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Power of image

May George

Corporations with good reputations stand a better chance of attracting and retaining staff, survey reveals

In a climate where there is a talent shortage, profit-making companies need to have solid reputations to attract and retain employees. A recent study concluded that companies which failed to build respectable images would find it extremely difficult to hire and retain the best and brightest minds.

A global survey of management and business administration (MBA) students across the world found that three-quarters of respondents said the reputation of a company played a critical role in deciding where to work.

The survey, carried out by Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates for public relations firm Hill & Knowlton, interviewed 527 MBA students at 12 top-ranked international business schools in the United States, Europe and Asia from May to October last year. Students of 57 different nationalities took part in the survey.

It also found that graduate business students sampled were most eager to work in the fields of banking and finance, information technology, and energy and utilities.

In Asia, the banking sector was particularly popular, with an overwhelming 82 per cent of respondents saying they would be interested in working in the fast-growing field of finance, and just 5 per cent saying the opposite.

Respondents in all three markets surveyed generally agreed that they were least interested in working in corporations dealing with alcohol, chemicals, or tobacco.

In terms of shareholding structure, respondents around the world were overall most eager to work in public listed companies, followed by corporations owned by venture capital or private equity funds and family-owned companies.

They were least eager to work in state-owned companies. The exception was in Asia, where more respondents said they would rather work for a state-owned corporation rather than a family-owned business.

Respondents also said they were most interested in working in Western Europe and the US, as they were perceived to be the regions where firms do the best job in promoting their corporate reputations. North Asia, Australia and New Zealand, and Southeast Asia rounded out the top five. Russia, Eastern Europe, and Africa were at bottom of a list of 11 regions where MBA students said they wanted to work.

Of the emerging markets, most said they were either 'very interested' or 'fairly interested' to work in the mainland (64 per cent), followed by Singapore (61 per cent), and Brazil (48 per cent).

Few students showed an interest in working in Russia.

'The leaders of tomorrow are overwhelmingly seeking to associate themselves with industries, and specifically companies, with great reputations,' said Glenn Schloss, regional director, corporate communications, Hill & Knowlton Asia-Pacific.

'Those with inferior reputations will find it very difficult to attract and retain the best and the brightest.'

While students everywhere cared about the pay package and their career opportunities, what stood out in the survey for Hong Kong and the mainland was that students seemed to associate a company's reputation with its corporate social responsibility (CSR).

In fact, 43 per cent cited it as an attribute of corporate reputation, ahead of career opportunity and company brand.

Sixty-five per cent of the students surveyed in Hong Kong and the mainland cited social responsibility as extremely or very important in the assessment of the reputation of a company.

In a region, particularly locally, where family run companies are numerous, CSR is still a recent concept.

It seems that business leaders of tomorrow will be looking for firms that show they care about their employees, the community, and the environment, on top of having a successful bottom line.

'The approach to CSR in Asia is driven by two factors. The first is that Asia generally lags behind the west in terms of CSR and sustainability, and MBA students are acutely aware of that and believe companies need to do a better job,' Mr Schloss said.

'Secondly, in China there is a very strong push by the government for companies to be more responsible in terms of the community, but particularly with the environment because of the environmental challenges China is facing, and because there is that top-down approach students are even more conscious.

'Multinationals are struggling all the time to find well-educated, well-trained, well-motivated people, and those people can command their own salaries and futures.

'It's an issue that also challenges us as an employer in China.'

Lawrence Chan, administrative director (marketing and student recruiting) MBA programmes at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said he was not surprised that the survey found that MBA graduates in this region value CSR.

'Particularly for our university we regard CSR as a very important element and we plug this element into various parts of our programme,' he said.

Last year, students were involved in a charity initiative in a remote area of Yunnan. This year, some of the students will go to Cambodia to assist a charity helping in a developing area.

'Last year, we invited students from a primary school run by a fishermen's association.

'The students are all from underprivileged families, so they don't have a lot of opportunity to visit a university,' Mr Chan said. In May last year, the university organised a CSR conference in Hong Kong, which was led by the students.

'We invited a number of charities and corporations, including Kowloon Motor Bus Company, Oxfam, and HSBC,' Mr Chan said.

'We also invited a number of universities in the region, emphasising the need to realise the importance of CSR. This May we are organising a second conference to advocate CSR and train the students to be aware of CSR issues as business leaders.' Referring back to the survey, Mr Schloss said: 'In China there was a big emphasis on companies that advertised responsibly.

'We don't have any direct evidence on this, but we think it is part of the fact that MBA students are aware that advertising standards lag significantly behind Europe and North America and developed markets, and that there is misleading advertising and that they believe companies need to be doing better in these areas.

'The emphasis placed on the impact of companies on the environment and society in Hong Kong and China demonstrates MBA students are aware that corporations in the region have much work to do to improve their CSR performance.

'They are sending a clear signal that companies which fail to address sustainability will suffer loss of reputation in the eyes of this important group.'

This is the eighth annual report by Hill & Knowlton.

Each year the survey focuses on corporate reputation, but each year a different group of people are asked for their views.

Last year, it was financial analysts. It found that those in Hong Kong and the mainland were more focused on CSR than analysts from other areas of the world.

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