10 Things You Can do to Attract Scarce Talent: #2 – Focus on Social Responsibility
How can you attract top talent to your company?
In addition to focusing on and showcasing your DEI efforts in your recruitment marketing, take a look at your social responsibility: are you known for your community involvement?
Why you should have a robust corporate social responsibility (CSR) reputation
CSR is the idea turned into action that a business has some responsibility to society. It’s self-regulated/decided upon within the organization and is articulated in programs and strategies decided upon by both management and employees.
Using a CSR to help you attract hard-to-find talent
As you look for top talent, you also want to understand what’s important to candidates when it comes to attracting them to your company.
And what do they want today? They want to work for a company that makes CSR a priority. In fact, “one of the major reasons people apply to various companies is because of their CSR strategy.”
This is especially the case with millennials
About 65 percent of millennials may not even take a job “if the employer doesn’t have a strong CSR program” in place.
A good CSR can also:
- Help retain employees once they’re hired.
- Improve morale and employee engagement.
- Provide your company with a positive corporate reputation and image.
- Improve client retention/customer loyalty.
Whether you already have a CSR program or you’re just beginning, consider doing the following:
Conduct an office survey. This will give you a good idea of how your employees feel about your current social responsibility efforts. What do they like about your programs? What would they want you to do differently? What things could be cut or should be added? Ask them about local or national social programs in which they’re interested.
Some CSR ideas to consider
- Start a matching gift program. Let employees know that you’ll match employees’ donations to their favorite charities by a certain percentage. This tells your team members that you care about the causes they care about.
- Find organizations in your community that match your corporate values and consider investing money, time, and talent to volunteer there. This could mean a big donation push each year for your chosen non-profit. Even better would be providing employees with a couple of paid volunteer days each year.
Don’t stop with just the organizations your company has decided to support; allow your employees to volunteer with pay at the local charities they have embraced on their own.
- Tie your CSR efforts to your DEI efforts. Perhaps you could offer internships and fellowships to people who traditionally have a challenging time accessing your industry (IT, accounting/finance, startups, medicine, HR/recruiting, etc.).
Possibly the best way to do this is, rather than creating your own program, is to look to DEI/minority organizations already offering internships and piggy-backing on theirs.
Partner with existing charitable/minority networks that could grow access to your industry for people of underrepresented backgrounds via minority non-profits doing similar work.
Focus from the top is critical to a CSR’s success
CEO/C-suite involvement with CSR programs is essential to creating coherent social responsibility programs and strategies. Many experts believe a business’ CSR initiatives should be an “essential part of the job of every CEO and board.”
To celebrate your CSR through your recruitment efforts, you’re going to need to tout it publically
Write about it in blog posts (and create links to it on your social media channels). Post pictures of employees volunteering on your website (and social media channels). Send out news releases on it (and post it on your website, as well on social media, etc.). Talk about it on your company’s About and Career pages.
In other words, don’t be shy about showcasing your CSR initiatives just about every chance you’re able to in your recruitment and overall company marketing efforts.