Doing Good is Good for Business
When YesTax was formed 3 years ago with the aim of embedding giving into our every-day activities, we never thought that this would lead to faster growth, higher sales conversions and improved loyalty amongst staff and clients.
Businesses do good because it is the right thing to do. Because they care. Because they want to make a difference. Because it makes them happy and their team members proud. But a wonderful side-effect of doing good in this way is that your business may also receive very real commercial benefits in return. And the payback can be enormous.
Recent research by leading academics into many different types of business behaviour, that can collectively be labelled as ‘doing good’, suggests that the payback includes:
- Faster growth - because, on average, businesses doing good grow four times faster than the rest.
- Higher brand value - because brands doing good increase in value twice as quickly as brands seen as having a low sense of purpose.
- Competitive advantage - because 89% of people are likely to switch from a business that isn’t doing good to one that is.
- Improved loyalty - because 88% of customers are loyal to businesses doing good.
- Word of mouth advertising - because 81% will tell others about businesses doing good.
- Higher prices - because 66% of people are willing to pay more for products and services from businesses doing good (with several studies suggesting as much as 12-20% more).
- Higher productivity - for example, one study found that salespeople make 143% more sales when working for a business doing good.
- Future proofing - because 79% of consumers expect businesses to do more good in the future than they have in the past.
- Millennial and centennial appeal - because doing good is even more important to the millennials and centennials who will be your customers for longer than any other group.
At YesTax, we donate 2.5% of all our fees to children who live in poverty. This is not just another corporate responsibility programme. We take an active role in the projects that we support by working in them. As of the end of February, we are proud to announce that we have reached £150,000 of giving.
Alison Ralston was delighted to be speaking on this subject with local business, City Taxis, at their wonderful offices last week. Arnie Singh and Amy Tingle also talked about their wide range of community initiatives, charity partnerships, Sheffield College involvement and social enterprise residency.
So, as Sir Richard Branson often says, “doing good really is good for business”.
YesTax. Positively Better.