DRIVING SOCIAL IMPACT: INSPIRATION TOOLS & STRATEGIES

THE PURPOSE

The Community

Inspiration is the secret sauce to a community engagement program and partnership with a nonprofit. Not only does it encourage others to get up off the sidelines and take action (e.g., volunteer, donate), it also plays a critical role in raising awareness about social causes and issues. For example, an inspiring video about a volunteer at a local homeless shelter may do more to inform key stakeholders about the city’s homeless situation than a 10-page report. Consider how your company might leverage your marketing resources and reach to support a nonprofit or cause. Using your resource to inspire can have a significant and measurable impact.

Your Business & Employees

While we often think of inspiration as the end result or outcome of community engagement work, when used proactively as part of your strategy through employee recognition and storytelling, your engagement will surely increase. Beyond the special feeling and sense of pride we all get from being inspired, employee recognition can have a profound and measurable impact on your business.

Research on workplace recognition tells us that 60 percent of best-in-class organizations found employee recognition to be extremely valuable in driving individual engagement. Also, a lack of recognition can have a direct negative impact on your bottom line when you consider that a recent study showed “intention to leave is twice as high among employees who do not receive recognition (51 percent) compared to those who do (25 percent).”

Similar to being appreciated for general work performance or achievements, your employee volunteers will also respond favorably to recognition. Including recognition as a component of your employee engagement strategy is important to its success and ability to retain volunteers. Recognition helps raise awareness for your program and provides an opportunity to raise external awareness about the great work done by employee volunteers.

Additionally, employee volunteer recognition and storytelling strategies can be used externally to advocate for social causes and nonprofit partners and raise brand awareness for your company. Pride for your employees and their work in the community shows the authenticity of your company’s intended community impact.

back to top

THE TOOLS

Recognition

Cheers for our volunteers! Recognition includes all the ways an organization, manager or peer is able to acknowledge, validate, praise and appreciate the commitment, hard work and success of colleagues. Building a volunteer recognition strategy involves thanking employee volunteers and volunteer leaders in a way that acknowledges their contributions in a meaningful and authentic way. An effective volunteer recognition strategy has the right mix of formal and informal efforts along with incentives and rewards. Formal recognition is typically managed by the team leading your employee engagement work and often includes certificates, events and competitions that honor volunteer or community engagement achievements. Informal recognition occurs in the daily interactions between volunteers and your company when program staff or other leaders and peers convey appreciation for the volunteers’ work.

Go beyond the shout outs. Rewards and incentives can also be leveraged as part of your recognition strategy. A reward is an award given in recognition of service, effort or achievement. It can be tangible like a certificate, gift card or merchandise, or an intangible perk such as additional paid time off to volunteer, the opportunity to meet with senior leaders or an article written about a stellar volunteer. An incentive provides motivation or encouragement to complete certain actions or increase effort to meet specific objectives. Incentives are typically time-bound, measurable and associated with a specific reward. The achievement of an incentive may also be accompanied by recognition.

Storytelling

Take pride in celebrating and showcasing your community engagement program, employee volunteers and nonprofit partners! It is important that this storytelling take place both internally and externally, and also year-round (i.e., not simply during volunteer projects). Below is a list of opportunities and channels to highlight your program, volunteers and partners.

Internal

• Newsletters shoutouts
• Intranet “volunteer of the week” feature
• Companywide emails
• Staff meetings
• Office signage and posters

External

• Website
• Newsletters and customer emails
• Social media feature or interview of engaged employees
• Video interviews with volunteers and nonprofit partners
• Ads and marketing materials
• Annual report highlights
• CSR/Community impact report (consider starting this if you haven’t already)
• Recruitment materials
• Press releases for partnership, project and grant announcements
• Partnerships — who else can help tell your story? (local/national nonprofit partners, community foundations, United Way)

back to top

THE ACTION PLAN

Here is some homework before you seek to recognize your employees and drive more participation to your employee engagement strategy. It is important to reflect before sharing the great work of your employees because people may want to be thanked in various ways. Consider these questions and the reflections below as you get started.

Does community engagement show up in external communication materials?

How and where is your company’s story being told and can you incorporate messaging about your community engagement work? To start, this would likely include your company’s website, annual report, brochures and recruiting materials. Work with your marketing department to see what you can include (e.g., pictures, overview of your program, list of cause areas and nonprofit partners, volunteer quotes) to tell your program’s story and be sure to remind them of the business value that external stakeholders place on this work.

Are you using (and promoting) a hashtag for your community engagement work?

Creating a hashtag specific to your community engagement work can be an easy way to promote your work on social media. Promoting it to your employee volunteers and your nonprofit partners during volunteer projects to use will help extend your reach beyond your company’s social media presence. You might even consider tracking the usage of the hashtag as a metric to help gauge the promotion and reach of your community impact work.

What content are you capturing at your volunteer events?

The best storytelling content can often be captured as part of your volunteer events. Be sure to incorporate into your planning and instructions all the content that you want to capture, including pictures (make a shot list in advance), quotes from employees and community partners, and project metrics (inputs and outcomes). Following up with employee volunteers right after a project is also a great way to capture their feedback and testimonials and encourage them to share pictures they may have taken.

Do you have a plan to recognize employee volunteers?

Before you invest time into planning, you need to first understand how your employees like to be recognized. If possible, send out a survey and schedule focus groups with diverse groups of employees to gain a better insight into how they like to be recognized and motivated. For some, this might be a spotlight in the internal company newsletter or award presentation at an all-staff gathering, and for others this might be a gift card or special invitation to dine with the CEO or other leader. Once you understand how your employee volunteers like to be recognized, work on defining the process by which employees may be incentivized, recognized or rewarded for their service and contributions to community engagement. Determining the criteria is the next critical step, including number of hours, type of volunteerism (hands-on and skills-based/pro bono), percent participation by a team, or work outside of work, for example. If you require applications or nominations, think through what the process might look like and who would judge the submissions. There are no perfect criteria that capture the outstanding work of your employees, so creating multiple recognition programs is encouraged!

back to top