Commentary by Mallen Baker

According to a new survey of employees, most are enthusiastic about the principles of corporate social responsibility, and they are keen to work for a company that shares their values. But they are finding barriers at work to finding ways to express this enthusiasm.

That's only part of the story. A separate study has confirmed earlier findings that the talented MBA graduates that will make money for businesses in the future are similarly enthusiastic.

They surpass expectations as to the amount of salary expectation they might be willing to forego in order to work for a values-led company.

Since so many business leaders routinely identify the impact on their own staff morale and loyalty of CSR programmes, none of this should be a surprise. It is important, of course, to see that the phenomenon seems to be holding up in the early stages of more difficult financial times.

The employee research, produced by Fresh Marketing and based on a survey of 129 employees from a number of large and small companies, found that employees felt that management in their companies was indifferent at best in supporting staff to gain the knowledge to address sustainability issues.

Likewise, the companies were thought to be particularly bad at communicating their message to shareholders.

But they did feel that it was getting easier to talk to management about the issue of sustainability. Only one in ten currently say that they feel completely prepared to address the relevant social and environmental issues on the job.

The student survey covered a larger sample, 759 graduating MBAs at 11 top business schools. These business leaders of tomorrow ranked corporate social responsibility high on their list of values. The survey, carried out by Stanford Graduate School of Busines, found that a reputation for ethical conduct and caring policies towards employees was held to be as important as a job with intellectual challenge and level of salary by over 75 percent of respondents.

The researchers found that the students would be willing to make a financial sacrifice of up to just under 15 percent of their expected salary in order to work for a company that exhibited all the aspects of social responsibility.

Neither survey breaks new ground - we know that employees like the idea of working for a socially responsible company. What we haven't seen is much evidence that companies have translated this interest into giving high priority to internal programmes to empower employees to contribute to CSR activity, or that they have yet achieved the quality of internal communication that lets employees really know what goes on.

There has been a great deal of focus on CSR reporting as a primary means of how companies communicate about their social resposnibilities - it would be interesting to know how many, on reflection, might admit that their focus on such reports meant they had taken their eye off the ball in terms of communicating to one of their most important stakeholder groups.

About Mallen Baker

Mallen is currently responsible for developing Business in the Community's approach to marketplace issues, which includes how companies manage issues that arise around their core products and services.

He initiated the Business Impact Review Group - the group of 20 companies who developed a common approach to CSR reporting, and was responsible for the work of the Business Impact Taskforce which produced the landmark "Winning with Integrity" report. To read more of Mallen's blogs visit www.mallenbaker.net.

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