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Companies are realizing that not only can a reputation for corporate social responsibility be good for branding, publicity and the bottom line; it can also be a valuable recruiting tool. They’re incorporating their values into recruiting and advertising materials more and more both to attract the best candidates and to weed out the ones who wouldn’t be a good fit.
Twenty years ago, human rights records, environmental policies and levels of community involvement wouldn’t have been on the radar screen for some job seekers when deciding which companies to target in their employment searches.
Today, the situation is different. In light of recent corporate scandals, as well as growing global awareness, the public’s expectations for corporate social responsibility have changed. Accepting lower pay A study released in 2003 revealed that companies perceived as socially responsible often have a competitive edge when it comes to attracting good employees. Researchers at Stanford University and the University of California, Santa Barbara, surveyed 800 MBA students from 11 leading North American and European business schools and found that 94 percent would accept a lower salary--an average of 14 percent lower--to work for a firm with a reputation for being environmentally friendly, caring about employees and caring about outside stakeholders such as the community.
These results wouldn’t surprise Robert Morgan, president of employment solutions at the staffing firm Spherion. Morgan says that a reputation for social responsibility can often be the determining factor when a candidate is deciding between two or three companies.
While opportunities for career growth and work/life balance often top the list of what candidates are looking for, Morgan says, a reputation for corporate social responsibility isn’t far behind. At the same time, often the most powerful recruiting benefits from being seen as socially "good" are less direct, he says. "When you’re out doing good in the community, you get lots of PR, which raises brand awareness," Morgan says. It’s about recruiting Just as the public and job seekers are paying more attention to the ethics and missions of corporations, many companies themselves are shifting to a more values-based model of business. It’s all about attracting the best people.
David Gebler, president and founder of Working Values, a business ethics and training company in Sharon, Massachusetts, says that how a company projects its values and ethics has become a competitive differentiator in terms of recruiting, and he sees more and more companies realizing this.
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