Reason 1: The growing popularity of Corporate Social Responsibility
A growing number of companies are seeing and discussing the numerous business benefits of CSR. Despite the confusion sometimes espoused by academics and the media, CSR is being embraced as a profitable and competitive strategy.
Reason 2: Customers are beginning to demand more from the companies that supply their goods and services.
In the words of Carol Cone, Edelman’s recent research revealed that “It is no longer enough to slap a ribbon on a product. Americans seek deeper involvement in social issues and expect brands and companies to provide various means of engagement...we call this the rise of the ‘citizen consumer.’ (Read more here.)
Reason 3: Sustainability is THE issue we are all facing, whether as governments, businesses, societies or individuals.
As Julie Urlaub wrote on her blog a few months back:
“While many organizations falsely subscribe to the belief that business sustainability is only for larger organizations, there is the recognition that risk doesn't discriminate. To unprepared organizations, the business risks of carbon, water, and climate change disclosure takes many forms:
- Potential increase in operating cost
- Potential increase in supply costs
- Potential disruptions to supply or loss of supplier relationships
- Potential loss of revenue or market share
- Potential to business reputation
- Potential inability to secure investment dollars or capital
Beyond these (and many others not listed here) compelling reasons for doing business in a way that generates value for the company and the communities in which they operate, there is still the issue of how this is accomplished.
What Are We Missing?
While companies are beginning to focus on greening their supply chains, reducing the carbon footprint of their operations, ethically sourcing resources, as well as paying more attention to healthy and diverse workplaces, comparatively little is being done to leverage their greatest assets for social benefits: the employees.
Employees represent the strongest and broadest link between most corporations and their stakeholders. Understanding the value and impact of social capital may be a necessary precursor to embracing this fact, yet it seems fairly obvious that a company with over 20,000 employees has an immediate and relational connection with almost 2 million people around the world. This is especially pertinent considering 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations, while only 14% of a company’s customers (and stakeholders) trust advertisements. (More about trust and CSR here.)
In fact, according to the 2010 publication of Deloitte’s Volunteer IMPACT Survey in the USA “Corporate America is giving workplace volunteerism a strong vote of confidence as a means to make a significant, long-term difference in their communities.” Apparently “more than eight in 10 companies (84 percent) believe that volunteerism can help nonprofits accomplish long-term social goals, and are increasingly offering skills-based volunteer opportunities to employees.”
The Good News....may not be so good after all
Even though 60% of the businesses that responded to Deloitte’s survey reported that they offer skilled volunteering as an option for their employees, the actual number of employees who volunteer at this level is negligible. Based on our research and conversations with companies, it is very normal to find large global corporations with 60,000 plus employees running ‘skilled-based’ volunteering programs or ‘pro-bono’ programs with fewer than 1% of their employees volunteering at this level.
Many companies, including Deloitte, are much happier to report their episodic and general volunteering numbers. In 2010, a large number of Deloitte employees, 33,600 or 75% of their U.S. workforce, rolled up their sleeves on June 11th for a few hours of volunteering. Some of that volunteering obviously required some skill - most did not.
A few hours out of the office once a year to volunteer is good, it’s just not good enough.
It is impossible to effect attitudinal and behavioural changes in the workplace through this type of corporate volunteering. What’s more, the value to society is also negligible. In fact, many nonprofits would suggest that the cost to their organizations far outweighs any potential (let alone realized) benefits.
So while there is growing consensus among business leaders on the potential they have to impact society for good, little is being done to leverage their most accessible and powerful asset. It’s not that they don’t believe in the power of employee volunteering programs, “More than nine in 10 (91 percent) respondents agree their employees' business skills would be valuable to a nonprofit.”
So why the disconnect?
I want to suggest three reasons why employee volunteering struggles to evolve past the one day (week) events and limited numbers in skilled-volunteering programs.
- We treat our employees who volunteer as one-dimensional. That’s wrong. A good volunteering program must be three dimensional.
- We measure the wrong things. Well, that’s not entirely true. We just aren’t measuring the most important things. Companies tend to focus on promoting the ‘outputs’ of their programs. They should be focusing on the outcomes and long term impacts of their employee volunteer programs. Why? Until companies like Deloitte start to measure the actual impact of 33,600 their employees out working in the community for a day, they won’t understand the real value of their activity.
- Finally, and maybe most importantly, most companies do not collaborate with their influential employees to create impactful programs. Worse, many companies (with a fixation on those ‘output’ numbers) end up ‘stealing’ the social capital of their employees. Or at least that’s how the employees perceive it. A common response by employees in this scenario is ‘hey, I volunteer on my own time -it’s my own thing and has nothing to do with my employer’. Companies have to collaborate with the ‘influentials’ to capture the massive social capital they represent and then work to convert the employees who don’t volunteer (2 out of 3) and probably don’t see the value of volunteering.
chris@realizedworth.com
angela@realizedworth.com
317.371.4435
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