csr for employee engagement white paper - benefacto · 2016-10-10 · csr for employee engagement...
TRANSCRIPT
CSR for Employee Engagement White Paper
Introduction author: Ben Darlington, Benefacto
ContentsIntroduction
Employee engagement
Shared values
What does this actually mean?
Volunteering
Volunteering can boost employee engagement
It makes people feel good
It gets people together
You get something done
Get a sense of perspective
Top tips
Fundraising
Building employee engagement
Fundraising builds a sense of community
Your employees are your best ambassadors
Link your mission to high-impact same-sector causes
Top tips
Sustainability
Sustainability programs and workforce engagement
Leading from the front
Case Study: Innocent in action
Improved wellbeing
Better bottom line
Top tips
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Employee engagementIt’s not exactly equivalent to job satisfaction or
happiness at work. Rather, it is defined as the emotional
commitment that an employee has to the company and
its goals.
It’s official: Half of UK employees are disengaged at work, the biggest contributing factor being the chasm between individual and corporate values. In this series of articles Benefacto, Do Nation and JustGiving explore how a compelling approach to CSR can help promote shared values and by doing so revive and promote worker engagement, and create more energetic, committed and rigorous teams.
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For an engaged employee at work
It’s not merely a transaction made between 9-and-5, it’s about
genuinely sharing in the fate of an organisation and having an
investment in its success and growth.
Engaged employees self-select to go the extra mile, create energy
within their teams and are ambassadors for the organisation both
in and outside the workplace.
Despite this clear strategic importance, engagement levels have
been demonstrated to be pretty shocking in the UK. In their study
The Science of Ingagement, the PR company Weber Shandwick
asked employees across the country about job satisfaction,
attitudes to their employers’ reputation and success, and their
feeling of worth in the company.
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50%of British employees simply aren’t engaged at work
Boiling this down to an overall measure of engagement, the figures are stark
What this means in real terms is that employee retention,
productivity, team cohesion and wellbeing suffer and this is
naturally reflected in the bottom line: businesses with engaged
people show 6 per cent higher net profit margins.
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Shared valuesThere are many contributing factors to what makes work
engaging for people, from having varied, interesting projects
to get your teeth into to a comfortable, convivial working
environment or an inspiring, innovative boss. In fact, the
‘Ingagement’ study identifies nineteen. Suddenly, looking at their
Table of Elements, the role and opportunities for CSR becomes
clearly illuminated.
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Of all the drivers of engagement, the biggest problem concerns
‘Shared Values’: only 13 per cent of employees feel that their
employer understands and shares their personal world view, moral
stance and values.
This condition puts CSR clearly in the frame as a remediating
force. In terms of recommendations for improving employee
engagement, Weber Shandwick suggest that the first action point
for any company is to focus on creating a climate of shared values
and empathy.
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What does this actually mean?
And how do companies go about it?
The truth is that people have many and varied personal values, yet
many values are shared, especially within particular communities
(if you’re not familiar with the work, we recommend reading ‘58
values we live by’). Values help direct behaviour, which is why
sharing values helps direct common behaviour.
Although as a profit-making organisation — where promoting
values might not represent a business’s principal aims —
demonstrating a commitment to the values that are of mutual
benefit to the company and its workforce will clearly pay
dividends. This, of course, is where CSR comes in.
This whitepaper will focus on three key areas with real potential to
develop a climate of shared values and ultimately engage
your staff.
We will drill down into how you can focus on the three key topics
of Fundraising, Sustainability and Volunteering so as to emphasise
your corporate values and engage more of your people.
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The authorsBen Darlington
Ben Darlington looks after new partnerships and possibilities at
Benefacto.
Easily described as lastminute.com but for booking volunteering
– Benefacto provides professional volunteers with a mechanism
to find and book meaningful, one-off, short-term employee
volunteering opportunities.
Ben has been involved with the project since its inception back
in 2012, building the website and developing the graphic design.
He is always looking for ways for charities, businesses and social
enterprises to work together. If you’d like to work with Benefacto
talk to Ben at [email protected].
Isabel Sanchez
Isabel is the Corporate Partnerships Lead for JustGiving, an
online fundraising platform that enables people to raise money
for causes they care about. Since 2001, they have raised $4 billion
for good causes. At JustGiving, Isabel looks after corporate
partnerships, helping companies engage their employees in
fundraising. She is also a board member of Evolve Housing +
Support, and sits on the development committee of the Ministry
of Stories.
If you want to see how JustGiving can help with your community
initiatives, please get in touch at [email protected].
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The authorsHermione Taylor
Hermione is founder of Do Nation, an online pledge platform
aiming to make sustainable living mainstream.
Do Nation began when Hermione cycled to Morocco, asking
friends to support her with their own small challenges – from
cycling to work to wasting less food.
Since then Do Nation has evolved to be used by companies,
universities, and marathon runners alike – all using it to engage
people around them in sustainable behaviour changes. Their
clients include Siemens, Arup, and innocent drinks.
Hermione is on the board of FastForward 2030 and has been
an advisor on behaviour change and social value for Coca Cola
Enterprises and 2degrees.
CSR for Employee Engagement Volunteering
Author: Ben Darlington, Benefacto
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Volunteering can boost employee engagement
In addition to supporting local charities with skills and
elbow-grease, high-impact volunteering can also benefit
businesses.
We’ve identified five key areas where employer-supported
volunteering (ESV) can positively impact the bottom line.
As we identified in the introduction, employee engagement is an
‘emotional commitment’ that connects people with their place at
work. Attraction, retention, productivity, purpose and even brand
awareness all weave into the complex cultural fabric that makes an
organisation inspire, motivate and energise its people.
In this article I will dig a bit deeper into the link between employee
volunteering and employee engagement and explore exactly why
putting a shift in at your local homeless shelter or job club during
work time can boost engagement when you get back to your desk.
Employee attraction and retention
Productivity and purpose Brand Awareness
Learning and Development
Cost effective giving
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It makes people feel good
Volunteering makes people feel good about themselves.
It’s often tempting to get all quantitative when we’re talking about business
Let’s not forget that when we’re talking about engagement we’re
talking about people: we don’t need a graph to know that happy
people are more engaged employees.
Volunteering makes people feel good about themselves. It’s
satisfying to feel you’re helping people, putting your skills to good
use and contributing to the common good. We are inherently
social creatures and in a chaotic, confrontational and often lonely
world, helping someone around you is a great way to feel good.
It’s also important to take note that we all work too much (even
Deloitte says so!) and taking volunteering days is another small
way to redress work-life balance.
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It gets people togetherVolunteering is all about connecting people.
Whether you spend the day at an older persons’ day
centre getting to know someone new or build on fledging
relationships with colleagues on a small-team day it’s all
about people.
In a professional environment the average person spends
upwards of eight hours a day in front of a screen. So, ditch the
smartphone and spend time with someone different to relieve
stress, ignite new relationships and build on existing ones.
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You get something doneSometimes the projects we work on in modern life can
feel as long and inconclusive as the latest series of Game
of Thrones.
It’s often tricky to see the impact of one’s daily toil or even see a
piece of work through from conception to completion. Short-term
volunteering is a great foil to the malaise of the indefinite project.
Whether it’s helping someone writing a CV, tidying up a garden
or distributing food parcels, many volunteering opportunities will
allow you to help somebody in the space of a day and that’s got
to feel good!
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Get a sense of perspective
If you have days which just seem like one blur from
busy tube to hectic office to all-too-short-evening, you’ll
understand that sometimes it’s easy to be blinkered to
the world beyond the daily grind.
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Employee volunteering exposes you to a different side of the
place you live in and gives a window into the lives of other people;
people who are often less fortunate than ourselves. I challenge
anyone to spend a day at a homeless concern and not find
themselves re-evaluating their job, colleagues and workplace.
Give your other CSR projects purpose
An employee volunteering scheme often sits alongside other CSR
initiatives like fund-raising and office sustainability programs.
Giving people the chance to go and work within charities is a
terrific way of bringing other projects to life and giving them
purpose and relevance.
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As one program gains momentum you can expect to see cross-
pollination with other areas of responsible business. One of the
first volunteers we had volunteer through Benefacto is now a
permanent mentor to the team at Drive Forward Foundation,
and another of our corporate partners regularly makes in-kind
donations to the charities it volunteers with.
Reaching a level of ‘CSR maturity’ within business is truly the
Holy Grail from an employee engagement perspective. If an
organisation can really embody a culture of social values, it’s
a huge step towards bridging the values gap we identified in
the introduction.
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Top tips for making a startSo you’re sold!
There are many ways that companies can get involved in
volunteering, and whilst I would obviously recommend the
Benefacto platform, I will leave you with three points to consider
whatever you choose.
Convenience
Professional people are busy; you need to give your
colleagues a clear path into volunteering. Co-ordinating
a volunteering day is really time-consuming; the truth is
you can’t expect people to arrange these on a
case-by-case basis.
Choice
Charity is personal and if you want broad engagement in
your ESV you need to reflect this in your program with a
range of options. People like to contribute to a cause that
chimes with them.
Culture
This is often the biggest barrier, but when done right,
creating a great volunteering culture can really contribute to
employee engagement. Simply put, you need to make sure
your colleagues are not only aware of your policy, but feel
genuinely supported to use their volunteering leave.
CSR for Employee Engagement Fundraising
£
£
Author: Isabel Sanchez, JustGiving
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Building employee engagement
Developing an engaging, high-impact CSR
program at a company is a journey, and like every
journey, you have to start with the first step.
It would be nice to hit the ground running – with
colleagues regularly volunteering during work hours,
mentoring or supporting charities as trustees and through
pro-bono work. The reality tends to be more modest.
Indeed ‘charity begins at work’, because most community
engagement in the workplace starts with grass-roots
fundraising: bake sales, sponsored bike rides and
Christmas jumper days!
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For example, JustGiving works with companies to engage their
employees in fundraising programmes
Since
2011 we’ve helped over
1000 companies raise over
£40m for causes, contributing to the
£2.5bn value given annually by British businesses.
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There’s a good reason for success of workplace fundraising
People enjoy office-based activities because they’re fun,
rewarding and easy to get involved in. They also don’t push
people out of their comfort zone – something that’s really
important in building people’s confidence with community work.
Just as it is easy to get a fund-raising initiative off the ground in
the workplace, it’s also a great place to start building CSR into
your employee engagement strategy. Empowering your staff to
take the first step into community investment helps align your
corporate values with those of the workforce. We’re going to
explore this idea a bit more in this article.
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Fundraising builds a sense of community
Modern corporate life can feel pretty silo-ed; people
often work hard within their specific teams whilst
at the same time rarely getting a sense of the
organisation as a whole.
Fundraising within the office allows people to meet and to build
relationships across different functions, seniorities and, often,
offices. It can strengthen the shared identity of the organisation
and foster better team working. Fundamentally, it promotes
powerful cross-community bonding.
A great example of this is the Deloitte UK’s 2015 Global Challenge,
where 300 employees from different teams and levels took part in
one of four global challenge treks around the world, raising about
£1.5m for three charity partners.
In a vast multinational company, a unifying project like Deloitte’s
Global Challenge helps people to identify the ‘imagined
community’ to which they belong.
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Your employees are your best ambassadors
Fundraising helps your teams build positive relationships
beyond the company.
Your employees can help spread the word about the work you as
an organisation do in your community, particularly through the
medium of social media.
At JustGiving we did our own #nomakeupselfie which raised money for a good cause and brought colleagues from different teams together
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On JustGiving, each fundraiser that links to Facebook has an
average of 338 friends. As such, each time your employees share
their fundraising activities on Facebook a captive audience will
see your initiatives, encouraging their support.
Fundraising is also the easiest way for people to start a
relationship with charities. From fundraising, your employees have
the opportunity to build relationships with charities which really
begin to add value to their contribution and the charity’s work,
through such things as volunteering, pro-bono work and beyond.
£
£
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Link your mission to high-impact same-sector causes
You can really improve how your people perceive the value
of the work they do everyday by using your fundraising
power to make a positive change in similar sectors.
Through fundraising your employees are making an impact on
causes by raising the vital funds that enable them to continue
their good work. Some companies have opted to fundraise for
specific projects. Thames Water, for example, is raising money for
WaterAid’s Malawi Appeal.
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Convinced? Here are our top tips to get your employees involved
Make it compelling
Get employees excited and motivated to fundraise.
Host a friendly competition between teams, for example,
if your office is quite competitive. Spread the news about
your new programme and use different media to make it
engaging especially using videos and images. Every office
will have its ‘charity enthusiast’; identify them and get them
to tell their success stories to get the message across.
Involve key members of your company
Ask influential individuals and those in authority to spread
the word:
• Senior management: it shows your colleagues that
fundraising is a priority within your company’s strategy
• Charity champions: having a peer shows how important
fundraising is locally.
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Show your impact
Explain to your colleagues what impact their fundraising
would be. For example, if your company has a target of
£50,000, what would that mean for your charity partner?
This would give your employees something to work towards.
Equally, as a CSR track-record is developed, make sure that
the impact of past successes is communicated clearly.
As seen above, engaging employees in fundraising has
tangible benefits for companies and charities alike. Most
importantly, it serves as a first step for employees to get
involved in the third sector. Often fundraising can be seen as
the initial rung in the ‘CSR ladder’: individuals often fundraise
first before they move on to greater levels of community
involvement. Therefore, not only do fundraising initiatives
boost employee morale, but they also empower individuals
to support causes and their local community, regardless of
their experience.
CSR for Employee Engagement Sustainability
Author: Hermione Taylor, Do Nation
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Sustainability Programs and workforce engagement
Until recently climate scepticism was the main challenge
facing the environmental movement.
Thankfully, nowadays there is little dispute over the need to
change. The obstacle we face now is knowing how to change. The
complex, global, and serious nature of the problem leaves many
people paralysed, unsure where to begin.
Together our individual actions really do add up to make
a big difference; experiencing this first hand can be
hugely empowering.
The simplest place to start is with our own actions:
Cycling to work
Taking shorter showers
Using video conferencing
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These facts offer a fantastic opportunity to employers
Our workplace is the biggest, tightest community we
belong to, supported by a clear structure and regular
communications channels. It offers the key ingredients
needed for us to really experience the power of collective
action. By capitalizing on this we can support our employees
to create change together through personal actions.
Your business can benefit three-fold. You can tap into significant
environmental impacts, improve employee health and wellbeing,
and improve how your people feel about their workplace.
42 per cent of the UK’s carbon emissions are a result of individual
actions
42%
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Leading from the front
Use the organisational power of your company
to catalyse powerful group actions.
This demonstrates commitment to your corporate values in
a tangible, everyday way and raises the profile of CSR as an
important, real and working element of the company’s culture.
By making sustainability personal, people relate to it. Conversations start, attitudes change, and sustainability begins to influence employee decision making. The ripples started by this process can soon turn into waves.
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Case Study:Innocent in action
In the build up to the COP21 climate talks, Innocent
Drinks used Do Nation to ask their staff to make
personal carbon-saving pledges.
Encouraging their European offices to see which could make the
most pledges, almost two-thirds of their employees took part,
committing to try things like boiling less water in their kettle,
eating less meat, and taking the stairs, for two months.
Do Nation’s campaign achieved truly worthwhile carbon savings.
It also widely increased employees’ awareness and ownership of
their own company’s sustainability strategy and, critically, of the
company’s Sustainability Team: the wider employee base suddenly
knew who they all were, what they did, and why it mattered.
Read the full case study
bananas worth of carbon saved annually
1,204,491,
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Improved wellbeingPro-environmental behaviours also tend to
benefit health and wellbeing.
Taking the stairs instead of the lift is a classic example
of a simple way we can fit exercise into our everyday lives
whilst saving energy; likewise cycling to work instead of driving.
Of
10,000 people recording pledges through Do Nation
69%reported improved well-being, and
5,000reported it improved health and fitness
The business case is obvious in terms of reduced absenteeism, yet
simply in terms of quality of life – who wouldn’t want a happier,
healthier workplace?
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Better bottom lineTypically, behavioural change programmes can cut 10
percent off a business’s energy bills, whilst also reducing
costs associated with environmental taxes.
Perhaps the biggest business benefit is less tangible, this being
in employee attraction, motivation, and retention.
A further seven in ten employees wanted actively to help their
company meet its CSR commitments.
About eight out of ten millennials consider a company’s
social and environmental commitments when deciding
where to work.
8/10
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Top tips for a sustainability program that will engage your colleagues
Keep it simple
Give your employees ideas of simple, everyday actions they
can take right now. Things like adjusting their laptop’s power
settings, unsubscribing from junk mail, or boiling less water
in the kettle. Support each with clear, practical advice.
And don’t use the ‘s’ word - ‘sustainability’ is jargon, useful
for professionals but unhelpful when it comes to applying it
to your everyday habits.
Focus vs choice
Strike a balance between having a clear focus and being too
prescriptive. It’s important that you give your employees
choice, but don’t overwhelm them with too many options,
which promotes indecision.
Do Nation encourages clients to select five high-priority Do
Actions particularly relevant to their organisation, then 10-20
others to provide choice.
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Team competition
Team competition is always a winner. It allows delegation
of responsibility to team leaders, who are then personally
motivated to engage their colleagues, thus reaching spheres
of influence further than you yourself could manage.
Follow up
Dull perhaps yet vital, post-event follow-up helps you
understand the impact and reinforces the commitments in
employee’s minds, helping to ensure there is lasting impact.
Platforms such as Do Nation will take care of follow-up for
you; in fact, it’s one of the things they’ve put most love,
sweat and tears into.
Collective impact - beyond your walls
Finally, show your employees – individually and collectively
– what their actions mean. Measure and demonstrate the
impact clearly, focusing on the part they played in their
organisation’s achievements and then, say, at an industry-
wide or regional level.
Demonstrate achievements in terms of carbon, water, or
waste savings – but remember that plain numbers don’t
tell a good story. Do Nation recently developed a carbon
visualiser to help bring data to life, making it more engaging
and meaningful to your people.
JustGiving, Do Nation and Benefacto all work with companies to
help them get the best out of their CSR programs. Please don’t
hesitate to get in touch if you’d like to explore how to develop
your community investment and build a culture of social value at
your company.
For Sustainability ideas please contact Hermione at
[email protected] or 07793 155 044
For Fundraising please contact Isabel at [email protected]
or 0207 067 0959
For Volunteering advice please contact Ben Darlington at
[email protected] or 07872 522 560.