Employers missing out by not highlighting their virtues

• Less than 0.5% of job ads explicitly mention the company’s positive social values

• Studies have shown many jobseekers want to work for companies making ‘positive impact’

• Positive values that can be marketed as perks prove more popular than commitments to environment

Employers are missing out on opportunities to attract millennial workforce with positive workplace cultures, according to new research by Adzuna. Analysis of over 1 million live vacancies by the job search engine Adzuna has found that employers are largely failing to let candidates know about the steps they take to make a positive impact.

With studies showing many candidates want to work for companies making a positive difference, employers may find that emphasising their existing green credentials or charitable ways in job ads could attract more applicants.

Perks that double as positive values prove popular

To find out how many employers highlighted their commitment to a number of social responsibilities in their job ads, Adzuna searched for dozens of key phrases across over a million live job vacancies being advertised across the UK.

‘Corporate responsibility’ was the most commonly used phrase with 1725 appearances, followed by ‘socially responsible’ (1298) and ‘responsible company’ (942).

Positive values that can be marketed as perks, such as ‘charity days’ or ‘volunteer days’ (940 combined) proved more popular than green phrases such as ‘environmentally friendly’ (359), ‘environmental sustainability’ (332) or ‘carbon neutral’ (48).

For comparison, almost 1,000 job ads mention offering staff free beer, suggesting that job postings value beer just as much as charitable causes!

Strong values pay

With 99% of job ads not saying anything about the company’s positive social values, many employers could be missing a way to appeal to jobseekers.

The Guardian has reported that almost 50% of the UK workforce wants to work for companies that have a positive impact on the world.

A study from PWC found that, among millennials, this number could rise to over 80% during times of economic certainty. These studies also suggest that employees will work harder if their company is benefitting society. On top of this, they believe that work that helps others is more important than a high salary.

Becky Harkins, Head of PR at Adzuna commented: “Employers are doing themselves a disservice by sticking to business as usual when recruiting, and not talking up their social values. Many candidates are attracted to companies that care about more than the bottom line – a clear idea of the company’s position on these issues could be just as important as an appealing job description.”

Table 1. Selected social value phrases, and number of ads mentioning them