Responsibilty as a concept sounds about as sexy as a pair of flat, brown, lace-up shoes. Yet many organisations have Fairtrade-cottoned on to the idea that responsible business and corporate social responsibility are words that customers and employees want to hear loud and clear.

This means that it makes business sense to smarten up the image and look as if they care. Better still, corporations ought to actually care; after all, unless you’re in the flipper business, turning a profit might be pretty difficult when we’re 10ft under water.

So what does it mean to be a responsible business? Claire Ebrey, one of a team of five ethics advisers at The Cooperative, says: “A definition of responsible business is quite complicated. In theory it simply involves considering the ethical, environmental and social issues that arise from your operations. Although that is open to interpretation. It can be spun to get media attention or used as a gimmick.

“At The Cooperative we recognise that we have a purpose that goes beyond making a profit... we have embedded ethics into our material operations.” This includes The Cooperative Bank’s commitment not to invest in any business involved in the manufacture or transfer of arms to oppressive regimes. “We have to turn away money to live up to these principles,” Ebrey says. But the reason for doing it is clear: the customers want it and that means it makes business sense.

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Adrian Hosford, the director of corporate responsibility for BT Group, says his definition of responsible business is “all those things we choose to do on a voluntary basis, over and above the legal requirements and the normal things we need to do to run the business.” This covers activities that range from environmental initiatives to transparent corporate governance. Responsibility affects every aspect of the business and its suppliers. BT has a voluntary agreement with its suppliers to commit to certain standards, including no child labour. “It covers a huge breadth of activities and is related to your values, it goes right to the heart of the company,” Hosford says. “It might start out because you want to be a nice company, but you quickly collect the data that shows there is a clear business case for being responsible.”

Robin O’Kelly, the head of corporate affairs at T-Mobile, agrees with Ebrey and Hosford and says that being responsible is about going “above and beyond what is expected”. He points to T-Mobile’s TimeBank volunteering programme, in which 10 per cent of employees have signed up to give two days of their time; to its commitment to reduce carbon emissions by 5 per cent a year; and its phone recycling campaign, which has proved very popular with customers.

But it’s not just customers who have taken to responsibility. O’Kelly says that it plays an important role in the recruitment and retention of staff too. It is all about portraying your brand as transparent and honest. And you can’t say fairer than that.

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