Employees are an important stakeholder group in a corporation, perhaps the most important stakeholder group. After all, what is a company if not a collection of people working toward common objectives?

Most corporations recognize the importance of employees and invariably produce statements holding employees as the greatest asset. However, in discussions and practices of corporate citizenship, employees are barely visible. Until now, corporate citizenship has been mainly focused on externalities – the community, the environment, supply chains. Internal features of corporate citizenship, especially employees, seem to have been largely left out of the equation. The “place” of employees in the citizenship paradigm has become an intriguing question. As a key stakeholder, how can employees become a more central focus within corporate citizenship?

By placing employees at the very heart of a company’s citizenship, there is a need to reconfigure the citizenship paradigm, and see it as an inside out approach, rather than one that starts outside, with other stakeholder groups, and moves inward. Until now, there have been entire movements devoted to the environment, community involvement, consumers and shareholders, to name a few, but nothing about employees and citizenship. Placing employees at the heart of the corporate citizenship paradigm is not easy. Indeed, employees are the hardest stakeholder group to satisfy, given that they belong to multiple stakeholder groups, exist within their organizations, and get to see on a daily basis any flaws. However, this “domestic” knowledge is a reason why employees must be included in the citizenship equation.

This In Focus report recommends engaging employees by putting them at the heart of corporate citizenship. Practical tips to accomplish this include:

• Create employee engagement processes that involve practical initiatives such as volunteer programs, community involvement programs, and matching gifts programs
  
  
• Link employee engagement activities with performance measures and business strategy
  
  
• Build awareness and understanding of corporate citizenship for all employees
  
  
• Create internal task forces to engage employees around corporate citizenship issues
  
  
• Embed core values into daily business operations and communicate them to all employees
  
  
• Connect Human Resources to the company's corporate citizenship agenda

The report also highlights three corporations - Expedia, Reuters and Prudential Financial - to provide examples of how firms can engage their employees and build a sense of loyalty with them.