Are your CR and government affairs strategies aligned? Does your left hand know what your right hand is doing?
The answer I often hear is, “I’m not sure.”
Corporate responsibility practitioners have long struggled with this question. From spending on political campaigns to supporting groups with specific policy agendas to lobbying for or against issues like climate change, these matters are often hot potatoes that are complex and sometimes controversial.
Yet, we still see many companies say one thing in their annual corporate responsibility reports, but do something seemingly contradictory in their political engagement efforts. As my colleague, Charlie Ashford, succinctly points out, it’s embarrassing to be championing carbon reduction and clean energy if you’re simultaneously funding a group that opposes them.
If you accept the premise that the whole business should be working towards shared goals, then maybe it’s time to make sure the left hand knows what the right hand is doing.
Here’s where you can start:
- Read up on the latest. Look at what your company is already disclosing in its GRI report. Then review other credible sources of information. For example, if you’re in the U.S., the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics may a good resource, as well as government-run databases, such as the U.S. Senate’s Lobbying Disclosure Act Database or the Federal Election Commission’s disclosure database. There are no secrets in here – this is all publicly available information that companies and organizations are required to disclose.
- Engage and align. Meet with your Government Affairs team to talk about their vision, objectives, goals, and strategies. Use this forum to share yours. Do any of them contradict with one another? If so, then discuss how you can work together to achieve better alignment. This may entail raising internal debate and challenging each other’s assumptions. In the long run, both teams will be better off for doing so.
- Be transparent. And do so in a way that’s timely and makes sense to your stakeholders. Microsoft is a sound example of a company demonstrating excellent effort in disclosing their political engagement activities. Each of us can find something that we may or may not agree with, but it’s hard to criticize the company for not being transparent relative to so many other companies that are reluctant to share similar information. Ultimately, good reporting should foster healthy, well-informed stakeholder discourse that leads to mutual understanding and improved decision-making.
As we enter the general election cycle in the U.S., there’s no better time to think about the role that public policy, political engagement, and transparency plays in our daily lives and on our institutions.
These are the things that help companies flourish and make societies free, open, and democratic.