As Jack Frost comes to town, how do you stay warm? Do your business activities leave you feeling toasty inside?

You do your best. Hopefully, your bed’s rockin’, the ceiling’s shakin’, and the ice is melting on the eves . . . but one night stands provide heat, not warmth. As 90-year old sex therapist Dr. Ruth Westheimer explains, sex doesn’t warm us, only meaningful connection does. And we’re not getting it; half of Americans (47%) feel lonely most of the time. Digital technology helps us communicate, but we’re not using it to come together.

 

My source of warmth.

Most Americans don’t feel warmth at work, either. Despite record corporate profits ‘melting the eves,’ 70% of Americans are disengaged. Cash, by itself, is cold.

Delivering social responsibility can be a profitable business strategy:

  • Attract higher quality employees, engage them, and make them likely to stay with you
  • Appeal to more customers, who want you to succeed
  • Improve business decision-making and increase innovation as new perspectives expand thought
  • Enhance other business value-creation as you strengthen society, such as by developing new markets or robust supply chains, and
  • Uncover collaborators 

But leaders must take that first step of searching out meaningful profit because they want the human warmth, as well as the value.

Pausing during the day to consider where socially responsible action could help your business is a simple, graceful way to engage yourself in work.

Fully integrating social responsibility into business requires insight and planning. That said, the rewards for doing so can enhance your life and that of everyone around you.

Where is there overlap between social failure and your business life? How might the desire to ‘do good’ better align with your desire to earn more money?

Share your thoughts in the comments or by sending me an email: info@RodWallacePhD.com.

Our society cannot just survive. For the sake of our children, it must thrive.

Rod

Dr. Rod Wallace is an economist, consultant, and speaker who helps businesses make more money by solving society’s big problems. He speaks on digital technology’s impact on society and the strategies and tools with which business can solve our pressing social problems. Contact him at info@RodWallacePhD.com.