Resource Type: View all

Social impact professionals’ views on the changing talent pipeline

Social impact professionals’ views on the changing talent pipeline

SURVEY FINDINGS
Posted on
Download

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the way we work in unprecedented ways, both positively and negatively. While many employees attained new flexibility to work from home, and others exercised new leverage to pursue beneficial career shifts, many others experienced significant difficulties, like record high rates of burnout, layoffs, and rising cost of living. Educational attainment patterns have also shifted, with lower levels of post-secondary enrollment and higher levels of dropout changing the outlook for future workforce qualifications. For employers, these trends are increasing pressure to evaluate strategies and investments that affect the education, training, and retention of their current and future employees.

To better understand the sentiments and priorities of purpose-driven professionals, individuals who are often at the vanguard of social impact and innovation, NationSwell partnered with Lydia Loizides, President of Talentedly. Together we surveyed the NationSwell Council, a diverse community of individual changemakers, to learn more about their unique perspective on the evolving demands of the talent pipeline in the United States. This report provides findings from that survey.

Specifically, it explores three themes that emerged from eight major findings: 

Educating the future workforce

  • Social impact professionals say the educational and job training ecosystems are in need of reform to better prepare young people for success in the workforce
  • Social impact professionals aren’t ready to do away with post-secondary education as a credentialing system
  • Social impact professionals want companies to be more directly involved in the education and training of the workforce, including during their post-secondary years
  • In their desire for a more prepared workforce, social impact professionals say soft skills are the most important

Hiring and recruiting talent

  • DEIB remains a top priority for social impact professionals, particularly as it pertains to recruiting and retention, but actions are lagging behind intentions
  • A majority of social impact professionals are aware of organizational plans to change hiring and recruitment strategies in the next 12 months, identifying a range of modest to bold efforts to increase candidate diversity

Retaining and engaging employees

  • To keep employees satisfied and engaged, organizations have been focused on improving communications from senior leadership and promoting remote/hybrid workplace flexibility.
  • ​​Social impact professionals are keen on increased compensation and stronger communications around professional advancement as key to strengthening employees’ job commitment in the next 12 months.
Share this report
Recommended Features
Insights Website Templates (2)
pexels christina morillo
pexels canva studio
sincerely media dGxOgeXAXm8 unsplash

The state of play: Corporate civic engagement

The state of play: Corporate civic engagement

Corporate civic engagement describes how companies plan for, respond to, and participate in political, social, and cultural activities that are important to their employees, customers, communities, and other stakeholders. Unlike traditional government relations and public affairs efforts, which often relate narrowly to core business interests, corporate civic engagement often denotes a clear, public stance on broader social issues and values.

2020 sparked increased corporate civic engagement, with companies taking a more vocal stance on a larger portfolio of political and social issues than seen before. Today, those same companies are grappling with the reality of serving a broad spectrum of employees, consumers, and other stakeholders in a politically fraught environment. The current moment – and those on the horizon – will tell us a lot about the social role of the corporation moving forward. This trend report describes five key trends for corporate civic engagement in 2022:

The trends: 

  • Since 2020, more customers than ever want companies to take a stance on social and political issues, but they may not be aligned on what that stance should be.
  • Employees are increasingly willing to leave companies and mobilize their collective strength to force change, and they’re not letting CEOs get away with non-public action.
  • Politicians and companies are confronting one another in uncharted territory; the risk calculus for corporate leaders is getting scrambled as a result.
  • Media and third party watchdogs are bringing more transparency to the gap between commitments and actions; they’re revealing that companies still have a ways to go.
  • Partnerships and playbooks are gaining momentum to address political, consumer, and employee challenges; though there remains no one-size-fits-all strategy.
Share this report
Recommended Features
EOY
Insights Website Templates (2)
pexels sam lion

The state of play: ESG

The state of play: ESG

ESG describes an array of non-financial factors that investors, regulators, and other stakeholders use to evaluate the performance of companies. The growing popularity of ESG-motivated investing is contributing to more transparent and rigorous corporate reporting practices as well as operational changes aligned with improved social and environmental impact. ESG factors are increasingly understood as interconnected with–rather than distinct from–the financial performance and value of a company.

ESG can retain the attention it has garnered over the past few years if companies and investors better match their public commitments with operational rigor. Skeptics will undoubtedly remain, but ESG can become a powerful force for change if stakeholders make it so. This trend report describes five key trends for ESG in 2022:

The trends: 

  • Social issues are at once more fragmented and more important to the general public than climate concerns; as companies concentrate their climate commitments around carbon neutrality and net zero, the public is likely to become even less forgiving of those that perform poorly on social factors.
  • Dozens of ESG reporting frameworks and regulatory standards exist in jurisdictions around the globe; efforts are underway to consolidate and simplify those frameworks for the sake of consistent and universal reporting requirements.
  • Investors and companies are seeking deeper expertise and greater accountability related to ESG on their management teams, staff, and boards; the marketplace for that talent is not yet well established. Soon, that will change.
  • More retail investors, small funds, and large institutional investors are embracing an activist posture related to ESG and expressing growing skepticism that companies will make good on their commitments; the efficacy of ESG-motivated investor activism is on the rise, too.
  • Until recently, private markets have taken a back seat to public markets in ESG investing; now, private equity investors are playing a major role in the next chapter of the ESG story.
Share this report
Recommended Features
Untitled design (4)
Insights Website Templates (2)
Economist Darrick Hamilton at the NationSwell Summit
Gardeners working in a greenhouse plantation

How Verizon engaged 89,000 employee volunteers in the middle of a global pandemic

How Verizon engaged 89,000 employee volunteers in the middle of a global pandemic

Between 2020 and 2021, Verizon mobilized 89,000 of its employees to volunteer over 1,000,000 hours, at an average of over 7 hours per employee. Far exceeding the industry average of 1.4 hours per employee per year and the average annual volunteer participation rate of 17%, Verizon’s success demonstrates how taking a human-centered and empathetic approach can tap into employees’ diverse motivations for Volunteering. This case study describes six elements of Citizen Verizon Volunteers that are critical to its success: 

  • Cascade volunteerism strategy from the organization’s broader societal purpose.

Verizon linked goals to the time and talents of its employees.

  • Develop a volunteerism-oriented RFP that’s empathetic and transparent toward applicants.

Verizon designed a partner selection process that mitigates legacy deficiencies.

  • Over-index to existing employee skills and organizational capabilities.

Verizon harnessed features intrinsic to the organization and its people.

  • Use metrics to elevate the strategic importance of volunteerism.

Verizon actively promoted the strategic value of volunteerism to the business, its employees, and the communities they serve.

  • Plan to tap diverse motivations among employees.

Verizon used a varied toolkit as opposed to relying on a single engagement lever to bring employees forward.

  • Make participation as easy as possible for employees and partners.

Verizon lifted barriers to entry for participants and created opportunities for engagement that were highly responsive to the current environment.

Share this report
Recommended Features
Bush Foundation Case Study
Untitled design (4)
Employee Impact
cee

Four imperatives for centering communities in philanthropy

Four imperatives for centering communities in philanthropy

EXECUTIVE BRIEFING
Posted on
Download

Traditional approaches to philanthropy are rooted in power imbalances that reinforce closed networks of social and financial capital. These networks make equity elusive and instead perpetuate behaviors that systemically constrain access to resources for historically underrepresented communities. 

Spurred by stakeholders’ newly impassioned demand for equity, justice, and change, we now find ourselves at the precipice of a new era of philanthropy. But to fully harness the potential and possibility of this moment in our evolution, the philanthropic sector must acknowledge that the inequities of its past are inextricable from the inefficiencies of its systems — systems that, by and large, eschewed voices from the communities that philanthropy purports to serve. 

Philanthropies achieve their biggest impact when they act as the intermediary that can help empower local communities toward their own self-determination. In order to make good on the promise of this new era, leaders behind philanthropic efforts and at the top of philanthropic organizations must place the communities they serve at the very center of every aspect of their work. This briefing provides strategic guidance to funders — anchored around four imperatives — for shifting philanthropic power toward communities. 

The Four Imperatives: 

  • Show up intellectually, physically, and emotionally in the community 
  • Radically alter the way funding decisions are made
  • Invest holistically in grantees’ financial and social well-being
  • Empower communities to own their data, metrics, and reporting
Share this report
Recommended Features
Philanthropy
WF and NS