Using Corporate Social Responsibility to Win the War for Talent

Abstract

To understand better when, how and why employees react to CSR, we devised a two-part study. the first part involved a series of in-depth interviews and eight focus groups with employees of a major consumer-goods company, followed by a global employee survey (10,000-plus responses) administered by the company itself. Each focus group comprised five to eight participants at various locations, including the company's U.S. headquarters, a manufacturing plant, a regional sales office and one non-U.S. location. The second part featured a series of interviews followed by two online surveys of employees (yielding 481 responses) from more than 10 companies in the manufacturing, retail and service sectors. (Details of the study methodology are available from the authors on request.) The data from these primary research studies, viewed through the clarifying lens of our general research program, provided valuable insights into the challenges and opportunities facing companies that want to deploy their CSR efforts strategically in the war for talent.

Keywords: CSR, war for talent, corporate social responsibility