Promoting your organization’s values won’t just make you attractive to customers, but your staff will want to remain with you too.
As external customers have become more and more informed, promoting your Corporate Social Responsibility policy is of increasing importance. According to research from Cone in 2017, 76% of customers would refuse to buy from a company who supported an issue that went against their own belief. That statistic also filters down to your recruitment strategy.
One of the biggest issues facing HR professionals at the moment is retaining talent within your organization. Companies want the best individuals working for them, but the power will always lie with the talent itself when choosing who they wish to work for. This makes retaining staff even harder, and as there’s a growing desire from millennials to work for companies who share a similar ethical outlook, promoting your CSR is essential.
With that in mind, the results of some recent research carried out at Anderson Frank make for some interesting reading in terms of Corporate Social Responsibility. When presented with the statement, “My employer has clear policies in place to support people of different gender identity”, only 39% of those surveyed agreed that they did. For the statement regarding age discrimination only 32% agreed, and for disability it dropped to 30%.
Most large organizations now have clear statements that back up their commitment to having a more diverse workplace that encourages equality, as well as the impact they want to have on the world around them. A workforce being unaware of that can only come down to poor internal branding, and that disenchantment can only lead to decreased morale, lower motivation, and poor productivity. You can bet employees won’t want to hang around to improve things either.
When attrition rates in many industries are low (our survey also revealed 38% of participants expect to leave their current job in the next year), it’s clear that something needs to be done. Deloitte estimate that companies in the US spent $1 billion in 2017 on employee engagement, but there is still a long way to go.
The best starting point is to take a closer look at the way you are branding yourself internally. Your CSR shouldn’t just be a document that is written then hidden away from view; it should form the nucleus of your engagement program and be a focus of your company’s activity. Rather than using it as an occasional reference point, it should also be a vital part of your recruitment process as well as during onboarding.
Use your CSR to form how you recruit, make sure any internal branding refers to those company values. Think about it during communication with staff, even before they join the company. The values you have as a business will have a huge impact on how your workforce perceives the organization that they work for. Decisions that aren’t affected by your CSR may be made elsewhere, but the way that you use it to engage employees is within your control.
A workforce that believes in you and what you are trying to achieve socially will be more switched on, and employees who are invested in you will remain with you longer. They also serve as brand ambassadors, which will not only help drive custom, but also new talent towards you. When people want to work for you, they’ll also want to remain with you.
Keeping employees with you longer won’t just make your company better, but it will also make it cost-efficient by saving on constant re-training. It’ll also free up your time so that you can contribute more to your company than just repeatedly going through the recruitment cycle.
short url:
