The arrival of 2012 brought with it the news that there are still 2.65 million people out of work in the UK.
Widespread redundancies, salary freezes or even cuts as well as the increasing loss of employee benefits are not only hitting employers hard, but also causing employees to question their job security.
And such a situation inevitably takes a heavy toll on workplace morale and individual motivation.
Poor corporate performance affects everyone in a company, breeding resentment among people who lose their jobs and guilt among those that survive. Beleaguered employers are faced with the unenviable task of trying to engage and drive enthusiasm among a workforce that feels under threat.
Attempting to motivate disengaged personnel at a time when budgets are tight is no easy feat. Gone are the days when staff could be won over with personal rewards – company cars, salary increases and bonuses are all off the table if a company fails to grow.
Instead new and imaginative solutions are required to get the best out of staff – and one possible approach is to introduce a corporate social responsibility scheme.
CSR proponents not only talk of supporting a worthy cause, but also of fostering a deeper and more meaningful level of staff engagement, which helps to increase brand loyalty and boost motivation.
Self-worth
As a result, in March last year, we decided to trial a CSR programme with global charity, Dress for Success. The charity helps women that have fallen out of the job market through economic or domestic circumstances to gain financial independence by getting back into employment.
It provides them with professional attire to wear for interviews and provides them with one-to-one interview training and career support, all with the help of skilled volunteer professionals.
To this end, our recruitment consultants visit the charity’s offices and work with its job candidates to furnish them with interview skills, providing tips in mock interview sessions, sharing techniques to help them stand out from the crowd and offering advice on imaginative possible questions to ask interviewers.
The team also provides coaching on how applicants can best deal with not being selected for a post in order to build up their confidence and ensure that they continue to perform effectively the next time that they are in the hot seat.
As our partnership with Dress for Success enters its second year, meanwhile, we have found that it has generated a unanimously positive response. Not only do team members get a kick out of doing charity work, but the fact that they can apply their professional skills to good effect reinforces the value of what they do on a day to day basis.
This makes participants more proud of, and engaged with, the work that they do, which has, in turn, had a positive impact on the quality of their performance.
For example, it is easy for recruitment professionals to lose sight of how stressful an interview situation can be for candidates. But coaching people who have been out of the professional environment, often for years at a time, through this kind of nerve-racking experience is hugely rewarding.
The sense of empowerment that they help to instil in candidates also gives people a real boost to their own sense of self-worth. Indeed, the scheme has proved to be such an eye opener that many have now indicated that they wouldn’t consider working for a company that doesn’t have a CSR programme in place.
Key CSR considerations
Despite this, HR directors should be judicious in their choice of programme and not just plump for the first thing that they see. Instead it is vital that their CSR strategy supports the core values of the business and is aligned in some way with the skills and activities of all staff members.
Remember, the core objective is to increase workforce engagement and motivation. This will be achieved through participating in a scheme on a long-term basis in which employees can make a tangible contribution by using their own professional skills and knowledge.
When reviewing the vast array of worthy causes out there, it is easy for attention to be diverted away from this core fact, but HR directors do so at their peril. Failure to get it right will mean that participants do not gain personal value from the programme, causing it to fall well short of expectations.
Moreover, allowing employees to take paid time off to participate in a CSR programme can be a powerful demonstration of trust and commitment, especially for junior employees. And this ‘time off’ won’t be squandered.
On the contrary, the right scheme will provide staff with the opportunity to continue developing their skills in a new environment, while boosting engagement with yours, meaning that they will generally be more willing to go above and beyond the call of duty for their employer.
Despite it being an ‘employers market’, it is important that organisations offer job candidates an attractive place to work if they wish to attract the best – and a lot of people these days do look to see if a CSR scheme is in place.
But participation in a CSR programme can also generate other benefits. When included sensitively in your marketing and communications activities, it can help boost your employer brand and reputation by indicating corporate integrity as well as help you differentiate yourself in a difficult and competitive marketplace. So it’s a win-win all round.
Sinead Hasson is managing director of market research recruitment agency, Hasson Associates.
