Company’s CSR survey reveals consumer expectations of companies
AFLAC (American Family Life Assurance Company) conducts an annual CSR Survey. A leading provider of voluntary insurance at the worksite in the US, the company boasts numerous awards for its CSR, including recently being named by Points of Light to its 2018 Civic 50 list.
Their 2017 CSR survey was conducted by FleishmanHillard, a global PR and marketing agency. While this is a US-based survey, the results provide insights and learnings for Australian businesses.
Here are the top line CSR survey highlights:
Objectives & Methodology:
1,001 Americans aged 18 years and older were surveyed online and an additional 100 investment professionals were surveyed online separately.
This survey was designed to meet the following objectives:
- Continue to probe consumer attitudes surrounding the meaning of corporate social responsibility and their expectations
- Explore whether and how consumers expect companies to speak out or act on controversial political or social issues
- Examine perceptions of ethical behaviours
- Understand consumer expectations for workplace diversity
Result Highlights:
Workplace diversity
- 52% of Consumers say equal pay for men and women should be a top priority of responsible companies, compared to 34% of Investment Professionals. 81% of Consumers and 72% of Investment Professionals say a company cannot pay men more than women and still be responsible.
- There is far less support for policies ensuring women and minorities are represented in senior leadership.
Impacting spending
- 56% of Americans believe companies need to spend something in order to be responsible, on average saying they need to spend 14.5% of profits. (In fact, corporate contributions to charities in the U.S., as measured by percentage of pre-tax profits, stand at about 1 percent.)
- If they were dividing an investment between two companies –one responsible and one not –with all else equal, Investment Pros would invest 68% in the responsible company.
Necessary conditions for responsibility
Asked about irresponsible actions companies could take, the wide majority of Consumers say they would NOT forgive the company at all, ever.
- 76% say they would not forgive a company for not recalling a product known to be unsafe until forced to do so; 74% say the same for paying men more than women for the same work.
- Of those who would forgive, the price tag, measured in donations to charity, is high. EG: a company that causes $1M (US) in environmental damage would have to contribute $2.5M (US) to charity for Consumers to consider “forgiveness.” That’s in addition to the costs of clean-up.
Speaking out on controversial issues
- 77% of Consumers and 83% of Investment Professionals say a company that wants to be known as a leader in responsibility has to be a leader on issues that matter to people.
- 76% of Consumers and 82% of Investment Professionals say a company cannot claim to hold values if it does not defend those values for fear of controversy.
- 52% of Consumers and 61% of Investment Professionals expect responsible companies to speak out on important controversial topics.
- 64% of Investment Professionals and 53% of Consumers approve of companies speaking out or acting on controversial political or social issues
- Yet 58% of Consumers and 69% of Investment Professionals agree with the statement, “Companies should stick to their business and avoid politics.”
Ethics
- In their own experience, 19% of Consumers have done something at work they consider unethical, an experience more common among the most highly educated Consumers.
- The majority of Consumers believe unethical behaviour is common across all sizes of businesses – though more (79%) consider big companies more unethical than small businesses (52%).
- Both Investors and Consumers believe unethical behaviours are common among American companies, ranging from religious discrimination (55% of Consumers and 57% of Investors say it is common) to awarding bonuses to undeserving executives (78% of both audiences).
Responding to government policy
- More than half of Consumers think that depending on the program, responsible companies should be donating more to programs that lose government funding. Support for companies making up funding is much higher on specific issues.
- Both the majority of Consumers and Investment Pros agree that responsible companies should report workplace accidents, pay overtime to non-managerial employees and offer paid maternity leave.
