How Employee Volunteering Will Help You Attract, Engage and Afford the Best & Brightest of the Millennial Generation

Hiring The Best New Talent: Attracting Them

“Firms are also facing strong demand for CSR from their employees, so much so that it has become a serious part of the competition for talent. Ask almost any large company about the business rationale for its CSR efforts and you will be told that they help to motivate, attract and retain staff." (Read the full Economist article here.)

“People want to work at a company where they share the values and the ethos.”

- Mike Kelly, head of CSR, KPMG Europe 

Companies in the process of recruiting new talent from college campuses already know that millennials have a unique perspective on employment. (If you’re the one charged with interviewing them, be prepared; you may be surprised by an odd sense of being interviewed yourself.) Recruiters are also discovering that the criteria they are being assessed against are not what many businesses are traditionally prepared for. Rather than salary and benefit packages, millennials are asking about a company’s corporate social responsibility. In fact, nearly 50% of interviewees from the millennial generation will raise the issue of CSR during the interview or hiring process with a potential for-profit employer.

According to the 8th Annual Deloitte Volunteer IMPACT Survey, more than half (61 percent) of the millennials surveyed said that they are likely to factor a company’s commitment to the community into their decision if choosing between two jobs with the same location, responsibilities and pay and benefits. Surprisingly, that was true even among those millennials surveyed who rarely or never volunteer.

But this isn’t recent news - In a 2007 survey of 2,418 students in 53 undergraduate programs in the U.S. and Canada conducted by Net Impact, it was discovered that 77% of respondents planned to seek socially responsible work immediately upon graduation. In the follow-up 2010 study, that number jumps up to 84% of undergraduates intending to seek out a socially responsible workplace.

Hiring The Best New Talent: Engaging Them

It’s one thing to find that hot new talent, it’s quite another to engage them. Your company may have a great CSR program. But millennials need to be able to actively participate in the process of being a good corporate citizen in order to tap into all that potential.

The same Deloitte Volunteer IMPACTSurvey revealed that - compared to those who rarely or never volunteer - millennials who frequently participate in their company’s employee volunteer activities are:

• Twice as likely to rate their corporate culture as very positive (56% vs. 28%)

• More likely to be very proud to work for their company (55% vs. 36%)

• More likely to feel very loyal toward their company (52% vs. 33%)

• Nearly twice as likely to be very satisfied with the progression of their career (37% vs. 21%)

• More likely to be very satisfied with their employer (51% vs. 32%)

• More likely to recommend their company to a friend (57% vs. 46%)