At the modern stage of business development, a number of organizations are employing the new concept, known as corporate social responsibility. Corporate social responsibility involves a broad range of programs, including environment protection, participation in political processes, and charity. Nowadays, “businesses and public sector organizations are becoming increasingly interested in helping their employees to become involved in charity. For employers, supporting employee volunteering can be part of broader corporate social responsibility program or to improve their image as a good corporate citizen” (Faber & McCarthy, 2005, p. 128). Employee financial donations and volunteering allow decreasing the cost of company’s charitably activities, raise employee loyalty, commitment, and retention. Moreover, it brings about a general positive innovation into an organization, which allows employees to demonstrate their leadership talents, express themselves and live a more meaningful life (Faber & McCarthy, 2005, p.129). In any case, employee charity is a positive experience for staff, but before introducing any corporate social responsibility initiatives, it is necessary to examine the internal audience of the company and determine the possible degree of employees’ involvement in charity. For this purpose, an employee attitude survey was developed.
The clear purpose of the employee attitude survey is to measure employee attitude towards the company’s existing charities and their “giving” potential. In fact, attitude towards charity is one of the major factors predicting the intent of participating in the corresponding activities, as a number of staff members might remain slightly interested in or indifferent to corporate charity and appear unresponsive to their employer company’s efforts and advancements in this area. In order to measure attitude, it is necessary to consider its affective, cognitive, and behavioral dimensions. Affective dimensions refer to emotions an individual has for certain objects and phenomena. When composing the present questionnaire, it is important to understand how employee emotional attitude towards the company is affected by corporate social responsibility programs. The first, second, and fifth questions allow measuring the emotional aspect of attitude, as the first is associated with pride, second – with acceptance and feelings of justice, the fifth – with interest at least in the information about the charitable events.
The cognitive component of attitude is close-knit with the emotional and reflects the person’s thoughts and beliefs, associated with the activity or issue. In fact, the third, fourth and sixth questions reflect the cognitive aspects, associated with a corporate charity. The third question reflects the perceived effectiveness of corporate giving as well as suspicions whether the aid reaches its addressee. The fourth question determines whether the individual is able to embed the concept of corporate social responsibility into their vision of strategic interests and business goals of the company and whether they understand the interrelation between business and CSR. The sixth question actually extends the measurement of employee’s understanding of the usefulness of corporate giving programs to the company.
The behavioral dimension of an attitude refers to actions and intents associated with the object or issue. It actually appeared the most difficult part of the survey, given that pure participation in charitable activities does not point to the positive attitude towards corporate charity, as the employee might have not had a “physical” opportunity to demonstrate themselves in volunteering, so this part of the survey rather deals with intents and behavior in projected situations. For instance, the last questions measure the readiness to sacrifice personal time and financial assets for helping the disadvantaged. It is also important to note that the tenth question deals with intent to arrange charitable programs and act as a leader and initiator, which can also appear an important indicator of attitude. Thus, the overall validity of the test is quite high, since it addresses all necessary psychological aspects of attitude.
The survey can be administered in any company, which ran or is running charitable programs and now seeks to expand them. All employees and contractors are eligible. The data should be kept confidential, i.e. the research group should take the relationship between respondents’ identity and their responses secret. The survey should be emailed to all employees or the pre-selected sample with a friendly request for their help in planning corporate activities.
As one can conclude from the questionnaire structure, data collection implies the use of the Likert scale, composed of five options. The maximal score for the whole survey is 60 points, the minimal is 12 points. The low group will consist of 27% of the total respondents, whose answers give fewest, the high group will consist of 27% with the highest number of points. Due to the complexity of the test, it is necessary to use ITEMAN software, so that the alterations and discrepancies between the highest and lowest groups’ responses to all the questions. Furthermore, it needs to be noted that scores from 35 to 60 are favorable for the company in terms of the attitude towards charity, whereas a score below 25 are unfavorable and represent the critical attitude towards corporate giving. Scores 26-34 represent those employees, who still have doubts and personal fears, which can be eliminated or intensified depending on the further communication strategy the company selects when launching a new CSR project.
References
- Sources of information about tests. Ch.2 in Psychological Testing: A Practical Application, pp.49-68.
- Test development and item analysis. Ch.6 in Psychological Testing: A Practical Application, pp. 223-273.
- Faber, D. & McCarthy, D. (2005). Foundations for Social Change: Critical Perspectives on Philanthropy and Popular Movements. Rowman & Littlefield.