CSR - Can better social responsibility boost the UK economy by £17bn?

I’m not entirely convinced by the calculation (or rather, estimate) used to come up with the headline statistic in this otherwise useful article on CSR.

Management Today report on the results of a survey by LeapCR that highlights the potential business (and economic) benefits of firms taking CSR seriously as part of their corporate strategies. It seems that employees (a key stakeholder group) are very keen on CSR. For example, “three-quarters said they want their employer ‘to balance commercial success with good CSR strategies, including supporting charities’”.

The article mentions several potential HRM benefits of a firm embracing CSR, including:

- Better employee engagement
- Higher staff retention & loyalty
- Lower absenteeism
- Higher productivity

This all sounds too good to be true! For AQA students, there is a neat link here between BUSS3 (strategies for success) and BUSS4 (CSR). It seems that an effective, credible CSR strategy can be part of improving the effectiveness of a business and therefore making it better able to achieve functional and corporate objectives.

What of that £17bn claim for the economic benefit of CSR in the UK? The maths behind it are not particularly complex. £17bn is simply the estimated value of adding 1% to the GDP contributed by the UK’s service sector. LeapCR assume this arises as a result of the improved productivity mentioned above. So what of the benefits of CSR for the primary and secondary sectors? Its a poor bit of estimation used to enhance the PR impact of their survey, but still worth noting as part of an evidence-based research essay.