When we think of the primary function of most businesses, they have historically focused on maximizing profit for the owners or shareholders of the organization. But this era of profit over purpose has shifted, especially during the past decade and especially during this pandemic. Across the globe and across industries, more companies have recognized that doing well by doing good means aligning their business model to help meet the increasingly complex needs of the communities they serve.
This is the very essence of the stakeholder model, where empathy can be at the center of every business function because it has heart and humanity as its guide. What does this look like in practice? How do we embed empathy — and this idea of doing well by doing good — into the very culture of our organizations? How do we take a deeper look at the needs of our customers and ensure that what our business produces adds value to our communities?
It starts with reorganizing our business function to further align with these needs and reassess the impact we have on our stakeholders — employees, partners, customers, community — and ways the business can further improve day to day lives, through what it produces and other exchanges of value it provides.
These are the types of questions that can be addressed. Does your business production help improve the financial condition of those in your community, and does it help bridge the historical economic gaps between groups within it? Does it provide a supportive living wage to the workers you employ and are these jobs filled in an equitable manner, ensuring equal opportunities across gender, race, ethnicity, and other factors that mirror the fabric of your communities? Do your business values and ways you generate revenue align with the cultural values of the communities you serve? Is your business adaptive to the social, economic, and environmental conditions that it works within? In essence — are you a good corporate citizen?
Regardless of the scale or the type of business, there has been a move toward more community connectivity and more sustainability that focuses on additive value versus extractive revenue models. More businesses are contributing a portion of profits to community groups and community causes; they are working to support economic empowerment, facilitating training and education of those without equal access, and they are adding goals to improve their physical environment to elevate the physical health of their communities. This will require deeper engagement with the most important area of business leadership: human resources.
The central focus of the human resources function should be the condition of humans within the organization. From onboarding new employees to helping develop team dynamics and the culture of the business, the HR team is critical to the success of the organization as it sheds a brighter light on the impact the business has on its people — but also the needs of their greater community. HR must ensure that the needs of employees are being met, that their ideas and concerns are being heard, and that the leadership team understands what is happening across the business. This goes from the shift in how we used tools and technology during the past sixteen months to the protection of employees’ health and mental wellness post pandemic. Human resources are more critical than ever now.
We must be also intentional in pursuing outcomes that address the social challenges that we face as a civilization. The onus is on all of us to ensure that we are building an equitable future that will deliver positive outcomes for everyone. This optimism is at the very heart of our new book, Beyond Good. And while much of the book has examples from industries like financial services and areas most impacted by technology, the approach to creating a more inclusive culture that results in better outcomes are universal lessons for every business. They come from our conversations with people across the world doing amazing things within their companies and communities to help others. They offer us hope that a different model does exist.
With constant change, leadership at all levels — led in part by the continual oversight of human resources leaders — must be more forward thinking, more future focused, and more inclusive. The critical part we each play is defined within a larger system of change — whether what we are trying to change is big and complex or broad and finite — toward a more collective leadership. How we lead matters and who leads us matters even more. Leadership must become more responsive to the needs of the stakeholders of the business, and that starts with your employees. But we know change and progress do not come easy.
This is the time for long needed structural change within the businesses within our communities — and it is the time that human resources leaders can impact their organizations. Change requires work, perseverance, and commitment. How we prepare the next generation of business leaders matters — as do the ethics we embed in our business models as we shift attention toward more principled and tangible demonstrations of collective management that embraces the needs of the entirety of our communities. With the changes taking place in society and the relentless pace of technology, shifting mindsets is an increasingly difficult task as societal norms are rarely stagnant. Yet we must try.
Bradley Leimer is co-founder of Unconventional Ventures and co-author of Beyond Good – How Technology is Leading a Purpose-driven Business Revolution published by Kogan Page.
