Why Businesses Should Embrace Co-Creation in 2023

As 2022 prepares to slow and slumber, an overarching theme has emerged over the last 12 months: paradigm shifts. From the regulatory landscape shaking up the world of ESG (and by extension CSR) to the tectonic shifts in narratives about the future and culture of work, as we move into 2023 and beyond, it’s clear that the way that businesses have always done things will no longer be possible or even advisable. As with all paradigm shifts, it’s both a moment of anxiety and an opportunity to consciously pivot towards a healthier future. 

Where the history of work centered top-down hierarchy, the future of work — and especially the future of integrating CSR programs into ESG strategies — could center co-creation and collective design. 

In a company context, co-creation brings leadership and employees together to align their personal values with company values in order to co-design or reassess a company’s environmental and social initiatives in the context of employees’ passions, interests, and lived experiences. From there, co-creation leads to a co-design process, where leadership and employees collectively design or revamp CSR programs. It’s great for creating a theory of change for DEI and social responsibility approaches, and guarantees inclusion, resulting in programs and policies that reflect the whole team. 

There are countless reasons companies should consider co-creation as an approach to engaging its teams in any number of initiatives, but six reasons really stand out. 

WHY NEXT BIG THING FOCUSES ON CO-CREATION

1. Builds Community 

While headlines have been focused on hand-wringing over hybrid work and employee disconnection, studies have repeatedly shown that a big source of employee disconnection is actually because people don't know or feel aligned with their company’s vision and values. Co-creation starts with values exploration and alignment and includes employees at every level of seniority, from entry-level to leadership. It provides a meaningful way for team members to learn about and connect with one another in a positive, constructive environment, as well as create a space for buy-in, where employees find new ways to bring the vision and values of the company to life and from the heart. This is especially important for CSR programs and budding ESG approaches. 

2. Surfaces Surprising Approaches

Beyond building community among team members, as well as buy-in when it comes to a company’s approach to CSR and even ESG, co-creation and social responsibility co-design can illuminate innovative synergies between existing internal programs. For example, a team that decides DEI efforts best embody their personal and professional values might decide to redesign their CSR using an equity lens. In doing so, they identify new community groups to support, and create new models for engaging with grassroots groups that go deeper than traditional CSR approaches. This process can really open up existing ERGs to cross-cutting issues and priorities in fun and surprising ways. 

3. Unique to Each Team

Co-creation is a very specific process, but just as no two people are the same, no two co-creation experiences are the same. What comes alive and gets translated into action, policies, or programs is a direct result of the uniqueness and shared core values of your particular team. If the company is the canvas and artistic style, the co-creation team is the paint colors, brush strokes, and imagination — no two teams will create the same image or style. 

4. Based on Sound Social Science

Social psychologists have long-shown how our values heavily influence how we live our lives and what information we consider when making decisions — from where we work to how we vote to how and when we show up for family and friends, and even what we buy and from where. They also heavily influence how we view and prefer to act on the same social and environmental issues that are material to businesses. By leading with a process of exploring and aligning personal values to company values, then translating those values into collective action, co-creation is grounded in positive and powerful social psychology, supercharging company impact and innovating its approaches. 

5. Flexible and Scalable

All great things start small, and the same can be true for co-creation. What might start as a way to simply take the temperature for how connected employees are feeling to your company’s values and vision, can grow into an approach to innovating employee and workplace policies, updating company culture, integrating individual passion areas into established CSR programs in dynamic ways, and even collectively setting ESG targets and co-designing approaches to meet those targets. It’s a process that lends itself seamlessly to a modular approach to integrating employee engagement and impact.
 

6. Strengthens Social Bonds

Unlike mandatory after-work happy hours and other social activities in the name of culture, co-creation’s foundational focus on values gives team members an opportunity to share meaningful and authentic aspects of themselves without feeling pressured to share personal facts and stories. In short, it provides an emotionally and psychologically safe space to explore connection while respecting privacy and personal time. This combination of emotional safety, meaningful connection, and self-reflection in a communal setting helps to strengthen the social bonds among employees, thereby strengthening culture at the same time. 

As 2023 readies itself on the horizon, we have the opportunity to leave behind what hasn’t served us collectively, and welcome new ways of approaching the world of work. A company isn’t a family, but it is a community, and communities are strongest, healthiest, and most innovative when all of the members of that community get to bring what matters to them to the table. In the future of work, hierarchy is out; co-creation and collective vision setting are in.