Blockchain keeps technology honest. The former sheds light on the latter, and it’s a key ingredient in keeping cryptocurrency and other business technologies accountable. But what if blockchain could help businesses thrive while also doing social good?
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a major rock for many companies. It allows them to display their organizational values, serve their communities, and inspire a new generation of brand loyalists.
But just like the businesses that sponsor them, CSR initiatives require transparency in both results and processes—blockchain can do both. Business leaders can use blockchain to align their CSR initiatives with trustworthiness and reliability, two traits every organization wants to embody.
Companies that appear duplicitous displease consumers. A Trinity Mirror study notes that 58% of adults don’t trust brands that fail to show concrete proof that they keep their promises. Consumers demand social responsibility and accountability, both of which blockchain can build into a company’s processes.
By embracing blockchain and its inherent transparency, a company creates trust internally and positive buzz externally. To achieve this accountability, follow these best practices:
1. Leverage blockchain to record impact results. Recording and measuring activities can help you make better decisions about which social initiatives to support. It also improves the efficiency of your programs and helps convince skeptical stakeholders of CSR’s value.
Measurement might feel like an afterthought, but it’s crucial for companies to recognize the value in measurement and understand that it can save them time and resources in the long run. According to Ben Darlington, director of Benefacto and GivX, this mental shift involves adopting an organizational mindset that embraces impact assessments.
“It’s important to change this mentality and understand how measurement can be applied to benefit your organization and make your life easier,” Darlington said.
CSR builds momentum when it’s able to demonstrate value. Leaders should use blockchain technology to showcase relevant impact metrics and demonstrate progress. This is a show of good faith to customers and a way to keep leadership’s big-picture focus.
2. Be open about your intentions. As noted by a Unilever study, 33% of consumers choose brands they perceive as taking a stand on social issues or being environmentally aware. Leaders practice CSR as a way to illustrate their personal values, and they should see blockchain as another way to depict those beliefs.
Enact this strategy by giving consumers, governments, corporations, and other interested parties access to your initiative’s metrics and operations. That transparency allows leaders to see what elicits the best response from a target audience, empowering executives with the insight they need to make informed decisions.
The heart of CSR is a commitment to improving the world. Give access to anyone interested in seeing what you’re doing to propel your business (and the world) forward.
3. Use AI for predictive analysis. Establish a microdata approach that allows AI to conduct a predictive analysis of the impact of CSR initiatives before they begin. Data analytics naturally folds into predictive analytics, using historical data to forecast potential outcomes.
Predictions no longer rely on human interaction to query data, validate patterns, and inform assumptions. In the past, human understanding dictated “What/if” assumptions despite any limitations that human volume, time, and costs placed on predictive capability. Thanks to AI predictive analysis, those barriers disappear in favor of more precise predictions.
If every corporate question had an answer as simple as blockchain, businesses would all be better off. Blockchain makes data accurate and unimpeachable, meaning leaders genuinely committed to their CSR goals would be wise to use blockchain to grow beyond vague promises.
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