10 Ways to Build Employee Involvement

By John Hagerman

Business owners and managers tend to spend a fair amount of time thinking about how to increase productivity, profits and retention. They recognize that happy employees tend to be more productive, making more profits for the company, and they stay with the company longer, meaning the company doesn’t have to spend as much on hiring and training new employees. Better working conditions, more generous paid time off, and other enhanced benefits are just of the few ways employers are looking at to accomplish these goals. Fortunately, more and more of them are also beginning to understand that one way to these goals actually comes from letting employees to step away from work. They’re discovering that encouraging employees to volunteer in the community, and actively supporting community projects, is good for business.

Too many companies tend to think in terms of simply writing a check to a nonprofit. Some do a sponsorship, but limit it to putting an image on their packaging and websites saying they support a particular cause. These are fine, but they’re cookie cutter solutions that allow companies to say they’re doing good rather than using more conscious choices and approaches that can achieve much better results. Instead of check writing or basic sponsorship, companies who find causes that take into consideration the company history and values, products, employee values, and what’s most important to their constituencies, achieve far better results. The good they are doing in the community is a true reflection of the company’s values and their customers notice it and tend to buy more products and services from the company. But there is more that can be done to achieve great results.

Companies that get the best results are the ones that proactively encourage and support their employees going out into the community to work on causes and projects that mean the most to them. They let employees do volunteer work while still on the clock and they financially and logistically support the nonprofits their employees are working with. The combination is a potent way of increasing employee satisfaction, company morale, productivity, profitability, community engagement, and sales. It’s a win-win-win-win situation for all. More involvement doesn’t have to mean more complexity or more work for the company. Simplicity usually translates directly to effectiveness.

I’m going to make some suggestions on approaches, programs, events, sponsorships, etc., that might be worth your company taking a look at. At the least, I hope these ideas will spark a brainstorm that results in the perfect, creative solution for your company. I’ll group them into categories to make it easier for generating new ideas.

Have Teams Participate in Fun Events

Having fun is always appealing, but when employees get comfortable with stepping out of the box, and sometimes downright silly, energy and spirit soar, and creativity levels rise. If you’re company depends on energized employees, or creative and inventive thinking, that’s a good thing.

1. 

   Photo Courtesy of Warrior Dash 2013

   Have a company team participate in a Warrior Dash or Mud Run. These can be made more fun, and memorable, if team participants wear funky costumes. A team from one of my employers all did a Warrior Dash wearing pink tutus – guys included! The team loved it, and when the story was posted on Social Media and in the newsletter, our constituents loved it, too.

2. Create a fun event as a fundraiser for a nonprofit, such as a snowball fight in mid-summer, or kayak race down the ski slope in winter. An event that is unique and unexpected is fun to plan and participate in. They can also draw a larger pool of participants, leveraging the company’s efforts. It’s very rewarding to be part of a team that puts one of these events on, and company’s benefit by the positive attention drawn to it by other participants and by supporters of the nonprofit.

3. Working with kids has its own inherent rewards, and challenges. Just encouraging employees to spend time with kids yields rewards, but creating a special event that pairs kids with company employees can be a lot of fun, and provide tremendous rewards for employees, the company, and the kids. One I like is to put on a fishing contest that pairs kids with an employee to spend a day fishing, picnicking and playing.

Have Company Teams Perform Work in the Community

Actually getting your hands dirty working on a project together does more than get a project done, it builds personal connections with the community and enhances connections within the company. Those connections can build cohesiveness, collaboration, and team spirit in ways the positively affect productivity and the bottom-line.

4. 

   Photo courtesy of Habitat for Humanity

   Taking on a day, a week, or even the entire project, for a Habitat for Humanity house is a great way for employees to get hands-on. It’s very rewarding to see tangible results from your work.

5. Doing good for the environment is getting to be more attractive these days, so look at planting trees, or doing a shore or bank restoration along a local lake, creek or river. Like a Habitat house, it’s hands-on and the results are immediately visible. In addition, the entire community benefits from projects like these, and that means local media are more likely to tell the story. That’s good for the company.

6. If your company works with seniors, think about doing a fix-up, paint-up project for seniors in the community. Along with being hands-on, a project like this is a direct benefit to members of your company’s target audience, and that receives positive attention from everyone in that constituency.

Leverage Your Employees Gifts and Experience

Some of the most rewarding programs for employees comes from being able to use the skills they’ve developed at work, or from outside interests.

7. Become a mentor at Junior Achievement, at the Boys and Girls Club, Boy Scouts, or other similar programs. I was in JA and learned a lot from the experience. I ended up as the emcee for their Futures Unlimited Banquet, and I’m still complementing the company for sponsoring us. A friend in my J.A. company ended up getting his college paid for by our sponsor company and ended up working for them his entire career.

8. An adopt-a-school program can work at schools at all levels. Reading in the classroom, or helping with art programs, or collecting school supplies is good for elementary schools. My kids both loved being able to spend a day of middle school “working” at a local company to see what it’s like. For high-schoolers, lending your expertise as a guest teacher, or mentor is powerful. There are also groups like DECA and other clubs and organizations that can benefit from employee expertise and experience.

Make Employee Involvement an International Affair

Be it through a church affiliation, previous travel, or an involvement that started with a disaster, many employees already have a connection to a community, project, or people in other countries, many of the in the third world. Fostering ways to strengthen these ties has a long-term positive impact at home.

9. Adopting a school or a community in a third-world country is a fairly simple undertaking with profound impact. When I worked for World Wide Village, we regularly connected employee groups to a school in Haiti. Employees would sponsor kids and insure they had adequate food, school supplies, qualified teachers, and, when there were enough sponsors, we were even able to build new schools. There are hundreds of organizations with similar projects all over the world.

10. 

    Photo courtesy of World Wide Village, LLC

    One of the approaches I liked to talk to companies about is having a team take a trip to another country to build houses, teach higher yield agriculture techniques to farmers, help villagers install a fish farm, or to reduce the destructiveness of malaria by distributing mosquito nets and teaching families how to use them. When teams take on planning every aspect of the trip, raise money for it, execute it, and follow up after their return, it changes everything for the people they work with, and makes permanent improvements in how business is done at home. Whole new levels of leadership skills emerge that can echo through the company for years improving levels of collaboration, communication, productivity and even profits.

There are thousands of ideas out there, and all of them can be adapted to fit the unique expertise, experience and interests of your employees, as well as your community and constituencies. The key is to be proactive and invite your employees into the process. Let them tell you what is important to them, then doe what you can to support their efforts. When you do, the rewards are usually far beyond anything you imagined. As the Edelman GoodPurpose study discovered, doing good isn’t only good for business, these days it’s a requirement.