Executive Summary
The study yields the following ten findings :
1 . Little has happened since 2017 . Some companies such as Bayer , Deutsche Post DHL , Deutsche Telekom , Merck and
SAP are taking a leading role , while others such as E . ON , Henkel , Munich RE and Siemens have shown significant signs of improvement . However , many of the others have made little progress since 2017 .
2 . More resources have been mobilised in the pandemic .
DAX companies gave over € 860 million in donations ( cash and in-kind ) to charitable causes in 2020 – much of it in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic .
3 . While Corporate Citizenship has become more professional , it has not yet been digitised to any great extent . 77 percent of companies now have global donation guidelines , but these mostly lack transparency . Only 14 companies report that they have digital platforms to manage their activities .
4 . Lack of focus is still making Corporate Citizenship inefficient and harder to communicate . 90 percent of companies spread their efforts across three or more different social concerns .
5 . Companies are becoming more proactive on their own sustainability issues . 75 percent of companies focus , at least in part , on issues that are essential to their own sustainable development .
6 . Companies still rarely link social engagement with their core business . German companies are consequently lagging behind in an international comparison .
7 . Corporate volunteering still makes relatively little use of employee expertise . 36 DAX companies support employee engagement . Only nine DAX companies have long-term programmes for skills-based volunteering .
8 . Partnerships are important , but their quality varies . Here , the large international NGOs are in the foreground – but targeted local approaches can also achieve a lot .
9 . Taking a political stance remains a rarity . In contrast to other countries such as the
USA , German corporations still lack the courage to adopt a public position on social issues .
10 . There is a lack of impact assessment . Only 44 percent of DAX companies produce aggregated reporting on the level of activities carried out ( output ), and only 8 percent report on the social results achieved ( outcomes ).
Companies do not generally go about their Corporate Citizenship activities as professionally as they approach their core business , i . e . developing purpose and strategy , setting goals , synergies and competencies within the company , defining measures , working out resource requirements , implementing them , measuring progress and reporting on the results .
Changing this is a leadership task . The changes should be implemented just as much by the C-suite and other senior management as by CSR ( Corporate Social Responsibility ) departments . In this way , companies large and small can increase the impact of their Corporate Citizenship programmes , improve stakeholder relations and , at the same time , effectively and credibly advance their sustainable transformation . The result is a win-win situation for business and for society .
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The remaining DAX companies did not respond to our enquiries or did not put forward anyone for an interview about their Corporate Citizenship activities .
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