For most businesses, being a good corporate citizen is crucial, not only to succeed, but in some cases to survive. Many customers, clients, investors, potential employees and even other businesses will only engage with companies perceived as acting responsibly. So when businesses do the right thing, they want everyone to know about it. That’s where Ted Deutsch has his staff come in.

Deutsch is the CEO of Taft Communications, a strategic communications firm in Lawrenceville that has staked out a position as a proponent and promoter of corporate responsibility. For this edition of NJBIZ Conversations, Editor Jeff Kanige spoke with Deutsch about the firm’s approach, rise of environmental, social and governance — or ESG — investing and how corporate behavior can affect recruiting efforts.

“You’ve got millennials and younger coming up who are really making choices based on not just how exciting the product or the technology or the service of the company, but what the company stands for,” he said. “How the organization behaves. How committed they are to sustainability. We see it in the people who want to work for us on a smaller scale, and we hear from other companies that that’s really critical. You can look at Glassdoor, they have similar numbers about the percentage of millennials, in particular, but all employees who rate that among the most important things sometimes even above pay competitiveness how responsible they view their employer.” Watch the full interview HERE.