Preparing For CSR-Related Protests and Countering Them

No company wants to be the target of CSR-related boycotts and other protests. But, bad things happen, and people will be critical of your company’s CSR performance. The best that you can do is prepare for potential protests and know how to respond swiftly and strategically to any actual protests. Use these two roadmaps:

Prepare for CSR-Related Protests: Your Roadmap

1. Identify your key stakeholders and public influencers 

Your stakeholder list should include all individuals and organizations that you can reasonably expect to care about the impacts of your company’s activities and products. Stakeholders are those that could be affected by your business or its products or affect your ability to achieve business goals. Obvious examples are consumers, employees, shareholders or other owners / investors, supply chain companies (e.g., raw material suppliers, packagers, distributors, and retailers) and their employees, plus local communities.

Public influencers include advocacy groups such as Oxfam and other NGOs, investor networks (e.g., Ceres and CDP), industry-specific media outlets, bloggers, and relevant experts. Look at recent public campaigns to identify influential NGOs and bloggers in your industry and their target companies.

2. Identify “hot button” CSR issues

Make a list of the key CSR issues affecting your company and important to your key stakeholders and public influencers. Many of the issues should seem very obvious. If you are in the food industry, for example, you know that ingredient sourcing is front and center. Think of the “free-from” buzz words (chemicals, preservatives, hormones, GMOs, etc.); animal welfare; local; and fair trade. For additional guidance, check out social media chatter on your company and peer companies. Also research the opinions of the key stakeholders and relevant public influencers that focus on your industry and interact with consumers.

3. Assess risks related to each hot button CSR issue

Consider your company’s current operations vis-à-vis the hot button CSR issues and the intensity of negative (or potentially negative) opinions of key stakeholders and public influencers. You will want to pay closest attention to those CSR issues that are most material to your business in terms of impacts and exposure. Next, consider pre-emptively engaging with specific individuals and organizations to better understand their viewpoints, objectives, and desired timelines. Finally, use your informed prioritization to determine potential next steps for new or updated CSR policies and management strategies.

4. Prepare a position on each hot button CSR issue

Your company’s position needs to be authentic, credible (backed by facts and third-party certifications, where appropriate), understandable, and sharable. For example, if your company says that raw materials are locally-sourced, you need a specific definition of “local” and a list of supplier locations that fits with the definition. If your company claims that products contain only cage-free eggs, you need a published set of supplier standards that specified “cage-free”, assurances that suppliers can meet the standards, and a process for verification.

Make sure that your company has a position on every hot button CSR issue, even if the intensity of known opinions is low and your position is, “this issue is not a current priority for us for the following reasons.” If you do this, you will not be blindsided by somebody raising alarm bells based on a gap in information disclosed by your company. Of course, you do not need to accommodate all stakeholder viewpoints, or even all of the loudest ones, and you do not need to publicize your position on every issue. You only need to have a position and an explanation for why you are (or are not) operating in specific ways.

Counter CSR-Related Protests: Your Roadmap

1. Consider relative importance of the protester

Expect that your stakeholders: employees, investors, consumer advocacy groups, regulators, and NGOs will disagree with one another. Some will support specific policies and business decisions made by your company, and others will not. You cannot please all of them, and you don’t need to. Listen and acknowledge all of the viewpoints but know that not all stakeholders are created equal. 

How important is the protesting stakeholder (and the stakeholder’s viewpoint) to your business? Some NGOs make themselves very visible and vocal, with big public campaigns, as we saw years ago related to deforestation, e.g., Greenpeace’s campaign against Mattel in 2011. And, investor groups are increasingly submitting shareholder proposals to enhance shareholder rights, board accountability, and governance practices, or address executive pay; and majority support for proposals is ticking up in 2024. 

In your case, determine whether the complaining stakeholder is a priority voice for your business. Pleasing key retail customers or investors obviously takes precedence over pleasing a small consumer segment or a non-influential blogger or NGO. Though you should identify and understand the viewpoints of all of your stakeholders, prioritize them in advance to help you respond to their demands appropriately.

2. Consider Importance of the issue raised

Just as some stakeholders are more important to your business than others, some of their needs and interests are more important than others. Regardless of whether you have conducted a detailed materiality assessment, you know which CSR issues are “hot button” issues, or risks, for your business, based on the preparation steps described above. As an example, you know that deforestation is important, if you work for a paper company like 3M, or you are a big palm oil buyer like PepsiCo. Pay close attention to the important, priority CSR issues, so that you are not caught off-guard by a protest.

3. Lean on relationships with supportive stakeholders

You will be in the best position to respond to objections if you have cultivated relationships with influential and well-respected stakeholders that support what your business is doing. You can leverage these positive relationships when faced with protests from others. Heavily weigh the opinions and support of stakeholders that respect your business, when deciding how to respond to protests. Having the support of well-respected and influential stakeholders should make a difference here.

Start early. Even if your business has never been the target of a protest or you think your business is too small to be targeted (wrong!), you should seek to cultivate positive relationships with NGOs, investor groups, and other public influencers. The positive relationships could be effective in reducing the reputational damage associated with a protest, or even avoiding a protest altogether.

4. Assess implications of accommodating the protester

Assuming that a protest comes from a key stakeholder and relates to an important issue, you still need to determine whether it makes business sense to accommodate the demands. Ask yourself whether the stakeholder’s demands fit with your company’s mission and business objectives, and whether it is feasible to change business policies or efforts in the ways asked. Do the benefits of adapting to the stakeholder’s viewpoint outweigh the reputational and other business risks of sticking with your current business strategies and management approach? If the answer is “no,” then do nothing and explain your position to the protesting stakeholder.

Some protests catalyze significant changes by a business and rightfully so. Other protests do not warrant any change in business strategies or operations. If the decision is made strategically, then it is the correct one.

Updated and adapted from articles previously written by Nancy Himmelfarb and published by TriplePundit.