Despite what some people may protest, it’s actually quite
easy to be a ‘responsible business’ – thinking about options for energy use,
how to respond to the ongoing requests for sponsorship for local charities, and
such like…
But what happens when things get tough – what happens when
your business gets hit by an ‘official disaster’ such as the flooding that
swept through a lot of the country over the Christmas of 2015? There isn’t the
time, money, (or patience!) to do the ‘nice stuff’; the focus surely has to be
on getting business premises rebuilt, stock replaced, bank managers pleaded with
for extensions to loan repayments, and such like? And what if as the owner of
the business you’ve been doubly hit because your home flooded too?
And yet, it’s such crises that can actually help us be even
more ‘responsible’ as businesses in how we manage our recovery. And that’s
because like thousands of others, I too was hit by the floods at the end of
last year[1]
– with my family and business having to move out while restoration works made
repairs to our home and office, and I drew national interest in how I responded
as a business.
Some of you may recall the huge expressions of support that
the wider country made through donations to the flood recovery funds that were
quickly set up – but along with the business recovery grants that local
authorities started to offer businesses, none of these could be applied to if
you were self-employed or home-based. The prospect for recovering the
livelihoods for both I and many of my fellow freelancers and micro businesses
seemed very bleak…
But what can an individual business do in the face of such
need and economic devastation[2]
(especially when they’re also trying to make their own home habitable again so
they and their family can ‘go home’)? The answer is surprising a lot: the
following list briefly outlines what I did, and it’s offered not as
self-congratulation, but rather as encouragement and inspiration for others to
realise the impact we can all make if we try and be ‘responsible’ as businesses
at all times:
- I set up a facebook group[3] for people like me who weren’t eligible for any of the business support grants. It was meant as a peer support network and saw lots of tips and suggestions of advice being shared around temporary cheap or free workspaces, and such like. But excitingly it was also picked up on by the local authority and others who used its existence and membership to allow them to successfully argue a change the eligibility criteria for the business support grants.
- I contacted national enterprise support networks I’m part of to ask if they may know of anything we could apply to: one made an immediate cash offer which was used to enable a number of local enterprises to gain IT and office supplies[4] to enable them to continue working from temporary locations.
- And I shared updates on support like mad across twitter and facebook groups to make sure that fellow local businesses didn’t miss out on opportunities for further support as it was announced and identified.
The above may not seem like much, but it was a lot more than
many other local businesses were able to do owing to the respective impact of
the floods on their businesses and homes (and thanks to the joys of social
media I was able to largely do it all at the end of each day after I’d
delivered client contracts and dealt with my own immediate issues).
And I wasn’t the only one thinking like this – there was also the world’s first collective crowdfunding campaign[5],
and others are re-staged the Christmas[6]
we lost for the benefit of local retailers who’ve suffered loss of takings over
what should have been one of their busiest periods.
Being responsible isn’t just about ‘buying the right things’
or treating your people right. It’s also about stepping up to do what you can
for the wider local business community when we’re struck by something that
affects us all[7].
But it doesn’t have to take a widespread ‘business disaster’ to motivate us to
do this – we should surely be looking out for opportunities to help out our
neighbouring businesses all the time anyway?
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