CSR Research: Engaging Employees

Researchers examining what motivates people to volunteer through their employer found employees have very different reasons to volunteer at work than in their personal lives. A study in the Journal of Business Ethics found that employee volunteers look for opportunities to help themselves and their employers while helping others.

Researchers studied management teams at 42 companies to examine whether differences in gender, tenure and functional backgrounds can form “fault lines” that harm organizational performance. They report in their article in Human Relations that strong shared objectives can overcome the potential fault lines of diverse teams and tap their potential strengths.

Researchers writing in the Interdisciplinary Journal of Contemporary Research analyzed previous research in the areas of corporate citizenship management and human resource development. Based on this analysis they propose a process that can be used to develop employees as a strong part of the company commitment to corporate citizenship.

As the growth rate of the American workforce continues to slow, U.S. business has an opportunity to benefit from the trend of workers delaying retirement because of personal choice and financial need. These findings are from an article in Generations: The Journal of the American Society on Aging that shows the historic trends.

Managers should identify the motives behind an employee’s organizational citizenship practices. Those with altruistic motives can promote greater organizational performance than others with self-serving motives. Although when this is understood and managed properly, a person driven by self-serving motives can provide greater benefit the organization.

A study of human resources managers found that the capacity for HR departments to support understanding and implementation of corporate citizenship initiatives is not being utilized by companies. Researchers found that important and valuable expertise of HR managers in organizational change and employee relations goes untapped frequently.

This paper examines the gap that exists inside many companies between human resources and corporate citizenship and provides a framework for the role human resources can play in planning, implementing, monitoring and institutionalizing citizenship.

Researchers studied what drains worker energy on the job and the strategies employed to recharge. Findings from the study indicate that rather than coffee or a quick break, strategies related to learning, finding meaning in work and building positive relationships on the job are most effective for restoring vitality.

This study observes that requirements that professionals account for time worked affect willingness to participate in employee volunteer programs. They found that the obligation to track billable hours made employees less likely to volunteer and more likely to substitute cash gifts.

In this study, researchers examined indicators of the quality of firms’employee relations creating an Employee Treatment Index. Companies with higher scores on the Index were found to have lower leverage ratios, higher median returns on assets, and higher sales to larger customers that suggest positive customer relationships built over time.

This study examined the relationship between organizational commitment and employee perceptions of corporate social responsibility – as measured by employee perceptions of CSR in the community, firm fairness in evaluation and treatment of diverse groups of employees, and the provision of employee training. Findings show that employee perceptions of CSR have a major impact on organizational commitment at a level equivalent to job satisfaction.

In this study, researchers analyzed the impact of the “diversity climate” on customer satisfaction in the stores of a large U.S. retail chain. Findings show that in these types of service environments where workers interact with customers, respect and appreciation for diversity are correlated with increased customer satisfaction.