MitCSR

MitCSR

Overview

Recruiting employees and retaining them in the long term represents an increasing challenge for enterprises – particularly for small- and medium-sized enterprises in Germany. Beyond this background, the project "MitCSR – Mitarbeiter finden und binden” investigated if and how CSR has an impact on employer attractiveness and could hereby be used as an instrument to attract and retain employees. The project was a joint research between the Berlin School of Economics and Law and the Beuth University of Applied Sciences Berlin. It was funded by the Institute of applied research Berlin (IFAF) as well as by six companies supporting the project.

This video (in German language) explains the role of CSR for recruiting and retention:

Research Questions

The following questions guided our research:
  • Is CSR important for the decision to apply for a job (job-seekers) and/or to stay with an employer – especially when comparing CSR with other employer or job attributes (e.g. salary, career perspectives)?

  • Does the perceived or factual CSR performance of a company have an impact on the commitment of employees?

  • How is the interplay between CSR expectations of employees, CSR performance and CSR communication – do companies sufficiently consider preferences of (potential) employees in their CSR and employer branding strategies?

  • Are there differences of different groups of (potential) employees and can these be explained with socio-demographic (e.g. gender, age) or psychographic (e.g. values) variables?
 

Methodology

For answering our research questions, we investigated selected aspects of CSR performance and expectations:
  • The factual CSR performance and the communication of CSR in six German Service industries (Self-assessment, interviews, website analysis)

  • The satisfaction with the CSR performance of companies as well as the commitment of employees (quantitative and qualitative surveys)

  • CSR preferences of 577 students and 326 employees (adapted conjoint analysis)
Areas of investigation in the research project



In accordance with other publications, CSR was operationalized by distinguishing five dimensions or action fields:
In order to find out the relative importance of CSR related employer attributes when compared to other, traditional attributes, 28 employer attributes assigned to 5 CSR and 2 non-CSR dimensions were identified (see figure 1): 
We used variance and regression analysis in order to detect influencing factors for CSR preferences and the link between preferences and commitment.
Findings
 
The project gave insights into the overall and relevant importance of different employer attributes for employer attractiveness and commitment of German jobseekers and employees. It also showed the interplay between CSR preferences, companies’ CSR performance and communication and job choice/ commitment. Among others, we could detect the following: 

  • In average there seems to be low interest of employees in most CSR related criteria of their employers. 
  • (Potential) employees care for employee related CSR – and for other job-related attributes, such as work atmosphere, variety of tasks or long-term viability of the company.
  • There is one segment of respondents with a comparatively high preference for socio-ecological responsibility.
  • Selected values orientations are correlated with CSR-related employer preferences.
  • (Perceived) CSR performance of a company and commitment are positively linked.
  • Most companies do not yet consider sufficiently preferences of employees and job seekers in their external and internal communication.
For more detailed information, see Bustamante et al. (2021) and Bustamante et al. (2018).



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