Key Questions about Community Investment
Last week I had the privilege of speaking with James Temple, Manager of Corporate Donations at Direct Energy. It was the first in a series of conversations about corporate social responsibility that I’ll be having with CSR executives and managers, These dialogues will be shown on the Canadian Business Online site starting in June.
In re-reading the questions I had for James it struck me that these might be helpful to others as baseline program planning considerations. Direct Energy has done its homework and is able to answer these key questions. Many other corporations I speak with are still grappling with these fundamentals.
How did your company decide on its community investment strategy? To what degree does the program reflect the social and business priorities of employees and of external stakeholders?
In what ways do your company’s partnerships with non-profit organizations address business objectives? How did you come to partner with these particular non-profits?
How do you balance the need for consistency at a corporate level with the priorities of employees and stakeholders at a local level?
Community investments are largely qualitative and difficult to measure. How does your company benchmark and assess the performance of its community programs as needed to determine the ROI?
Collaborate on Community Investment
People who are interested in the social purpose of corporations and corporate community investment may be interested in joining a new wiki that Impakt launched for people to share their ideas about how corporations should invest in social issues and community organizations. Click here to see the wiki – anyone can join as a member.
Ultimately, it’s my hope that public input here will help re-define how corporations should invest in the community.
How to Increase Employee Engagement
First, have a look at Google’s remarkable employee benefits program. According to Google CEO Eric Schmidt, CEO Google “The goal is to strip away everything that gets in our employees’ way. We provide a standard package of fringe benefits, but on top of that are first-class dining facilities, gyms, laundry rooms, massage rooms, haircuts, carwashes, dry cleaning, commuting buses – just about anything a hardworking employee might want. Let’s face it: programmers want to program, they don’t want to do their laundry. So we make it easy for them to do both.”
Here are some some simple and inexpensive ways to increase employee engagement adopted from David Coethica’s excellent CSR blog:
1. Understand what’s important and meaningful: Right now among your staff you may have an eco-warrior, a Twitter or blogging expert, a charity fundraiser extraordinaire or a fitness guru, who could all potentially add further value to your organization at little additional expense. Talk to your employees, tap into their true passions and look for ways to leverage complimentary skills.
2. Leverage CSR In Recruitment: More than ever potential employees are placing a very high priority on issues outside of salary and traditional benefits such as work-life balance, corporate values, commitment to CSR, and volunteering opportunities. Make sure that your company has established programs and policies in these areas and that they have been integrated into the recruitment process.
3. Provide Opportunities for Volunteering: Offering your employees the chance to volunteer for a charity that’s relevant and meaningful to them is an inexpensive way of adding value to employee packages. No matter how small your business you can spare at least a couple of employee hours (especially at low periods) to paint a fence, read to a child, clean a river bank etc. energised workforce, not to mention the new skills, change of scenery and feeling of satisfaction.
4. Support a Charity: Charitable giving can be done through payroll at very little cost which effectively reinforces the company’s ethos of being a good citizen. Each employee can select their own charity or you could suggest a good cause that the company supports formally.
5. Provide Flexible Work Options: There are numerous options including staggered hours, compressed hours, shift swapping, job sharing, flexi time and home working. Larger companies report productivity improvements of 20 – 30% using these techniques.
6. Make Employee Health a Top Priority: Here are a few suggestions to help your employees perform to their best of their ability: set up a company running/walking/sports team or club, promote cycling to work, encourage, pay for or subsidise yoga, Pilates or aerobics, provide fresh fruit and drinking water, or a fridge for employees own food, have regular health topic awareness days, promote Fairtrade or organic products, have a quite room for reading and relaxing.
Don’t forget emotional health. People tend not to talk about their own problems but 1 in 6 people are experiencing mental health issues at any one time. If your employees are having problems away from work these will almost always effect their performance in work.
7. Improve the Physical Environment. Corporate grey, filing cabinets, no windows, poor lighting and poor ventilation don’t really inspire anybody to do they’re best. Allocating time to talk about work space conditions with employees will unearth hidden gems of ideas that make a difference. Here are some good questions to ask yourself: Do you provide showers or somewhere to change if people want to cycle to work? Are employees allowed to decorate their own work space? Do you consult employees about general work space decoration and colour schemes? Is there adequate ventilation into the work space? Could you have more plants / greenery?
8. Host Employee Events: Most businesses have a holiday event but what about an end of financial year or seasonal event? It could even by tied into supporting a charity. A ‘bring your child to work day’ may need some management but it will be great fun and a fantastic change to the daily grind.
9. Get an Award: If you’ve got a great workforce tell people! Apart from the obvious aura given off by your business and its employees, the next best step is to gain accreditation such as a ‘Best Company to Work For’ award.
10. Get into Social Media: If you’re not using these tools you are missing out. Social media should be better described as free PR, free advertising, enhanced internal communication and improved customer relationship management. If managed properly, social media can also improve internal communications. A company Facebook group could provide great free branding, lead generation and compliment (or stand alone as) your employee newsletter. As long as you have a clear policy on how all employees can use these tools during business hours you should see the benefits quite quickly.
Corporate Responsibility Survey
Recently, most people I talk to believe that reducing the environmental impact of corporations has become operational “table stakes”. First and foremost, actions in this area result in reduced costs. Secondarily, they address what has become one of the defining issues of our our generation. Many people believe that corporate social programs have more long term value but aren’t as valuable in the short term because they are more difficult to measure and the ROI isn’t clear.
I’d like to know what Canadian Business readers think and have created a survey to find out. Click here to provide your response.
Corporate Responsibility Reports
In 2004 /05 my colleague Joel Sears (one of the principals of Collectivity) and I convened a year-long series of round table dialogues to find new ways of using community engagement to build brands, energize employees, and engage customers. In re-reading the summary reports from these sessions, I found the learning more relevant than ever and I’m happy to share them with whoever is interested. The reports have been posted on Impakt’s Corporate Social Purpose wiki,
I’d also like to encourage Canadian Business readers to weigh-in on what corporate responsibility actions have the greatest long-term benefit: reducing environmental impact, or improving the performance of social/community programs. Click here to let me know what you think.
Future Shop and Toronto Schools
The recent announcement of Future Shop’s donation of $50,000 for computer labs (or as they are to be known “Future Leaders Tech Labs”) to each of two Toronto schools has become a touchstone for commentary across the country.
I see the situation as enlightened self interest on the part of Future Shop and the Toronto District School Board (TDSB). I’m sure that Future Shop’s intention to help students isn’t completely insincere, however, it’s unlikely the donation would have been made if there wasn’t an ROI for the company. For its part ,the TDSB doesn’t have adequate public funding and has turned to parents and the private sector to close the gap. However, as stated in today’s Globe and Mail, this is indeed a “slippery slope” and the degree to which it’s appropriate for the school system to provide business benefits to corporations and other private sectors funders isn’t yet clear.
Here are some questions that the players should be asking themselves and some ideas that may be instructive:
How can Future Shop (or any other corporation) support schools in way that maximizes business impact and minimizes risk to its reputation? Future Shop should work with and through a relevant educational non-profit organization that would have the responsibility to decide which schools are most in need of support, what is required, and how results will be measured. This approach would result in a credible and equitable allocation of funds that would eliminate (or at least mitigate) criticism.
What is the best way for Future Shop to promote it’s support of TDSB in a way that creates awareness (as needed for brand building) and is seen as genuine and authentic? For all intents and purposes, painting the labs with Future Shop colours is the same as putting the company’s band name on the door. In fact, this approach could be seen as more controversial because it has an flavour of duplicity. The more effective and authentic approach would be for Future Shop to have absolutely no brand presence except on the computers themselves, to do an internal presentation to parents and teachers with the participation of a non-profit partner and a TDSB representative, and to promote the contribution in local stores.
Where’s the program? As executed, there is no “program” evident in Future Shop’s donation/sponsorship. Perhaps there’s an opportunity for Future Shop to define, in conjunction with a credible non-profit organization, what “Future Leaders” means in this context and and to develop a social brand to capture and communicate the value and values of this idea. Then the company and its community partners could develop programs to bring this idea to life. Possibilities would include providing educational software with all computers, undertaking research to identify opportunities for technology to have more impact with children who are disadvantaged, and engaging Future Shop employees as in-school or community volunteers.
We’re certain to see more situations like this and I welcome your feedback and ideas.
Companies Plan to Increase Emphasis on Sustainability
“‘At a time when the economy requires everyone to stay focused on the essentials, it’s noteworthy that businesses are putting sustainability programs into that must-do column,’ said Nancy Costopulos, chief marketing officer of the American Marketing Association.”
When it comes to investing in sustainable business behaviors and programs, more than half of corporate marketers and communicators in the U.S. believe that their organizations will increase their involvement in environmental sustainability initiatives during the next two to three years, according to a survey conducted by the American Marketing Association and Fleishman-Hillard, Inc. In addition, half of those surveyed believe that economic realities will actually encourage the adoption of sustainability practices.
The survey shows that 58 percent of marketing and communication leaders believe their companies will place more emphasis on developing corporate sustainability opportunities in the months ahead, despite the belt tightening that is happening in the business world.
More than half of those surveyed believe that sustainability is an essential element of their company’s reputation right now. Nearly three-quarters believe that corporate reputation, corporate culture and technological advancements will be the drivers for sustainability.
However, optimism is tempered with some smart realities. While the majority of companies will continue to invest in sustainability initiatives during the next year, how companies chose to communicate that commitment is mixed. About 43 percent of those surveyed expect their companies to increase marketing of their sustainability programs. They say they will do so because it is the right thing to do; customers are asking for more information; it is supportive of the corporate culture; and because sustainability offers a clear and distinct business advantage. That said, more than half of the respondents do not expect to increase their storytelling in the category of sustainability.
Additional key findings from the study include:
- More marketers and communicators (53 percent) define sustainability as the need to balance financial, human and natural resources for the long-term benefit of business and communities. Few define sustainability in terms of focusing on renewable energy resources (3 percent) or driving inefficiency out of the supply chain (10 percent).
- Employees (82 percent) and customers (74 percent) are more likely to be the targets of communications about sustainability than are investors and analysts (52 percent).
How to Improve Partnerships with NGOs
Today, more than ever, community investment partnerships need to have measurable business impact. However, many community investment and marketing managers are unable to answer the following fundamental questions: Why are we investing in this particular organization? What is the value to our business? What would be the downside of not partnering with them? In what ways are we able to measure business outcomes as needed to be accountable to our executives? What can be done to add more value and improve performance?
On May 26, Impakt will be hosting a practical and interactive half-day workshop that’s been designed specifically to help community investment managers improve the business impact of their partnerships with non-profit organizations. I’ll be facilitating the workshop along with my colleague Jon Packer, President of the Idea Workshop.
One of the key benefits of this session is how the Impact Valuation Tool can be used to improve reputation, increase differentiation and lift sales
All the details are available on the Impakt Learning Page.
Accountability for Community Investments
Today, more than ever, community investment managers need to be accountable for their investments in community organizations.
However, in my experience, most are not able to answer the most fundamental questions including: To what degree are the most high profile (and most costly) community partnerships seen to be of value by executives? To what degree do investments in non-profit organizations support corporate business priorities? In what ways are non-profit partners able to help engage and influence employees and key external stakeholders? In what ways could partnerships be leveraged improve their performance and value?
Without having the answers to these questions, accountability simply isn’t possible.
The days of using program summaries and press clippings from non-profits to justify large community investments are over. The difficulty is that putting values on outcomes that are largely qualitative isn’t easy.
So, what’s the best (and most cost effective) approach to establishing accountability for community investments? The first step is to ensure that both the corporation and its non-profit partner have a common understanding of the business and social criteria against which the program is to be evaluated. Next, I recommend holding conversations/consultations with internal and external stakeholders to gauge their perceptions of the partnership against the criteria that have been established. It’s not bullet-proof approach but it’s a lot better than what’s usually done.
As always, I welcome your feedback and ideas.
On May 26, Impakt will be hosting a practical and interactive half-day workshop that’s been designed specifically to help community investment managers improve the business impact of their partnerships with non-profit organizations. I’ll be facilitating the workshop along with my colleague Jon Packer, President of the Idea Workshop.
One of the key benefits of this session is how the Impact Valuation Tool can be used to improve reputation, increase differentiation and lift sales
All the details are available on the Impakt Learning Page.
Value of Partnerships with Non-Profits
I’m writing a book about how community programs are the building blocks on which corporations can establish, amplify, and communicate their social purpose.
Partnerships with non-profit organizations are a key aspect of community investment and I’m looking for people to interview who can speak to the business value of partnerships.
I welcome anyone who’d like to share their experience in this area to contact me.
