CSR and recruitment: your values are already hiring, now you have to show them

More than four in ten Gen Z candidates have already turned down an employer because it didn’t match their values. Not the salary. Not the schedule. The values. That’s what Deloitte’s global survey of nearly 23,000 young workers reveals.

Faced with this, many Quebec SME owners, who are struggling to attract and retain staff, tell themselves the same thing: corporate social responsibility is a big-company game. An annual report, a committee, a consulting firm. Not for us.

That’s wrong. In fact, it’s the opposite. Most local SMEs already live their values every week, without ever naming them. What they lack isn’t substance. It’s the story.

An intimidating word

Let’s be honest: “CSR” is an acronym that sends people running. It brings to mind consultants, scoring grids, reports nobody reads. A vocabulary built for head offices, not for the entrepreneur running the shop, the warehouse and payroll on the same day.

The result: ask an SME owner whether they practise social responsibility and they say no. They’re thinking of the 80-page document they don’t have. They’re not thinking of what they did last Tuesday.

Yet social responsibility, brought down to its simplest definition, is this: the way a business treats the people and the community around it. Its employees. Its customers. Its neighbourhood. None of that requires a committee.

And that is precisely where the SME plays on equal footing with the big company. Sometimes even better.

Look at your week

Forget the big principles for two minutes. Think back to your last week instead.

On Monday, you shifted your cashier’s schedule so she could start after dropping her kids off at daycare. You didn’t call it a “work-life balance policy.” You called it treating her right.

Last month, you gave a chance to a guy coming back from a long leave. His CV had a gap, his handshake was firm. Today he’s one of your most reliable people. You didn’t talk about “social inclusion.” You just saw the person.

Your shelves are stocked by a regional supplier. He costs a bit more than the national wholesaler, but he delivers fast, he answers the phone, and his truck supports three local families. Nobody at your place said “responsible sourcing.” They said: these are our people.

In the workshop, your youngest technician wanted to take a course. You paid for it and freed up his Fridays, even though it made scheduling harder for six weeks. You didn’t write a “skills development plan.” You invested in someone who wants to move forward.

And when an employee has a problem, they don’t need to fill out a form. They knock on your door, often already open, or they catch you between two aisles.

Each of these actions is social responsibility. Not the annual-report version: the lived version. The one you can see in the schedule posted on the board, in the faces of the team, in the supplier’s truck parked out back.

You have the substance. The question is: do your future candidates know it?

Attracting and retaining staff

Let’s go back to the candidate from the beginning, the one who turns down an employer over a values mismatch. What exactly do they look at before saying yes?

Not your revenue. They look at how you treat your people. Two similar offers on the table, and it’s rarely an extra ten dollars an hour that decides it. It’s the feeling of joining a team where life will be good. Or not.

The numbers confirm it in Canada too: according to Robert Half, a positive work and team culture weighs in the decision to stay with an employer for 68% of professionals surveyed. Among the main retention factors, right next to salary. And far ahead of anything written in a report.

That’s where your actions from the week become a recruiting lever. The adjusted schedule, the second chance, the local supplier, the paid course: this isn’t background noise. It’s exactly what candidates are trying to verify before they apply.

Retention follows the same logic. The people who stay with you don’t stay for the coffee machine. They stay because they’re treated right, and they know it. Your lived values don’t just fill your positions: they keep them from emptying.

So the problem isn’t what you do. It’s that nobody can see it from the outside.

The missing story

Your actions may speak for themselves inside, but they stay invisible to the person hesitating to apply. The candidate doesn’t see your open door. They see a job posting that looks like every other one: a list of tasks, requirements, “competitive salary.”

The missing story starts right there. In your job posting, replace one line of jargon with a truth from your everyday. “Schedules that adjust to real life” says more than “dynamic environment.” “We train our people” says more than “opportunities for advancement.”

In the interview, don’t just ask questions: tell stories. The technician who got his Fridays. The employee who came back after his leave. Candidates remember stories, never mission statements.

And above all, show your team. The faces, the floor, the real atmosphere. What you are can be seen in a few seconds; what you declare requires a leap of faith. Between a company that claims its values and one that shows them, the candidate has already chosen.

No need to invent anything. It’s all already there, in your week. You just have to make it visible.

You don’t need an 80-page report. You need your actions to get out from behind your walls.

That’s exactly what Joblinks makes possible: presenting your business as it really is, on video, in a few minutes. No three-month website overhaul, no communications firm. In the time it takes to have a coffee, your team, your floor and the way you treat people become visible to every candidate who, right now, is choosing their next employer on exactly those criteria.

Your values are already working for you on the inside. Let them recruit on the outside.