to compensate for an earlier one you skipped.