“Companies should not have a singular view of profitability. There needs to be a balance between commerce and social responsibility… The companies that are authentic about it will wind up as the companies that make more money”.

This famous quote by Howard Schultz, chairman emeritus, Starbucks, tells a lot about the changing face of corporate workforces where there is a possibility of an active engagement in larger social causes rather than just focusing on the profitability of businesses.

The Challenge of Talent

A comprehensive study undertaken by McKinsey & Company, a global management consulting firm, throws light on some of the significant challenges faced by the senior industry leaders worldwide. Almost one-third of senior leaders cite finding talent as their most significant managerial challenge. The study predicts a shortage of talent by 2020 to be in millions. A whopping 82% of Fortune 500 executives don’t believe that their companies recruit talented people.

2015 Gallup Survey reports that more than 50% of
employee respondents were “not engaged” and
an additional 17.2% were “actively disengaged.”

Similarly, other related surveys report that upwards of 70% of employees are continuously thinking about changing jobs. Presumably each of the employees hired were taken on only after a rigorous process of competency match by each of their employer organizations.

Clearly, strategies to hire the right person for the right job solves only a part of the problem – that of ‘skill’. Getting their hearts to be engaged in their work and drawing out their ‘will’ seems to be quite another thing.

CSR @ Ecom Express

It won’t be incorrect to say that the future success of corporates might largely depend on their efforts in integrating business and employees' personal values through thoughtfully planned and executed alignment initiatives. As per a recent study by ‘Centre for Corporate Citizenship’ of Georgetown University more than 60% of corporate executives believe that the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives and strategies employed by them helped in improving the overall corporate reputation and in turn, the success of hiring the most engaged talent.

An apt example of this is at our organization, Ecom Express. We are an end-to-end tech enabled logistics solutions provider to the ecommerce industry. The organization’s strong focus on CSR stems from the belief that attracting top talent is directly proportional to its CSR efforts. With 20,000 employees spread across the country, the company’s objective is to mirror the diversity of communities that we work in and giving our share of worth back to the society.

Due to the fact that we provide automation solutions to enable first-mile pickup, processing, network optimization and last mile delivery, the complete operation is dependent upon manpower. Even in peak season we sometime need in excess of 15,000 extra manpower. Finding right and productive talent at the right time is challenging. We have found CSR to be an excellent platform to reach out to our employees and attract potential employees. It creates the bond between their value systems and that of the corporates.

The Form and Fashion

Ecom Express actively engages in a variety of CSR initiatives to both invest in skill development as well as giving back to the society by touching as many lives as possible. With a strong belief in a collaborative working approach, the company partners with various NGOs for specific causes.

We believe that CSR needs to be inward looking too. The vast multitude of employees that constitutes our large team, spread over 2400 towns serving over 25,000 PIN codes in India are equally in need of care and development, as are the external societies. Therefore, our efforts towards upliftment are directed both ways: internally, towards our employees and their families; and externally, towards the society at large.

Initiatives at Ecom Express

Following are a few prominent CSR initiatives that resulted in direct business impact.

Hiring Specially-abled Employees
Ecom Express has partnered with Aashish Foundation for the Differently Abled, a charitable trust that provides multi-pronged solutions for families affected by autism and other disabilities, to induct persons with disabilities in the workforce.

Business Impact: We proudly boast to have an inclusive workforce that is oriented towards working with the best talent in the Industry, irrespective of the background or circumstances. The inclusion of specially-abled workforce continues to grow and brings more care and humility at workplace.

Empowering Communities
To invest in skill development, Ecom Express organizes book donation camps across its offices for employees to donate books and help promote literacy among children. The company has been continuously working on activities aimed towards building leaders amongst students and teachers with a mindset to take ownership of the quality of education.

Business Impact: The employee-organization relationship gained value by higher job satisfaction, better organizational identification, and meaningful organizational commitment, thereby positively impacting organizational outcomes.

Low Cost, High-impact Higher Education for Employees:
Ecom Express has partnered with Amity University to engage in a ‘Learn while you Earn’ program which gives discounted education to its employees. The company also introduced study leave for all employees.

Business Impact: The journey of improved knowledge, development and faster career progression of the employees has a direct impact on their productivity, performance and quality and fuels internal talent management.

Contribution Camps
Ecom Express endeavours to bring about a systematic social change through contribution functions, such as blood donation camps across India. The company holds an annual volunteer’s week choosing to partner with NGOs working in the respective field to inculcate the spirit of volunteerism amongst employees.

Business Impact: Employees could positively relate to job satisfaction by volunteering for the social cause.

Awareness Camps
To improve awareness towards social causes, Ecom Express partners with NGOs and civic bodies to carry out cause specific events, like:

• annual marathon camp on health and hygiene, to not only highlight the cause but also to encourage employees adopt healthy lifestyle habits.
• road safety awareness marches across cities to make our streets safer. This also helps to keep employees focused on the safety aspect, which is critical for logistics sector.

Business Impact: Employee engagement and sense of ownership increased multi-fold.

Such CSR initiatives at Ecom Express have resulted in benefiting the company in many ways, for instance:

• Attracting passionate and committed employees
• Improving workplace and communication skills
• Better performance at work
• Below average attrition rate
• Improved diversity of gender and ethnicity
• Increased sense of pride and ownership

The Beginning of a Systematic Change

CSR is no longer a concept driven by the idea of corporate philanthropy. With changing times, companies are making CSR as a part of their long-term plans across functions, including talent acquisition. It is in fact, becoming a crucial factor in the overall success and growth of companies since it allows them to find great talent to bring sustainable, real, and measurable changes in a way that’s profitable for their business as well.

A large number of dynamic individuals are becoming a part of CSR initiatives in various capacities. Passionate individuals become members of the core CSR team and actively engage in several initiatives involving economic, social and environmental development.

A Magnet to Attract Top Talent

According to a recent survey done by Net Impact on organizations that work on social and environmental causes, almost 54% of workers admitted that they would like to be a part of an organization where they can make a significant social impact. By being a part of CSR, individuals feel a sense of pride in their work and contribution towards compelling programs that resonate with their own values. In fact, several employees who carry a sense of empathy and passion prefer to join companies that have demonstrated a history and reputation of being CSR friendly. Employees may join in simply to be a part of some great corporate initiatives.

Almost always employees get a sense of fulfilment for having contributed. Some of the other common reasons could be:

• Job satisfaction and the ability it gives to influence and motivate people to work towards a common goal
• A deep sense of integrity and responsibility about their role as a change maker in the social sector
• Opportunity to work with people from diverse social and religious backgrounds
• Freedom to adapt and innovate in challenging situations by demonstrating strong project design and management skills
• Opportunity to work with some of the most passionate senior leaders and be a part of the company’s strategic development

Creating an Effective Corporate Program

Corporates keen to be effective at attracting, hiring, and retaining the right talent for their organization should take the following two aspects into consideration:

A.  Alignment of business objectives

It is not always about what the law says, but about being at the forefront of social responsibility issues in tandem with the business objectives. The CSR program of any company should be designed in a way that ensures a natural alignment between the CSR initiatives and the business. To do the ‘right’ thing is always better than to merely do the ‘correct thing’, for instance:

• Integration of the CSR activities in various job profiles and performance reviews to infuse the CSR culture throughout the company.
• A combination of top-down and bottom-up approaches to CSR wherein all employees are encouraged to take the CSR commitments as part of their individual responsibilities, and the entire organization works as a unit to achieve their common CSR goals.
• Corporates must reward and recognize the employees to take CSR seriously by asking employees to spend time with wider society as part of their KRAs in their performance appraisals wherein they are rewarded through the regular appraisal process for meeting CSR commitments.

B.  Authenticity of purpose

Companies need to take every effort to connect their CSR mission to their core mission. Authenticity in the CSR efforts should translate to taking a stand, believing and acting for the causes. Such CSR initiatives also provides a deeper sense of purpose to the employees and helps them reach their maximum potential to create a conducive work environment.

Among the other things, companies can do to promote authenticity in CSR initiatives include:

• Consistent and transparent communication both internally and externally
• Efforts to make sure that the employees understand the company’s CSR program and how it can contribute to the business success and towards a greater cause
• Top leadership supporting, believing and displaying company values

CSR is Becoming Imperative

Attracting talent using CSR as a backdrop is fast becoming an important aspect of the hiring process of corporate houses today. Companies are using CSR as an excellent recruiting tool to hire passionate and socially driven individuals with high values to create a dynamic, responsible, positive and socially conscious working environment. Captains of industry also acknowledge the fact that social responsibility goes much more beyond the philanthropy to social innovation.
Companies are viewing social innovation and varied community needs as excellent opportunities to create and develop new ideas as well as demonstrate technologies in order to reach the wider audience and solve business problems.

In short, keeping a strong focus on the CSR is not only going to strengthen the present of the company but also build a strong foundation for the future success and growth of the business.

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