Supporting worthy causes helps a business buff up its image and can open the door to valuable networking opportunities. Those effects of charitable giving have been supported by much research and practical experience. But does corporate philanthropy have any effect on employees? The answer to that question hasn’t been as clear.
Even while surveys show that millennial employees would take less pay to work for socially responsible employers, there hasn’t been research into how corporate philanthropy might affect workers’ attitudes. But now, new research finds that corporate giving can, in fact, make employees more satisfied with their jobs. However, not all ways of giving work equally well in increasing employee job satisfaction, the study also found.
For the new study, a team of researchers, led by Emily Block, Assistant Professor at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, analyzed three years of data on attitudes of 14,577 employees in 53 offices of a financial services firm. They expected to find that supporting charities with money, goods, services or employees’ time made workers feel better about an employer. They also wanted to examine what happened when companies gave in certain ways. For example, did it matter whether gifts were to smaller, local charities or national causes strategically chosen by the main office?
