So you recognise that your organisation should be managing its impact on society and the environment more effectively, and you believe this would have all sorts of indirect benefits for the organisation, the brand, the staff and customers.
Naturally this will require investment. This means you will need to persuade your finance director of its wisdom. Here are some tips:
1. Don't go alone. A lone voice is a lonely voice. Show that you have cross-departmental support. Who does the FD spend time with in other departments? Can they be persuaded to support your proposals first?
2. Speak their language. FDs deal in money. Talk about social returns, not about social outcomes or social impacts. Back this up with spreadsheets and pie charts.
3. Offer cost savings. But real ones. They can smell a false claim here quicker than you can smell a rat in the bedroom.
4. Free up resources for pet projects And you may be able to show how you can free up resources to do other things. Specifically, other things the FD would like to do.
5. Manage risks So far so good. But now you need to think about the future. How will managing the impact affect the business in future? There are no guarantees here, so provide reasonable arguments, without wild claims about how risks can be managed, alongside estimates of the downside from those risks.
6. Tie in with innovation in accounting The accounting profession is beginning to spend more time considering social and environmental issues. There are opportunities to be seen as innovative dynamic leaders within accountancy. No, really.
7. Make it systematic, repeatable, and make the approach visible (like that IT or those stock options) Not qualitative reports.
Jeremy Nicholls if chief executive of the SROI Network
