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Exclusive: CSR should be maintained even when budgets are tight.

More employees (31%) would rather see their organisations maintain budgets for CSR/volunteering activities than cut back in the short term to preserve jobs (19%). This is the surprising but somewhat heartening response from more than 1,500 staff interviewed for HR magazine by Harris Interactive.

According to the survey, just 5% of staff said their bosses had ceased providing volunteering opportunities, while 30% said budgets had remained unchanged, despite the recession. Nearly 10% of staff identified that budgets were beginning to return to volunteering opportunities specifically, while a further 14% said they knew of budget returning to all areas of CSR in general. Just 7% of staff thought their company had put CSR on the back burner in order to ride out the recession. Female staff were most likely to believe CSR budgets should be maintained, irrespective of the economic slowdown - 32% vs 30% of males. (See our feature, Engaged in Doing Good, p44).

Fieldwork dates: 14 - 21 October.

Interview method: online via the Harris Interactive Online panel.

Sample size of 1,576 included all GB adults 16+ working full- or part-time.

- Harris Interactive is a member of The British Polling Council. For more information, contact Nikki Bateman at nbateman@harrisinteractive.com

- Which one of the following statements best describes your feelings about the principles of having a CSR policy?

Companies should commit to their CSR policies continuously, not just when times are good - 31%

In difficult economic climates it's more important to maintain jobs than commit to a continuous CSR policy - 19%

It's not a company's responsibility to save the planet, so it's up to each one to decide whether it wants to have a CSR policy or not - 11%

Not sure - 39%