PASSION AND PURPOSE
IMPACTS PERFORMANCE
Corporations that focus on infusing their employee experience
with passion and purpose are reaping significant benefits. Recently,
Benevity evaluated the activity of more than two million users
from 188 enterprise companies and found that turnover dropped
by an average of 57 per cent in the employee group most deeply
connected to their companies’ giving and volunteering efforts.
Clearly, there are strong links between passion, purpose and per-formance,
and Benevity is increasingly seeing that employee-centric
“Goodness” programs – which include giving, volunteering, grant
making and prosocial actions – are a potent driver of employee engage-ment.
When people are empowered to be their best selves at work and
in their daily lives, the entire organization (and the world) benefits.
BUILDING A PURPOSE-DRIVEN
EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE
So how can you, as an HR professional, harness Goodness to boost
employee engagement? The good news is that you don’t need a big
strategy session or expensive consultants. You can begin by lever-aging
your existing giving, volunteering, grant making and other
social impact programs. Here are five practical ways to get started:
1. SHOWCASE YOUR COMPANY’S SOCIAL MISSION
Today’s workers want to belong to organizations that share their
values. Whether it’s diversity and inclusion, environmental sus-tainability,
investing in the local community or all of the above,
advertising your company’s social mission in job postings and
internal communications can not only help attract and retain more
employees, but also people who are a good fit for your culture. For
example, in some companies, employees aren’t even aware of the
grants their employer makes to charities and non-profits. Letting
them know – and potentially matching employee donations to
those causes – can help engender a sense of pride and connec-tion
to their place of employment. When employees’ core values
are aligned with those of their company, there’s a greater chance
that they will be satisfied and engaged in their jobs.
2. REFRESH YOUR BENEFITS PROGRAM
WITH SOCIAL IMPACT IN MIND
Foosball and free lunches are all well and good but supporting the
causes your people are most passionate about will really light their
fires; especially when that support comes as paid volunteer time
and donation matching. Making these Goodness-related “perks”
part of your benefits program is a great way to attract and retain
talent. Whether it’s committing a set amount of matching dollars
for each employee on an annual basis, letting employees choose
which causes they support or offering paid volunteer time, there
are a number of ways that HR departments can leverage Goodness
as a benefit without any additional investments or costs.
3. EMBED GOODNESS INTO TRAINING
AND DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS
Start early. Adding a volunteer component to your new hire ori-entation
program is a good way to introduce people to your
corporate Goodness initiatives and foster a purpose-driven
culture right out of the gate. In fact, a Deloitte survey on volun-teerism
showed that 70 per cent of respondents believe volunteer
activities are more likely to boost employee morale than company-sponsored
happy hours.
Benevity uses this approach to begin engaging their employ-ees
early with Goodness. New employees take part in a volunteer
activity during their week-long company orientation and this sets
the tone for their corporate culture. This kind of event is cost-effective
and also gives employees the opportunity to have fun
and begin building meaningful relationships with their coworkers
and the local community. Additionally, it teaches employees how
to track their volunteer time in your company’s CSR software,
making them more likely to use the software to do more good in
the future.
4. GET PEOPLE ENGAGED IN DOING GOOD
Most of today’s workforce are looking for ways to make their
work have more meaning and impact. One way many companies
are doing this is through programs that empower people to par-ticipate
in gamified activities that promote prosocial action. This
is the basis of Benevity’s recently announced Missions product.
Companies like PayPal are using it to get their people involved in
challenges that promote sustainable behaviour where employees
sign up for activities to reduce their carbon footprint, water and
waste consumption and increase their energy savings. The best
part of these programs is that they appeal to employees across var-ious
demographics and locations and have seen great participation
from remote workers, who often struggle to find tangible ways to
engage with a company’s culture and values.
5. LET DATA GUIDE YOUR DECISIONS
Before setting out to build the employee experience of your
people’s dreams, you’ll need to first understand what those
dreams are. How do they prefer to engage? Which causes really
fuel their passions? When are they most likely to participate?
Gaining these valuable insights will help you make the most
effective decisions. And here’s where the right technology can be
a game-changer. When all of your people’s Goodness activities
are tracked in one place, it is far easier to gain actionable insights
into your people’s passions and preferences; helping you to build
even more effective and resonant programs. For example, Total
Quality Logistics used employee giving data to discover that
their people were passionate about supporting the military and
veterans, and then built programs around that pillar to further
increase engagement.
According to a Great Place to Work survey of more than
350,000 organizations, people who felt their employers made a
positive impact on the world were four times more likely to indi-cate
their teams give extra to get the job done; 11 times more likely
to say they plan to stay with their organizations for the long haul
and 14 times more likely to say they look forward to coming to
work. The bottom line is that when it comes to the employee expe-rience,
Goodness matters. n
Vivian Farris is VP people at Benevity.
talent management
28 ❚ AUGUST 2018 ❚ HR PROFESSIONAL
/citizenship-deloitte-volunteer-impact-research.html
/citizenship-deloitte-volunteer-impact-research.html
/launching-missions-employee-engagement
/corporate-responsibility
/corporate-responsibility
/blog
/