Doing the Right Thing

By Will Bunch

A perfect storm of factors has encouraged the new age of employee-focused social responsibility. One has been the increasing number of millennials — generally born between the early 1980s and 1995 — in the workplace. Raised on the Internet and in the shadow of the 9/11 terror attacks, these young workers now in their 20s and early 30s are characterized as caring more about making a difference than making a dollar.

But workforce observers say the desire for a more community-conscious workforce extends beyond millennials. At the top, some say, the fallout from business scandals of the 2000s, beginning with the collapse of Enron and leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, has caused many corporate leaders to consider re-inventing a more socially aware and less profit-obsessed environment. At the same time, the new interconnectivity of social-media sites such as Twitter and Facebook has made the workforce more transparent and better linked to wider communities.

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