Dive Brief:
- A 2015 Pew Research center study found that more than half (53%) of consumers said that when deciding which companies to do business with, they support those that treat and pay employees well. Of that number, 13% said it’s extremely important to patronize those businesses and 40% felt it’s important to do so.
- But slightly under half (43%) of consumers in the study don’t think supporting employee-friendly companies is important. Of that number, 32% said it wasn’t important and to 14%, it wasn’t important at all.
- A significant number of study respondents (67%) wanted to support family-friendly businesses, but couldn’t justify the extra cost of patronizing them. Only 28% pay extra to do business with companies who treat their workers well.
Dive Insight:
Finding out how well businesses treat their employees was a roadblock for many consumers in the Pew study. Only 23% said finding accurate information about employees’ pay and working conditions at companies was easy, meaning transparency was clearly an issue.
Employee-friendly companies are often successful at recruiting, hiring and retention. But such a study does bring into question the importance of externally communicating company culture. An organization likely would need to consider the kind of external culture they want to exude (be it low prices, strong customer service, or otherwise) and adjust inwardly as necessary.