Research

The impact of gender, education and age on employee attitudes towards corporate social responsibility

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Abstract

Engaging employees can have a positive effect on turnover reduction, client satisfaction, company profitability, innovation and growth. Engaging employees in corporate social responsibility (CSR) can also generate positive impacts on environment and society. To do this, companies need to understand their employees' CSR attitudes. In this regard, many studies show that individual characteristics can influence CSR attitudes. This research aims to identify the influence of three sociodemographic characteristics such as gender, educational level and age on three employee CSR attitudes, such as CSR demandingness, CSR trust and CSR satisfaction. This analysis is carried out by examining eleven banks operating in the Italian banking sector. Employees' CSR attitudes are measured comparing banks' CSR disclosure with employees' CSR perceptions and CSR expectations. The findings of this research suggest that bank employees are generally very demanding in terms of CSR efforts and that, although they are trustful in CSR performance, they are not completely satisfied with it. In particular, employee gender has a significant influence on CSR trust and CSR satisfaction, with male employees generally more trustful and satisfied than female colleagues. Educational level differences also have a significant influence on CSR trust and CSR satisfaction, with graduated employees generally more trustful and satisfied than not graduated colleagues. However, employee gender and education do not influence CSR demandingness, and employee age does not have a significant effect on any CSR attitude. This research indicates that the banks under study need to improve the effectiveness of their internal CSR communication, especially with women and not graduated employees, who show the lowest levels of CSR trust and satisfaction. This study is therefore to provide a novel method for assisting CSR researchers and practitioners in better understanding employees' CSR attitudes, and, consequently, achieving a greater effectiveness and efficiency of CSR strategies.