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How Employees Respond at Companies That Give Back

netapp_WordCloud4773Attention all team leaders: When companies make an effort to give back and contribute to charitable causes, their employees tend to work more efficiently.

That’s according to a recent study by researchers Micro Tonin and Michael Vlassopoulos (“Corporate Philanthropy and Productivity: Evidence from an Online Real Effort Experiment”). When they set up their study, they knew that previous research had shown that employees are generally more committed to companies that practice corporate responsibility.  However, they wanted to dive deeper into how employees respond at companies that give back, and they wanted to determine whether or not a company’s charitable actions would make its workers more effective and productive. 

For the study, according to Pacific Standard Magazine, the two researchers set up an online experiment with 100 college students. The researchers gave the students tasks—in this case, inputting bibliographic information for academic research papers. They paid the students $28 dollars, in addition to $0.10 for each entry inputted. The students completed one work session with the traditional pay setup. However, for the following three sessions, the students had the opportunity to donate money to charity.

When the employees had the donation option, their productivity increased. Once the researchers analyzed their findings, they discovered that the students made 13 percent more entries when they had the option to donate as compared to the original, no-donation pay model.

The bottom line: corporate giving makes sense morally, socially and financially.

If you work with at a firm that’s looking to leverage corporate social responsibility efforts for company growth, consider reaching out to GEAR The World. We specialize in pairing companies with excess products or returns with nonprofits or charities that could use those particular items for their charitable efforts. If you’d like to learn more, click here.

 

© 2016 C.M. Blake and GEAR The World. All Rights Reserved.

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