By MBA Jorge Arturo León and Vélez Avelar*
Social responsibility is one of the factors that has become relevant in the last decade for companies, since they have realized the importance of not only selling products, but of doing so in a way that is committed to the environment.
For this, institutionally, various companies carry out multiple actions in order to positively impact the environment. These actions are generally reported for the various stakeholders through the annual sustainability reports that publicly traded companies prepare, and institutional reports to shareholders in the case of private companies.
However, these efforts are not always adequately communicated to the consumer, who does not necessarily have the access, interest and time to read these official reports, but who does have the right to know about the actions that companies take in terms of sustainability. To correct this fact, various companies carry out a much more informal communication through social networks.
Various studies of communication in digital media make it clear that, in order to stay informed, people prefer Twitter over other networks that, although they use much more, they do so for entertainment and personal relationships. For the above, It is also interesting to know what is being talked about on the Twitter accounts of the companies considered to have the greatest social responsibility in Mexico.
In this sense, a study (1) of the Tweets made during the past year was carried out, seeking to know which were the most relevant words and topics that were discussed in these messages, finding that The 10 most used words in company messages are: Mexico, water, thank you, COVID, health, world, commitment, service, people and development.
The foregoing can be a starting point to find out in an analytical way what are the issues that most concern companies to communicate in digital media.
If we seek to align this effort with the objectives of the 2030 agenda, we can find that the following objectives would stand out:
This obviously represents a great challenge, since in these three issues Mexico clearly still has pending commitments with each of these SDGs. Mainly on this occasion I want to focus my attention on the first two, where companies have made communication efforts about the actions they carry out but the efforts are still insufficient.
If we talk about health and well-being, this objective still has several pending issues in Mexico because, according to the latest data reported by INEGI (2) more than 15% of the population in Mexico lacks access to health services and just under 10% have to travel more than 2 hours to reach an emergency service. Likewise, the problem of overweight in Mexico continues to be a great task that must be addressed as a priority.
It is relevant to continue communicating to consumers all the prevention efforts and improvement actions that are carried out, especially in food products that seek to work to reduce obesity and therefore increase the health of Mexicans.
Regarding the issue of water and sanitation, there are companies that have dedicated their efforts exclusively to this matter, however, still 1 in 3 Mexicans do not have safe access to a drinking water supply and it is worth mentioning cases such as Guerrero, where only 10% of the population has access to piped water and sanitation, followed by Baja California Sur, Oaxaca, Morelos and Puebla, where in all cases less than 25% of the population has these services.
Undoubtedly, any effort made to take action is good and relevant, so companies must continue doing more and better social responsibility and letting consumers and stakeholders know about the actions they take. In this way, the consumer can decide for these products and generate a virtuous circle of responsible consumption.
Together society, government and business can still make many of the 2030 goals possible and every effort counts!
- León and Vélez Avelar, JA (2022). Communicating with Stakeholders via Twitter: From CSR to COVID-19. In: Business Recovery in Emerging Markets Palgrave Studies in Democracy, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship for Growth. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
- https://agenda2030.mx/
*Jorge Arturo Leon and Velez Avelar He is Director of the Bachelor’s Degree in Administration and International Business at Universidad Panamericana Campus México
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