Schools realize that encouraging kids to play a positive and active part in the community is considered good citizenship and adults would do well to remind themselves that it is just as important for them to be good role models.
Teach them that even though they are just beginning their careers, everything they do has the potential to impact a community, both negatively and positively.
One major key to achieving sustainable performance and good corporate citizenship is to be a good business role model that includes integrity of the highest standards, legal conformance, appropriate administration practices and management systems.
After September 11, all big companies are expected to practice good citizenship on a corporate level or corporate philanthropy.
Shortly thereafter, companies were asked to produce both social and environmental reports, but only about 1/4 of them have even attempted to do so and even those fell short of the required standards in many cases.
There are four areas that are used to track a company's citizenship rating and they include Operational Transparency, The Workplace, Community Help and Engagement and Sustainability.
Operational Transparency works to build up the publics trust by being more open about the progresses, setbacks and processes.
They do this by obtaining regular surveys from the members in order to monitor the company's willingness to meet the customer's expectations and being involved in community development.
The second area of corporate citizenship is Community Engagement.
It refers to companies encouraging both voluntarism and the donation of resources, including time, and promoting programs that will have an effect on the health problems within the community.
As you can see, this type of sustainability and citizenship goes beyond the normal scope of finances, as that only really tells one side of the story.
Corporate giving includes a strong sense of responsibility to the community and that in turn leads to a higher rated performance.
The third key element is Sustainability, which means, for example, that along with committing to internal recycling, the employees also pledge to give local community help by agreeing to make changes in both their home and work life.
This internal sustainability program will be used to support appropriate environmental choices and practices.
The last of the key elements in corporate citizenship is the Workplace, which simply put means creating work environments that are conducive to diversity, education and to promote the best environmental choices and practices.
Companies can do this by providing courses on leadership to employees, regardless of location and their position with the company.