Reesearch conducted by the Kenexa® Research Institute evaluated workers’ perceptions of their organizations ewith regard to corporate social responsibility. Participating in corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities provides more benefits to an organization than just giving back to the community and “doing the right thing.” The latest research suggests that an organization’s active participation in corporate social responsibility efforts has a significant influence on employees’ engagement levels and views of senior management.

Among the six surveyed countries, the research indicates that working for an organization where employees positively view CSR efforts has a significant, favorable impact on how they rate their pride in the organization, willingness to recommend it as a place to work and overall satisfaction. Furthermore, those employees with favorable opinions of their organizations’ CSR activities are more likely to say they intend to stay relative to those who have unfavorable opinions of their organizations’ CSR efforts.

Across all six countries, employees who believe in their company’s CSR activities also have more favorable opinions of their senior management. They are much more likely to feel that senior managers demonstrate employees are important to the success of the company, that management has the ability to deal with company challenges and provides employees with a clear picture of the company’s direction. In addition, these employees are also more likely to believe that senior management supports and practices high standards of ethical conduct and is more trustworthy.

Favorability regarding their organization’s CSR initiatives varies notably among the countries studied. Workers in India are the most favorable while workers in Germany are the least favorable. In India and China, the oldest workers have the most favorable views of their employer’s support for CSR, while in Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States it is the youngest workers (see Figure 3).

Executives and senior management were notably more favorable of their company’s support of CSR activities in all of the surveyed countries, with the exception of those in India, where professional and technical employees were the most favorable (see Figure 2).

“Corporate social responsibility is gaining traction as a strategic corporate initiative. Those organizations that have a clear CSR policy set themselves apart from the competition in terms of employment brand. Partaking in CSR activities not only has positive societal effects, but also increases an organization’s competitive advantage when recruiting, especially younger workers,” said Jack W. Wiley, Ph.D., executive director, Kenexa Research Institute.

Database Overview
The Kenexa WorkTrends™ database is a comprehensive normative database of employee survey results with comparisons on topics including leadership, employee engagement and customer orientation from workers in Brazil, China, Germany, India, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Study Details
The WorkTrends survey questions were designed specifically to evaluate how workers view their organizations with regard to CSR initiatives. The questions asked were:

• My company does a good job of contributing to the communities in which we live and work.
• My company’s commitment to social responsibility (e.g. community support, protecting the environment, etc.) is genuine.
• My company’s corporate social responsibility efforts have increased my overall satisfaction with working here.

Opinion items were rated using a 5-point Likert-like scale. The percent favorable is the percentage of people who chose either of the two most positive answers (typically “strongly agree” or “agree”).

The CSR Index is calculated by averaging the percentage of favorable responses across these three items. This results in a single score that reflects the overall strength of an organization’s corporate social responsibility culture as perceived by its employees.

Employee Engagement Items
The Kenexa Research Institute calculated an average score for each individual respondent across all three CSR items.

• Those with an average rating corresponding to at least the “agree” mark on the original 5-point rating scale were categorized as working within a strong CSR culture. By this criterion, approximately one-third of all U.S. workers currently rate the CSR culture of their organization as strong.
• Those with an average rating corresponding to “neither agree nor disagree” or lower on the 5-point scale were categorized as working in a weak CSR culture. By this criterion, approximately one-third of all U.S. workers currently rate the CSR culture of their organization as weak.
• The differences between these two groups on other important measures were then calculated.

People who feel they work within a strong CSR culture rate their organizations far more favorably in a number of important areas than do people who feel they work within a relatively weak CSR culture.