How Corporate Citizenship Can Help HR Build a Better Workforce

How Corporate Citizenship Can Help HR Build A Better Workforce

Session Description“How Corporate Citizenship Can Help HR Build a Better Workforce”

Big international companies like Wal-Mart and GE and smaller local businesses like Jiffy Lube of Utah and VISTA Staffing Solutions use corporate citizenship to build employee morale and loyalty, improve employee productivity, skills and teamwork, and serve as an effective recruiting tool. In this workshop, Paul Jones from Alden Keene and Associates will draw on national and local case studies to show how HR can:

• Build a better workforce using corporate citizenship• Start a new corporate citizenship campaign from scratch• Re-energize existing corporate citizenship campaigns,

even under today's budgetary pressures.

“An Emotional Bank Account is a metaphor that describes the amount of trust that’s been built up in a relationship.”

Corporate Citizenship Can Help HR:

• Build Employee Morale & Loyalty.• Increase Employee Profitability, Skills and

Teamwork.• Improve Employee Recruiting and

Retention and Put a Pipeline of Talent in Place.

Help Build Employee Morale & Loyalty

• The Council on Foundations found that employees involved in employee-sponsored community events were 30 percent more likely to want to continue working for the company than those who did not.

• A Fleishman-Hillard survey of employees found that 87 percent expressed greater loyalty to socially-engaged employers.

• A set of studies commissioned by IBM and conducted by UCLA Professor David Lewin discovered that employee morale at companies that were actively involved in their communities was as much as three times higher than in unengaged companies.

• A study of 22 marketing campaigns, reported in Journal of Marketing, found that even when cause-marketing campaigns didn’t achieve expected economic benefits, they were still effective at reaching goals like motivating the workforce.

Increase Employee Profitability, Skills and Teamwork

• An internal study at Sears showed that a 5-point gain in employee attitudes results in a 1.3-point improvement in customer satisfaction, which in turn drove a 0.5 percent improvement in revenue.

• Staffers who participated in employee volunteer programs self-measured their performance and showed an average 17 percent improvement in performance from before the experience to after. Supervisors assessed the improvement at 14 percent.

• In a survey of US corporations, 97 percent said that corporate volunteer programs boost employee teamwork.

• Timberland asserts that its employee service-learning program, organized and managed by City Year, represents a cost-effective way to teach employees teambuilding skills.

Helps Improve Employee Profitability, Skills and

Teamwork II• Cone compared workplaces that support a cause versus those

that did not and found that:– 90 percent of employees at a workplace that supports a cause (versus

56 percent without) report a strong sense of pride towards company values.

– 87 percent (versus 67 percent) feel a strong sense of loyalty.– 56 percent wish their employers would do more for causes.– 87 percent (versus 51 percent) wish their company would measure

success in social and financial terms.

Improve Employee Recruiting and Retention and Put a Pipeline of Talent

in Place

• Scott Brown, a systems integrator at Lenscrafters reports on his experience with the company’s “Give the Gift of Sight” program; “Gift of Sight has meant so much, both personally and professionally, that I’m just not willing to give it up.”

• Timberland’s attributes in part its relationship with City Year for helping it land on Fortune magazines list of the “100 Best Companies to Work For.”

• Humanistic approaches can smooth the tensions of mergers.

• People of diverse origins, races, and ethnicities, can find common ground in corporate citizenship.

• Corporate citizenship can help leaders cultivate the skills to face global business challenges.

• Places doctors in temporary work assignments in the US, Australia and New Zealand, something called locum tenens.

• Founded in 1990.• Headquartered in Salt Lake City.• Brenda Moland, VISTA’s socially-

conscious travel manager department, heard a news item about the extreme need for food donations at the Utah Food Bank.

• In a staff meeting she suggested the company sponsor a food drive.

• CompHealth, a competitor, also headquartered in Salt Lake City.

Case: VISTA Staffing Services ‘Food Fight’

VISTA Staffing is a Competitive Environment

“We generally have some type of sales contest in the works—Fantasy VISTA (like Fantasy Football, complete with a draft and a Super Bowl), Spin to Win, Mind the Gap—earn $$ for making our spread. We mix in programs to support our employees throughout the year. Most famous is our Holiday Health Drive. Employees get points and win prizes for eating healthfully, exercising, volunteering in the community, reducing stress, maintaining a healthy weight, and stopping smoking from November 1 to January 1. 85% of our employees participated this year.”

Carolyn Rose, VISTA Staffing

Instead, of a food drive, Katie Abby from Vista challenged CompHealth’s David Baldridge to a ‘Food Fight.’

Vista Fueled the Fight in Emails to Employees

“She followed it up with email pleas to save her from this fate. The “Save Katie” emails were flying. We engaged our out-of-state offices via email as well and they seemed to appreciate it.”

Carolyn Rose, VISTA Staffing

The Ultimate Winner Was the Patrons of the Food Bank

“Of note, productivity as measured by phone calls and days booked did not suffer during the contest. “Our contests are also a big recruiting tool for us. We talk about the contests…in the employee recruiting section of our website and in all of our job postings.”

Carolyn Rose, VISTA Staffing

Case: IBM’s Blue Project ‘Eternal Egypt’

• Eternal Egypt, followed on the heels of a similar project at the famed Hermitage museum.

• Egyptian government officials asked IBM to make Egyptian cultural more accessible.

• This was entirely a nonprofit endeavor. Although as it turns out, IBM got a substantial contract from a related undertaking.

• IBM gave away expertise and time, rather than cash.

• Eternalegypt.org one result. • The multimedia is accessible online and by cell

phone, which is vital. • Kiosks are in key parts of the country. • It is possible, for instance, to take a stunningly

realistic virtual tour of the interiors of the pyramids at Giza without actually stepping inside.

Case: IBM’s Blue Project ‘Eternal Egypt’

• Eternal Egypt was done on company time. But that’s not always the case.

• When IBM got involved with Second Life, the virtual world, nearly 200 IBMers self-organized to put together the company’s presence there, all of it on their own time.

• “It was one of the most exciting years I’ve spent in IBM, to watch this group come together outside every structure IBM has,” says John Tolva, who also worked on the Eternal Egypt project:

Nine Lessons From IBM’s Blue Projects

• It’s about expertise not cash.• Change is what counts. The

public must care about the problems and be willing to support the solutions.

• Innovation is the pathway. But the innovation must be sustainable, not one-off.

• Target recipients most likely to succeed, not the neediest.

Nine Lessons From IBM’s Blue Projects II

• This work is for the most talented, not the mediocre or burnt out.

• The work can and must be managed, just like any other project. Even if the funding is different.

• ‘Agreements stress a process of joint discovery rather than following preordained specs.’

• ‘The best partners round out the change coalition.’

• Results, not PR, are the prize.

How to Reenergize Corporate Citizenship

• Identify non-monetary assets you might provide a nonprofit

• Determine the benefits your company might seek in an alliance

• Review your readiness to engage in alliances with nonprofits

• Delegate responsibilities for guiding alliance development

• List your current relationships with nonprofits

• Map your place on the continuum between philanthropic----transactional----integrative

How to Reenergize Corporate Citizenship II

• Research each potential alliance for strategic fit and opportunity

• Identify nonprofits with which to create alliances

• Develop a purpose and fit statement for each alliance

• Develop a management plan for each alliance

• Determine how to appraise alliances

You Are Special!

Q&A

Paul JonesAlden Keene and Associates801/809-9470aldenkeene@gmail.comTwitter: @paulrjoneswww.causemarketing.biz