Employers that can tie the experience of working at their company to the social and environmental good will have the advantage when it comes to retaining staff and attracting new hires.

Disillusioned by years of burnout, social unrest, and constantly shifting work environments, employees are thinking more deeply about the purpose of their work. According to a 2021 McKinsey report, 70% of workers feel their sense of purpose comes from their job.

During a panel titled “Attracting New Employees With a Genuine Sense of Purpose Beyond Profits,” during From Day One’s March virtual conference, five panelists shared the ways they connect workers with purpose in a way that both satisfies employees’ search for meaning and supports business goals.

Some employers may already have the components of a corporate social responsibility (CSR) or environmental, social, and governance (ESG) plans operating in their organizations. Used car retailer CarMax created its first CSR team out of existing parts.

The company’s longtime mission has been to bring integrity to used car sales, but there was no coordinated strategy to deploy that mission outside the business. CarMax had teams working on energy, community relations, and diversity and inclusion, but “we weren’t building strength of impact. We had a lot of good work being done, but it wasn’t aligned and it wasn’t coordinated,” said Laura Donahue, who was appointed to a new role as VP of corporate responsibility, charged with organizing this work. 

Donahue’s marketing background equips her well for this job. Consumers and candidates alike are increasingly looking for mission-driven companies.

The questions they asked in forming the CSR plan were both business and community-oriented, like, how will CarMax lead the industry and differentiate itself from the competition? And, how could this be meaningful to their employees?

Other panelists endorsed the philosophy of taking the corporate mission and pointing it in a new direction. Jennifer Kartono, the SVP of people, organizational strategy, and culture at data management company Iron Mountain, described it as aligning the customer and employee experiences.

Eightfold, an A.I. talent acquisition and management platform, tweaked its business philosophy, A.I. for good, making it Eightfold for good.

The company created a committee of leaders from different departments to identify opportunities for the company to contribute to the social good. “We’re always trying to take the expertise we have in house and figure out how we can provide that to the communities where we work and serve and live,” said Jason Cerrato, Eightfold’s senior director of product marketing. Because its employees have a lot of expertise in HR and talent management, Eightfold started holding career development events in its local community.

Other HR leaders are directing corporate expertise in new directions. Megan Trotter, who leads social impact at customer service software company Zendesk, recommended sticking to what your company does best to be most effective in your community.

“We’re about great customer service, and we have that consistent message, whether in our products or the ways we show up for impact.” Trotter said the company provides its products to some nonprofit organizations for free and trains underrepresented groups in its tech to help them move from traditional customer service jobs to a career in the field.

Iron Mountain also offers its services for philanthropic purposes, including storing digital scans for the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation. “Whether it’s the Lincoln Papers or whether it’s recording an interview with somebody who won’t be here in the future, we link our brand and what we do to our values, and then bring that to our employee population,” Kartono said.

Where there are dozens of causes a company could take up and even more ways to get involved, it helps to pick a lane. Use the tools and expertise you have. “We can’t lead everywhere,” Donahue noted.

Pick Causes Your Employees Already Care About

When you’re ready to take on new causes, involve your employees. Customer experience tech company TTEC asked employees to “pitch” its executive team, Shark Tank–style, on new ways to give back.

“We wanted to make sure that we not only focus on the areas that we thought were important, but also that our employees were passionate about,” said Judith Almendra, the company’s VP of global human capital and TA. Employees from Africa, Latin America, and Europe made pitches. “Sometimes what we understand as important, it may not necessarily be the case in certain geographies,” she said.

Almendra said that finding people who really care about the work matters. It can require a lot of hours, and employees have to care. “In some cases, it’s not necessarily a full-time job, it is something to do in addition to all the other responsibilities that you have.”

Remind Your Employees How They Can Get Involved

 Even if a company has a plan for social contribution, employees might not know about it. Trotter said that despite having an internal marketing plan, she still meets employees who don’t know about the company’s sustainability program.

She recommends repeating the message in many ways: ask employees to talk about what they’re doing on social media, create blog posts that can be shared, “and then resurface all of that in three months,” she said. “That consistent drumbeat and having that information everywhere, in the job postings and the website, it’s hard to overestimate how much you need to get that message out to have it land and resonate with folks.”

The panel recommended involving employees to evangelize their peers inside and outside the company. It helps staff see how their work connects to the greater good, and it gets potential hires interested in your organization.

TTEC asks its employees share testimonials as part of the onboarding process. “To be able to make that connection between what the employee is going to be doing and how it’s going to impact the lives of different customers is very important,” said Almendra.

At Eightfold, Cerrato said his HR background has come in handy for just this purpose. “You always want to try to emphasize how someone’s work touches the customer or the product in some way, and I think now you even take that further to say, ‘this is how you are impacting the community.’”

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance reporter and From Day One contributing editor who writes about the future of work, HR, recruiting, DEI, and women's experiences in the workplace. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, Fast Company, Quartz at Work, Digiday’s Worklife, and Food Technology, among others.