10 Ways to Ace Employee Engagement at Your Company

With the Great Resignation in the headlines, many executives and HR managers are rethinking how they engage their staff and prevent turnover. When employees are engaged and committed, they are happier, more productive, and more likely to stay with you for the long-term.

One great way to foster that engagement is with corporate social responsibility (CSR) programming to promote charitable giving and volunteerism. Studies show that when staff are proud of their company’s CSR work, they are more likely to be engaged at their job.

Here are 10 ways to foster employee engagement through CSR at your company:

1. Highlight CSR During Recruitment

According to Gallup, 1 in 3 job seekers said that it is extremely important that their organization have a positive impact. If you wait until an employee’s first day to talk to them about your CSR, you may be too late. You could be losing the best candidates to other opportunities. Share your company’s commitment to doing good by highlighting your CSR initiatives in job postings, recruitment materials, and interviews just as you would retirement and health benefits.

2. Incorporate CSR into Onboarding

So you have hired a top-quality, impact-driven candidate. Congratulations! Engage them from the start by incorporating CSR into your onboarding presentations and materials. For example, if you offer a 401(k), your employee has to fill out paperwork indicating how much they want withheld from each paycheck to go to that account. This is a great time to also link them to recurring giving and donation matching opportunities.

3. Share Your Vision

Millennials and Gen Z want to work at a company that aligns with their values, but they also crave authenticity. By crafting a cohesive CSR vision and integrating that vision into your company’s brand and story, your efforts will come across as more genuine. Incorporate this vision into company retreats, annual reports, and other key touch points the way you would with your mission statement.

4. Amplify Giving

You can promote workplace giving in many ways throughout your employee’s lifecycle. We mentioned donation matching earlier in this article, but do you know about credit grants? These are small donations that you can give employees to direct to a charity of their choice. Whether you use them on an ongoing basis or to mark special occasions (e.g., new hires or anniversaries), they are an innovative way to promote giving and boost employee morale.

5. Promote Volunteerism

Giving is great, but volunteering can be transformative. According to SCORE, when employees volunteer through employer-sponsored programs, 93% reported being happier and 92% reported improvements in their leadership and professional skills. If you want to encourage employee volunteerism, consider allocating dedicated paid time off for volunteering, or providing a matching donation for each hour your employee volunteers.

6. Offer Flexibility

Some employees will want to donate money or volunteer once. Others will want to pursue a sustained relationship with their cause. Build flexibility into your CSR programming to allow employees to participate at the level and frequency that makes sense to them.

7. Request Feedback

In order to truly engage employees in your CSR programs, they need to feel some level of ownership for the program. Incorporate opportunities for qualitative and quantitative feedback on the program to ensure that it is meeting your company’s and your employees’ needs. Bright Funds’ integrated data collection tools allow you to collect insights to keep your programming relevant.

8. Create Opportunities for Staff Leadership

Allow staff members to lead the development and implementation of events or ongoing volunteerism initiatives. In addition to creating more buy-in, this is a great way for early- and mid-career employees to develop and demonstrate the leadership and managerial skills they need to advance their professional journeys. It is a win-win!

9. Leverage Technology

Building CSR into your staff lifecycle sounds complicated, but it does not have to be. Corporate social responsibility software platforms such as Bright Funds provide a one-stop shop for staff to engage with all facets of your program while also enabling real-time impact measurement for HR, CSR managers, and executives.

10. Celebrate Impact

Take some time each quarter or year to celebrate your CSR results with your team. Employees know their individual giving and volunteering habits, but seeing their collective positive impact can powerfully reinforce the mission-focused culture you are trying to build. Bright Funds makes it easy to share your impact by tracking your organization-wide metrics, results, and grant reporting. All you have to do is plan the celebration!

Delivering Impact That Drives Engagement (and Vice Versa)

Employee engagement is like gardening. It requires planning and nurturing, but once you implement a thoughtful system that works for your team and follow these steps to make your CSR vision tangible to your employees, engagement will thrive. The more engaged your employees are, the more impactful your CSR programs will be. And so on…and so on…

To discover how our platform can support your programs, schedule a demo today.