Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is becoming more prevalent in our global economy. The other night, a TV commercial informed viewers that a car company is operating a manufacturing plant that has achieved zero landfill status - nothing from its manufacturing efforts goes into a landfill. Going carbon-neutral is also gaining a lot of press. Several high tech companies are making a commitment to offsetting the carbon emissions they produce each year via their technology and/or employee commuting. They do this by supporting the planting of trees, investing in clean technologies, promoting the use of mass transit and car pooling or buying credits to offset the emissions from their business operations. Some organizations have also created foundations that are dedicated to promoting corporate social responsibility and philanthropy and are giving back to the community.

If your organization is thinking about embarking on or enhancing an existing corporate social responsibility program you may want to reach out to your employees prior to doing so. This will help you accomplish the following:

1. Communicate to employees that CSR is valued by your organization.
2. Solicit employees' ideas on ways they would like to contribute to the organization's CSR efforts.
3. Collect useful data on employees' willingness to do so, which will help your planning efforts as well as be a selling point to prospective employees you are trying to recruit.

Here are some tips to help you with your next CSR survey.

• Make sure to collect data via a web-based survey. Using a paper survey will send the wrong message (even if it's on recycled paper).
• Encourage participation by making a donation to a charity or community organization for every completed survey or if you achieve a certain participation level.
• Consider integrating these questions as part of a larger employee survey. By doing so, you can look at the relationship between CSR and other important outcomes like engagement.
• Make sure to include relevant demographic information like work location, job level and business unit.
• Be sure to communicate back to employees on the actions taken based on the survey - for example, if you decide to implement a community out reach program based on the survey, make sure to inform employees that the decision was made based in part on employee input.
  

Here are some survey items you may want to ask in your CSR survey.

1. I am aware of our company's CSR efforts. (Agree- Disagree scale)
2. I understand how our CSR efforts support our mission and vision. (Agree-Disagree scale)
3. Where should we focus our CSR efforts? (Open- ended)
4. How likely would you be to participate in a community day held during the work week? (Likelihood scale)
5. How likely would you be to participate in a community day held on a weekend day? (Likelihood scale)
6. In what ways can we help reduce our impact on the environment? (Open-ended)
7. I would be interested in participating in a mass- transit program (Agree-Disagree scale
8. I would be interested in participating in a car pool program (Agree-Disagree scale
9. I would be interested in participating in (list other programs you are considering) (Agree-Disagree scale)