Morals Before Money

Attracting and retaining the best people remains a fundamental objective for just about every human resource function across all businesses, everywhere. And traditionally, the way to go about ensuring this objective was met has been very simple by entrusting the unfailing allure of that most popular of partnerships - pay and perks.

But now there is an accumulating weight of evidence to suggest that, for job seekers and employees, the generous salary, bountiful pension scheme and company Jag are just not doing it for them any more. By contrast, it would appear that an organisations reputation in the field of business ethics and CSR can now tangibly affect its attractiveness as an employer.

According to one survey carried out last year by recruitment firm totaljobs.com, 43 per cent of the 5,000 respondents said they would refuse to accept a job in a company that has no environmental or ethical policies even if they were given a substantial financial inducement (10,000) to do so. The survey also found that the attractiveness of material perks is on the wane seventy five per cent of those surveyed said that a company car was unimportant to them.

Meanwhile, another survey by Select Appointments found that more than three-quarters of people would choose not to work for an organisation that was considered to have unethical products and services.

Last year it was also reported by Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO) that it had received a record number of applications an indication that workers are looking for a job that does more than just pay the bills.

Nathan Oxley, 23, is a research director at Futerra, a sustainable development consultancy in London. He graduated from Cambridge a couple of years ago and, after a temporary job with the NHS, he took an unpaid internship on a corporate responsibility magazine before joining Futerra last summer.

"During the milkround at Cambridge, it was apparent that some of the jobs were being marketed solely on the basis of high salaries," says Nathan. "Although I was relatively unaware of what was out there I knew that I wanted to do something meaningful, something that would have some kind of positive effect but not just anything that happened to pay well."

"So now, working for an organisation that deals in all issues of sustainable development gives me an opportunity to intellectually explore a field Im passionate about. Currently, for example, I am working on the communications strategy for a climate change project which is incredibly challenging, absorbing and essentially important. Im very happy that Im able to undertake really interesting work where I can see the positive impact of what I am doing," he says.

"Increasingly, salaries and perks arent always enough for the modern worker," says Caroline Waters, head of employment policy, BT Group. "We have evidence from two recent (UNUM) surveys of graduates to suggest that salary is now ranked only 4th in the list of things that make potential employers attractive. Number one is flexible working or work/life balance. We also have seen a growing number of people who, relatively early in their career path, are leaving corporate life and taking a role of significantly lower financial reward but greater intrinsic value."

"Employers are beginning to recognise this trend as well," she says. "You will find that most large companies attach their social report, environment record and diversity policy to their recruitment web sites or job ads because thats whats giving them the edge rather than a few extra thousand pounds in salary."

But is having a sound CSR policy only relevant for firms recruiting for what are perhaps regarded as more senior positions?

"Absolutely not," says Caroline Waters, "Companies that wish to attract staff for lower paid jobs are finding that higher pay is not always the way to do it. These employees frequently differentiate on the availability of flexible working because that means a lot more to many of them than extra money."

Employers wishing to poach and keep the best people are being forced to rethink their own employer brand values as it seems a new breed of job seeker is placing ethical issues and CSR above financial incentives when considering a job offer. Of course, it would be foolish of recruiting businesses to dispense with the duties of Messrs Pay and Perks when constructing the job packages of today. But it would be just as imprudent of them to ignore the real requirements of todays ethically conscious job seekers.

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