What Goes Around, Comes Around: How Corporate Social Responsibility Helps Your Recruiting

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) isn’t on the front of most hiring manager’s minds, but it should be.  Today’s best workers care about the impact that their companies have on the world around them.  A-players love helping companies that do good, do well.

Companies that care about sustainability and CSR benefit in many ways, but some of the biggest gains lie in employee engagement, recruitment, and retention.

In Good Company: Aman Singh

I was fortunate enough to get to ask Aman Singh some questions about the subject last week. While working with The Wall Street Journal, Vault.com, Forbes, and many others, she’s studied how corporate social responsibility and sustainability help the companies that embrace it.  Now she runs Singh Solutions, her own CSR consultancy, and maintains the In Good Company blog.

Her insights make quite a compelling case for CSR from a talent perspective.  Anyone who wants a strong, well engaged workforce should take note.  Have a look at our conversation after the jump:

Bradley Short (BS) – I’ll start generally: How does CSR and sustainability affect a company’s ability to recruit and hire new talent?

Aman Singh (AS) – If nothing else, the current economy has ensured that candidates are being ever more careful about choosing an employer.

For example, according to a recent survey by DoWellDoGood.net:

• 83% of employees would seriously consider leaving their job if their employer used child labor in sweatshop factories
• 65% would seriously consider leaving their job if their company harmed the environment
• 32% would seriously consider leaving their job if their company gave no / little money to charity

These candidates are putting more emphasis on corporate values, social responsibility and the company’s commitment to the environment than ever before. For the B2B sector, this has meant re-strategizing their branding and recruitment strategies. 

For the B2C sector, besides a very vocal consumer base, the employee and candidate bases are demanding more obvious signs of responsible corporate behavior, i.e., community relations, encouraging a culture that emphasizes volunteering, etc.

BS – How should companies already involved in sustainable initiatives get the most out of their work during the recruiting process?  That is, how should they market their sustainability to candidates?

AS – Rethink the recruitment process. Talk about how some of these initiatives are part of an employee’s expectations, evaluated in performance reviews and encouraged as part of professional development. Discuss personal achievements, green teams, how integral these initiatives are in succession planning, etc. 

Show that sustainability is really embedded in the organization. For example, Campbell Soup now gives out USB drives in the shape of a soup can at career fairs and in interviews. These drives include all the collateral a company would want to hand out to a prospective candidate. Zero printing costs and no unnecessary handouts. Message delivered.

BS – Concerning those who don’t already place sustainability as a priority, what risks do an organization take by sticking with the status quo?  (Particularly from an HR perspective)

AS – Today, HR professionals might believe that the market is tipped on their side with much more supply than demand. However, this will eventually shift. And that is when employers will realize the efficacy of having sustainability as a priority. From a candidate’s perspective, a sustainable company is comparable to a long and lucrative career path today. This opportunity to mesh professional and personal development is significantly key for candidates and will act as major distinguishers for companies’ ability to attract top talent.

Edelman’s 2010 Good Purpose study revealed that 87% of consumers believe that business needs to equate at least equal weight on society’s interests as on business interests. This centrally places the onus on HR professionals to communicate their company’s strategic and sustainable mission to candidates and employees. Because we are getting to a place where we are beginning to make the same informed decisions as professionals as we have for the longest time as consumers. Deciding with your dollar is now translating into deciding with your skills and professional choices.

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In our next post, I’ll include the second half of our conversation.  We’ll address the specific opportunities that CSR creates for recruiting younger workers, some examples of companies who do it successfully, and much more.

To learn more about CSR’s role in building an engaged workforce and about Corporate Social Responsibility, follow @AmanSinghCSR on Twitter, and read Aman’s blog at http://amansinghcsr.wordpress.com/.