SB CollaboratoryEmployee Engagement Toolkit

A human-centered guide on how to inspire, design, build, launch and share employee

engagement efforts

THE IMPERATIVESustainability is increasingly a key area of employee interest and their core values. Engaging employees on sustainability can make them happier, more loyal and satisfied, and results in higher value for the firm and a stronger brand position overall.

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Business Case

Designing Employee Engagement

Case Studies

Introduction

Business Case

Designing Employee Engagement

Case Studies

IntroductionThis employee engagement toolkit shows how companies can design, build, launch and manage employee engagement programs in support of sustainability.

INTRODUCTION TO EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT

Engaging employees in ways that are meaningful to the employee leads to both higher individual performance as well as that of the overall firm.

Talent wins, culture enables talent. Engaged employees create great cultures. The best organizations recognize the value of talented employees as well as the challenge of recruiting, retaining and supporting those individuals.

INTRODUCTION TO THE SB COLLABORATORY

The SB Employee Engagement Collaboratory is a peer-to-peer forum to share learnings, approaches and opportunities to foster sustainability in corporate employee engagement programs.

This presentation represents the knowledge, experience, expertise and case studies shared and presented by SB Collaboratory participants

Introduction

Business Case

Designing Employee Engagement

Case Studies

Engaging employees on sustainability has demonstrated business benefits ranging from employee retention to higher returns to an overall stronger brand for attracting the best talent.

BUSINESS CASE

BUSINESS CASE

• Growth and Profitability

• Innovation

• Increased Productivity

• Reduced Absenteeism

• Higher Morale

• Talent Retention (lower

turnover)

• Talent Attraction

• Lower Costs

Benefits of Engaged Employees:

BUSINESS CASE

Organizations with a high employee engagement (9.3 engaged employees : 1 actively disengaged) had 147% higher EPS.

Active disengagement costs the U.S. an estimated $450-$550 billion per year or $2,246 per disengaged employee

Source: Gallup State of the American Workplace (2013)

147%$450-$550 billion per year

Growth and Profitability

BUSINESS CASE

Disengaged Somewhat Engaged Engaged Fully Engaged50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

110%

120%

130%

60%

80%

100%

120%

Employee Return on Salary

Source: Human Capital Institute

Growth and Profitability

BUSINESS CASE

• Engaged employees put in 57% more effort to their job, and are 87% less likely to resign

○ Losing/Replacing a good employee costs 70-200% of the employee’s annual salary

• Companies that build engagement are 16% more likely to hit profit goals, and 13% more likely to

hit revenue goals.Sources: Corporate Executive Board: Employee Engagement Survey

Guardian: The case for corporate sustainability? Better employees

For a large, global company like SAP, every percentage change in employee retention results in €60m change to the bottom line€60m

Productivity & Retention

BUSINESS CASE

Employee engagement affects performance outcomes. Companies with the most engaged employees have:

• Growth and Profitability○ 10% higher customer metrics○ 22% higher profitability

• Productivity and Retention○ 37% lower absenteeism○ 25% lower turnover (in high-turnover organizations)○ 65% lower turnover (in low-turnover organizations)○ 21% higher productivity

• Lower Costs○ 28% less shrinkage○ 48% fewer safety incidents○ 41% fewer patient safety incidents○ 41% fewer quality incidents (defects)

Source: Gallup Q12 Meta-Analysis of 1.4 million employees (2013)

BUSINESS CASE

Employees who have opportunities to make a societal or environmental contribution through their jobs are more satisfied with their work than those who do not have such opportunity.

• Source: Net Impact Talent Report: What Workers Want in 2012

2x

When employees are positive about their organization’s CSR commitment, engagement rises to 86%• Source: Sirota Survey Intelligence: The Enthusiastic Employee86%

Productivity & Retention

BUSINESS CASE

Engaged Employee

Net Income

EPS

Operating Income

$

$

$

Environmental Impact

Source: Josh Henretig, Microsoft

DiscretionaryEffort

Intent to Stay

Performance

RetentionLevels

Innovation

CompetitiveAdvantage $

CONTENTS

Introduction

Business Case

Designing Employee Engagement

Case Studies

DESIGN

DESIGNING EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENTGreat employee engagement programs align a company’s sustainability strategy with employees’ interests. This section details a four phase process on how to design an employee engagement program that will resonate with employees and leadership alike.

DESIGNING EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT

Understand Build Launch Learn

UNDERSTAND

» Explore what’s important to employees as well as how they want to engage / be engaged» Focus on targeted organizational goals of employee engagement » Develop allies / supporters to help create / support employee engagement » Synthesize emergent insights with employees early and often

EXPLOREStart with exploring what’s important to your employees as well as how they want to engage / be engaged through:- Observations: e.g. ,‘ride alongs’ with employees to understand their interests/value and see where/how employee engagement fits with their roles/lives; or use provocations that show possible means of employee engagement- Surveys- seek to understand values and interests

- Small group meetings/brainstorms - Word clouds, online polls, etc.- Use these insights as opportunities on which to act in building your program

Pro-tip: use the IDEO human-centered design toolkit to design your employee engagement program

EXPLORE (CONTINUED)

» Mission/Values: How does your mission and values permeate your workplace practices? How do we want them to permeate? How do you align your approach with your companies brand, expertise and interests?

» Collect baseline cultural and engagement data

» Commission or use an existing workplace cultural study, “pulse survey,” etc.

» Conduct “listening” sessions around compensation, review process, other key issues as they arise so folks feel progress is being made during the design process.

» Find out what activities are already being conducted. What has worked/failed and why?

FOCUS

» Understand your key objectives & your desired long-term vision

» Ensure that your methods of engagement meet your cultural/organizational model: How would you ideally like employees to be engaged, i.e. what would a model employee look like for us?

» Culture: What do we want our culture to look like 6 months or 6 years from now?

» Engage others from leadership or HR to help frame these questions

DEVELOP ALLIES

Seek out and identify Champions/Advocates/Evangelists

• Every program needs champions or embedded program evangelists throughout the organization to help spread the word and keep momentum high

• Identify the key leaders from whom to seek support and buy-in at each level of your organization

• Executive and management participation in engagement activities is key

• Identify who can serve as motivation leaders

• Reach out to HR (CSR without HR is PR) to identify how to potentially coordinate with existing programs.

SYNTHESIZE INSIGHTS

• Synthesize insights gained during the prior phase

- sense making is about identifying themes, points of resonance, opportunities for

interventions, and tensions between what people say and how they act. • Develop opportunity areas based on those

insights• Share insights back with your emerging team to

check in and keep people involved in the process

IMPLEMENTING

BUILDTurning insights into your employee engagement program is the focus of the build phase.

DESIGN PRINCIPLESDesign principles are guideposts for creating great programs. Strive to address these principles in the design and implementation of your employee engagement program:

1. Lead with fun. Making an employee engagement effort enjoyable will make it sticky and result in greater participation.

2. Meet employees where they are.  Start with smaller steps to build engagement and help employees own the initiative.

3. Align to build momentum.  Grounding an employee engagement program in your sustainability strategy strengthens and extends internal support for the effort.

4. Build on what people care about.  Employees are motivated by diverse interests- one size does not fit all. Aligning with those interests creates resonance and allows employee engagement programs to scale across regions, roles and cultures.

5. Don’t think of an elephant.  Use principles from behavioral economics and social psychology to help people engage

The Fun Theory turned a metro staircase into a piano keyboard. With no prompts or signage, 66% more people than normal took the stairs.

BUILD

» Brainstorm employee engagement opportunities that reflect the prior insights.» Align employee engagement opportunities with strategy / cultural norms / goals / existing initiatives / org. assets» Prototype the opportunities to fail fast and succeed sooner» Identify comms / human resources approaches & channels and collaborate to build the launch» Draft metrics of success

BRAINSTORM• The best brainstorms are multidisciplinary- try to engage a cross section of

your organization

• Don’t be afraid to use digital brainstorming tools like https://realtimeboard.com/ or https://drive.google.com

• Well-crafted ‘How Might We?’ (HMW) questions create great brainstorms. HMW’S are a way to optimistically explore opportunities while providing sufficient constraints to spark specific ideas.

• Explore the types of engagement that would work for your company (green teams, HR activities, etc.)

• Spark opportunities for co-creation e.g. a steering committee or another group such as a brown bag brainstorm

• Distill down brainstorm ideas into concepts through grouping according to theme, type of engagement, timing of engagement, etc.

• Strive for 2-4 employee engagement concepts to prototype

ALIGN

• Ensure that your sustainability strategy integrates Employee Engagement

-Identify the themes and elements within your sustainability strategy that be developed with employee engagement

• Are there opportunities to partner with other companies or organizations

- Embedded employee engagement metrics into job description/compensation incentives

- Explicitly empowering employees with the license to operate, permission, the freedom or encouragement to use company time for sustainability actions, without fear of negative consequences from not focusing on one’s "job.“

Example: Annie’s has had a volunteering program for several years, but by making 8

hours of volunteering mandatory in performance review, Annie’s increased hours

per employee by 144% in one year

↑ 144%

PROTOTYPE

•Prototype your 3-4 brainstorming concepts

- prototypes can be physical (paper, etc.) to experiential (service, etc.)• Prototype to learn where/how to improve your concepts and test

interest/resonance with your employees• Iterate quickly on the concepts to improve them• Don’t be afraid to merge successful components of ‘failed’ prototypes into

final conceptsGet expert help – the sustainability team at Eastman shared initial ideas with their design team, resulting in impactful infographics

IDENTIFY RESOURCES

» Identify supporting team for the Employee Engagement effort- leadership, business units, HR, Comms, etc.

» Identify communications resources and channels

- Utilize senior leadership to communicate the importance of new programs

- This creates buy-in, air cover, and assurance that the initiative will be supported

» Understand where and how employees get information and engage—

- Office/desk employees – Internal web, break rooms, email notices, cafeteria, word of mouth

- Plant/MFG employees – Break rooms, cafeterias, word of mouth, Supervisors

- Field/sales employees – email, supervisors

IDENTIFY APPROACHES

Sustainability Innovators & Early Adopters• These people are bought in to

Sustainability.• They will want to receive consistent

communications about Sustainability.• They can be your Sustainability

Champions and help spread your engagement message

• Goal: Engage them early and identify ways they can be the ‘bright spots’ that accelerate the adoption of the effort

Early & Late Majority• These people may or may not know

about Sustainability. • They do not understand sustainability

yet, or how they are impacted/can be involved.

• They do not want consistent communication, they would be interested in learning of events which they can relate to easily (e-recycle days).

• Goal: Engage them with events which relate to them, are easily understandable, and lead to further conversations about Sustainability

Understanding your audiences can help you build a typology of users, such as:

DEVELOP GOALS AND METRICS

• Explore and clarify what success looks like over time

• Explore goals, e.g. do we want to become a ‘best places to work’ or do we want to show reductions in turnover or impact on the environment?

• Align employee engagement goals with overarching sustainability strategy goals

• Draft and share success metrics to garner input and feedback

• Develop specific, targeted and measurable goals- Examples could be participation rates at events, number of activities, hours

volunteers, awareness levels, worker satisfaction, etc.

• Tracking goals and metrics is balance between cost ($/time) and rigor- find the right balance

• Identify/build tracking tools and approaches that work for reporting in your organization

IMPLEMENTING

LAUNCHBringing an employee engagement program to life is an exciting event. Here are some tips/tricks to getting the most out of the launch of your program.

LAUNCH

» Launch employee engagement efforts from the top (CEO is best) » Amplify relevant channels to help create / support employee engagement » Seek out stories of early successes to help spread and scale the effort

LAUNCH

• Launch from the top to garner attention and interest• Ensure that key leaders are part of the employee

engagement launch (show, don’t just tell)

When eBay launched its Little Bits of Good engagement program, the initial

announcement came from the SVP of Corporate Communications and CEO support

was given significant visibility

Interactive• Contests (web)(sustainability related

prizes – nest, solar backpack…)• On-site events (lunch & learns, speaker

series, earth day fair)• Volunteer opportunities (community

engagement opportunities “sponsored”)• “lunch room presence” – not static signage• Green team – activate them – “free

workforce”Static

• Email (do you have the power to email all employees?)

• Internal web-presence (stories, articles, videos, pictures)

• Posters (skew towards “unexpected” – not bound by “corporate” standards)• Elevator clings – stairwells – bathroom

stalls – bathroom mirrors

AMPLIFYUsing the right channels for your employees ensures that the employee engagement program motivates them to action, such as:

SEEK OUT

At Microsoft, an engineer in Ireland not directly tied to any sustainability team developed a novel algorithm for

managing energy supply & peak demand. The company supported his project and ultimately the application was implemented in other parts of the company in other geographies.

• Identify early successes to share and spread• Find and forward non-sustainability spokespeople to

share successes

COMMUNICATING

LEARNExperience is about how you apply what you’ve learned. This phase is about how to build on your employee engagement efforts and share your successes.

LEARN

» Track what’s working through org-appropriate metrics (e.g. employee satisfaction surveys, turnover, reduced health care costs, overall ROI, etc.)» Translate successes and challenges into the right language (e.g. financial metrics / benefits for CFO, satisfaction metrics for recruitment, etc. » Iterate on programs / initiatives to ensure continued success and alignment with other strategic initiatives

TRACK

• Track results of the initiative according to prior established metrics• Dig deeper feedback through online surveys or in-person small

groups• Identify highlights• Build portfolio of impacts that show direction (growth, opportunity)• Gather stories to inspire advocates

○ Stories are stickier than data○ Celebrate employees who are having meaningful impact○ Communicate wins--of any magnitude--to show other

employees what’s possible

TRANSLATE

• Translate data into meaning for different constituencies (e.g. CFO, HR, business units, sustainability/CSR, etc.)

• Synthesize data to build model of success (e.g. Employee Engage = ROI+Reduced Turnover)

ITERATE

• Assess programs across different success metrics to determine where / what success looks like

• Identify elements that can be accentuated, elevated or transplanted to build programs

• Integrate lessons learned and, if necessary, go back through the Build phase

• Determine future portfolio of employee engagement programs

Introduction

Business Case

Designing Employee Engagement

Case Studies

CASE STUDIES

Context: Interest or Pain Point Solution Design: Describe the solution. How will the solution solve the pain point?

eBay believes that disruptive social innovation can be a valuable tool for driving shareholder and customer results. But only if employees are aligned around the shared purpose. The company set an 80/40 goal to have 80% of employees aware of its Social Innovation work, and 40% actively engaged in it. With over 60 offices and 30k employees, an easily accessible, shared place around which employees could engage was necessary.

eBay partnered with Practically Green to utilize its engagement platform.Targets:• 10% of total global employees participating• Active engagement: 10 actions per quarter• Quantifiable impact at work, employees’ homes, and communities• Motivate employees to act as Social Innovation ambassadors

Implementation: How was the solution implemented and what resources were required?

Impact/Results

Practically Green’s cloud-based platform facilitated global roll-out. The program was driven from the Communications department, with strong tone from the top, including visible CEO support and an initial announcement from SVP of Corp. Communications. Projects/actions were aligned with company pillars, and compelling incentives were developed to reward a variety of behaviors.

• 12% of employees participated• 24 actions were taken per person per quarter• 17k gallons of water saved• 21k pounds of waste saved• 263k kWh of energy saved• Ambassadors helped drive participation to surpass goals

CASE STUDIES

Context: Interest or Pain Point Solution Design: Describe the solution. How will the solution solve the pain point?

Listening tour:• Employees were not aware of current sustainability activities• Employees didn’t know what they could do or how they could get

involved• Employees were unaware of involvement of other employees or

executives• Employees felt that the company was not doing enough

Tap into the culture of innovation to move sustainability from “tax” to an accelerator, and unify efforts for collective impact.

1. Inspire Advocates• Increase awareness and engagement• Support employee projects• Equip employees to be sustainability evangelists2. Reinforce Leadership• Showcase leaders’ perspective and highlight business relevance• Increase accountability: follow through on ideas and measure impact3. Celebrate & Measure Success• Communicate and celebrate employee impact of whatever scale• Incentives for measurable impact

Implementation: How was the solution implemented and what resources were required?

Impact/Results

• Connected network of local Green Teams to share successes and best practices between geographies, headed by country managers as local Ambassadors

• Maturity model to measure progress in each country• Internal Carbon Fee used to build capabilities in underperforming

counties through employee-driven proposals; funded through the successes of other countries

• Employee-presented proposals have resulted in over $1m investment in sustainability initiatives through internal carbon fee to build global capabilities

CASE STUDIES

Context: Interest or Pain Point Solution Design: Describe the solution. How will the solution solve the pain point?

Business need: Increasing customer demand for sustainability information and purchase options, but HP sales team wasn’t fully equipped to meet the demand.

Goal:• Differentiate based on sustainability by educating and equipping

sales team sustainability advocates• Provide leadership opportunities for employees through sustainability

Eco Advocate program: toolkit and training program to support and equip Sales to differentiate on sustainability

Sustainability Network: grassroots employee network to

Kiva Partnership, Matter to a Million: $25 credit for each employee to loan to a bottom-of-the-pyramid borrower$4.2 million+ loaned, 40%+ employee participation

Implementation: How was the solution implemented and what resources were required?

Impact/Results

High-potential/performance Eco Advocates were identified ahead of the full roll-out. Early successes from these Advocates were shared to jumpstart the program by communicating accomplishments.

Eco Advocates were also given toolkits to use in their communities to help local businesses improve sustainability performance.

Sustainability Network is the largest employee network. Employees who participated in volunteering opportunities were 13% more likely to recommend HP as a great place to work.

2000 employees attended Eco Advocate training webinar, 350 enrolled as Eco Advocate

Matter to a Million:$4.2 million+ loaned, 40%+ employee participation

CASE STUDIES

Context: Interest or Pain Point Solution Design: Describe the solution. How will the solution solve the pain point?

As an aluminum rolling and recycling company with approximately 10,000 employees in our manufacturing facilities (the rest in offices) around the globe, engaging with the majority of our employees on sustainability is often difficult to do through traditional in-office methods alone (using computers alone for email, e-newsletter or gamification).

• Collaborate with plant champions and external experts to convey importance of sustainability to the future success of our business

• Learn more about our employees through assessing what they know about sustainability and seeking their interest in other sustainability areas to know how we should engage them

• Increase plant employee awareness of sustainability at personal, plant & corporate level to empower them to take individual action at home and in the workplace and ultimately decrease the impact of our operations

Implementation: How was the solution implemented and what resources were required?

Impact/Results

• Used knowledge and expertise of C2ES, a climate and energy nonprofit, as well as internal corporate and plant EHS/sustainability personnel

• On-site sustainability workshop conducted during different plant shifts to maximize attendance

addressing corporate, plant, and individual impacts including sustainability trivia with prizes, local sustainability organization

expo, free lunch and launch of plant cafeteria composting initiative• Ongoing communications - articles/tips for sustainable habits

distributed by email and hard copy before and at least up to 12 months after workshop

• Pre- and post-program survey to assess impact

Program pilot implemented at largest North American facility:• 16 total workshops, each 30 min long, conducted over two days• 477 attendees = 52% plant attendance • 5 local partner organizations at expo, providing employees with at-home

energy-saving opportunities• 98% of participants said they now have a better understanding of what

sustainability means, 97% said they think sustainability is important or extremely important to long-term success of Novelis, 95% of participants said the workshop helped them to see more ways that sustainability is related to their job or life at home

• Identified key sustainability topics employees want to learn more about• Due to success, program will serve as template for future plant rollout

CASE STUDIESAdd a case of your own.

Context: Interest or Pain Point Solution Design: Describe the solution. How will the solution solve the pain point?

Enter Enter

Implementation: How was the solution implemented and what resources were required?

Impact/Results

Enter Enter

The SB Collaboratory platform is an exclusive benefit of Sustainable Brands Corporate Membership and select passionate participants from the broader SB community.

The Collaboratory convenes

participants who want to work together to develop solutions to the shared systemic issues facing sustainability professionals.

To learn more about the SB Collaboratory, upcoming initiatives, and how to participate, please visit:

http://www.sustainablebrands.com/community/collaboratory

ABOUT THIS REPORT

Many thanks to SB Advisory Member Ted Howes for chairing this collaboratory

COLLABORATORS

APPENDIXAdditional information, tools, references & frameworks

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PHASES OF DESIGN