Green employee

What matters to Ming?

• Corporate responsibility
• Climate change
• Employer loyalty

Employee profile

• The common belief is that employees choose employers who appear to match their beliefs and values. The reality is that the talent pool for the brightest and best remains competitive, and whilst CSR rankings are a factor, the overall incentive package remains all-important.
• Incentives however are not just reward-related; for example, they include paid secondments to work for social projects and worthy causes―a popular trend post-2010.
• Because organisations adopt a more holistic approach to developing their people, including personal development and measuring the impact they have on the wider world, employees are more engaged and as a result more likely to have a job for life.

What matters to a Green World employee?

Corporate responsibility: Our employer must have a strong stance on sustainability and climate change.

Corporate responsibility was deemed to be very important to millennials we surveyed with 88% stating that they would seek employers with social responsibility values that reflect their own. What is interesting, is the very high number (86%) who said they would consider leaving an employer whose social responsibility values no longer reflected their own. Respondents from Argentina (94%), the US and Brazil (both at 92%) were the most likely to say they would leave, whilst Indian respondents were the least (66%).

I hope that people are more aware of the environmental and social impact of companies. I do not think people should work for a company with whom their values do not align.

Climate change

An employer’s policy on climate change was also seen as quite important or very important to 58% of respondents. The contrasting views among nationalities was interesting: respondents in Brazil (86%) saw this as an important issue compared to only 40% of US and Belgian respondents. This may reflect the higher profile of environmental issues in certain parts of the world–the concerns over the Brazilian rainforest being a good example.

Sustainability in the workplace will be key as this is how a company's image will be seen in an ever-increasing view of the current climate changes and their impact.

+ PwC point of view

These are clearly topics of the moment and millennials may want to be seen as saying the right things about these issues. Nonetheless,the high rate of response coupled with the comments we received on the issue support the idea that corporate responsibility and climate change are important issues to millennials and that employers need to take note.

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We are loyal to our employers… for as long as it suits us

Over 90% of respondents expressed loyalty to the organisation they worked for. We varied the loyalty statements see chart below to ascertain exactly how deep the loyalty was. Respondents in Australia, Germany and Turkey had the highest rate of agreement that they are loyal to the organisation they work for. Regionally, Australasians showed the highest degree of loyalty, whereas respondents in the Middle East and Africa (38%) and South and Central America (43%) were the most likely to put self-interest first. German respondents were the least likely to agree with the third statement regarding career objectives taking priority over the employer–only 15% of them agreed with this statement

I believe that employees who are not happy with their employers will be more inclined to look for another job with another employer. We want to feel appreciated for the amount of time and effort that we put into our careers.

Gen Y will continue to look for employers who embrace their desire for challenging work, amazing development and training opportunities, and travel possibilities.

+ PwC point of view

Graduates are more likely to aspire to being loyal employees at the start of their careers, so these findings are not a surprise. However there is clearly an element of self preservation in the findings, by hinting that they were not willing to commit to blind loyalty.

As stated at the start of this report, millennials will be a generation in high demand. We believe that this group will force employers to have clear employer brand values against which they can be evaluated―and that if employers do not live up to their expectations, millennials may look elsewhere.

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