Meet & Engage

Social Citizenship: Doing The Right Thing

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This article is taken from our whitepaper. Download our whitepaper, Understanding Our Emerging Talent to read more.

There were a number of potentially interlinked themes that featured heavily in our research; work/life balance, equality, and social impact.

In short, doing the right thing by not just your employees, but by society as a whole.

Whether it was at exploratory or final decision-making stage, our audience clearly considered these factors important to their choice of employer.

And we’re not alone in our findings. Research by Deloitte in 2017 found that 88% of millennials – who make up over half of our workforce now – believe that employers should play a role in alleviating concerns such as inequality, hunger, and the environment.

It appears that Gen Z are continuing this trend.

Another piece of research – this time by Nielsen – found that 67% of employees prefer to work for a socially responsible company, and Deloitte’s aforementioned millennial research found that employees who believe that their employer supports the local community are 38% more likely to stay at that employer for five years.

Social citizenship is not a matter of altruism but is crucial to attracting, retaining and engaging critical workers…

Our audience shared that companies who were focused on remedying social inequality – such as the gender pay gap, social mobility and the under-representation of women at leadership level were attractive.

And, whilst being seen to need ‘special treatment’ wasn’t appealing, companies who ran programmes or events to support this kind of long-term change were appreciated, for example, women only networking events or social mobility entrance programmes.

But perhaps the stand-out factor was work/life balance.

This was the most constant and spoken about indicator of ‘the right employer’ amongst our group.

Our audience wanted peer-to-peer feedback on the reality of company culture; one graduate suggesting this helps her check what’s being said about apparent healthy work/life balance on the careers site isn’t being “romanticised”!

Another of our audience checks how much parental leave men are given as part of her research; she said “if it’s more than standard, it’s normally a positive indicator on how they treat family and work/life balance”.

So, how does this affect your employer brand? How does this emphasis on healthy work/life balance and corporate citizenship alter the way we articulate why people should join, stay and enjoy success in our businesses?

It certainly seems that these factors increasingly need to be an integral part of both the business strategy and brand.

Deloitte stated in their report that authentic social citizenship “is not a matter of altruism…” but is crucial “…to attracting, retaining and engaging critical workers”.

It seems ‘doing the right thing’ will now take its place alongside reward, benefits, career, and culture as keystones of the employee value proposition.

And about time.

This article is taken from our whitepaper. Download our whitepaper, Understanding Our Emerging Talent to read more.

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