By Allison McGuire | @Calimcg
This is a continuation of yesterday's post.
Let’s face it: Engaged employees are the best. I don’t mean the best at their jobs—although that can be true—I mean the most spirited, zestful people.
TalentZoo recently explored the ‘5 I’s’ of employee engagement. Definitely check out the post in its entirety, and find part II of our take below.
1) Inform.
2) Inspire.
3) Instruct. As we’ve mentioned before, everyone can use professional skillset enhancements—especially Millennials. By providing employees with clear directives and leadership opportunities, you set them up to succeed.
By Allison McGuire | @calimcg
As you may know, this week—April 21-27—is Volunteer Week, which is a great reason to engage your employees for good. For example, I’m coordinating a team volunteer outing to help one of our nonprofit customers.
Edelman’s goodpurpose blog has a terrific breakdown on how different generations think about volunteer opportunities at work. The highlights are below, but be sure to read the whole post too.
Having a corporate volunteering program is a boon to recruiting top Millennial talent. My generation looks fondly upon employers that support employees’ connection to cause. Show appreciation for your passionate employee volunteers (and increase brand loyalty!) with charity rewards. Not only will you incent positive behavior, but volunteers will feel good about paying it forward.
As many of you know, Google Reader is closing down. If you're using Google Reader for this blog, you won't get our cause marketing and employee engagement posts anymore.
While we're all very sad the RSS service will be gone, we'd like to extend an official invitation for you to get this blog in your inbox. We'd miss you as a member of our community (and we're sure you'd miss us too) so connect with us here:
Sincerely,
By Allison McGuire & Kate Olsen
Patrick Hanlon, CEO of THINKTOPIA®—an innovative branding, marketing, consulting, and advertising firm—has the secret to brand relevance. Fortunately for us, he’s willing to share.
Q: How has the advent of ‘conscious consumerism’ influenced how brands approach marketing strategy?
By Kate Olsen & Allison McGuire
When you enable that response in your employees, they associate their passion for a cause with your company. If you're looking to help your employees pay it forward and are interested in fostering loyalty, charity rewards does both.
By Kate Olsen and Allison McGuire
This is adapted from our eGuide, Rewards & Loyalty: 3 Ways to Win the Hearts of Your Consumers & Employees with Cause.
When it comes to cause marketing, consumers and employees want it all. They're hungry for a connection to your company’s social responsibility commitment, and they want to feel personally invited to a conversation with your brand. Further, they even want to help you co-create your brand’s identity!
A powerful way to fulfill those two desires is to make cause central to your brand promise. When you insert charity into your consumer and employee engagement approach, you open the door to a rich conversation about what matters – to your company, to your consumers, to your employees, to your community – that can only help you build relationships (not just fans) and enhance loyalty.
Here's how you do it:
3) Mark a Milestone
While an award or certificate is nice to receive, when the excitement is over, it then sits on a shelf collecting dust. Why not celebrate brand milestones, employee service anniversaries and other events with the long-lasting gift of charity instead?
Your giant billboard and website homepage banner build awareness for a big milestone, but they don’t help your consumers and employees relate to or internalize the joy of the occasion. Provide an experience that translates that joy in a way that is meaningful to each individual. This way, you’re helping your consumers and employees mark the occasion by supporting something they care about. The milestone will feel twice as nice.
HBO paid it forward with charity gift cards for the premiere of the documentary ‘A Small Act’:
Ready to say thank you, incentivize participation, or mark a milestone with charity rewards? Contact us today!
By Kate Olsen and Allison McGuire
This is adapted from our eGuide, Rewards & Loyalty: 3 Ways to Win the Hearts of Your Consumers & Employees with Cause.
When it comes to cause marketing, consumers and employees want it all. They're hungry for a connection to your company’s social responsibility commitment, and they want to feel personally invited to a conversation with your brand. Further, they even want to help you co-create your brand’s identity!
A powerful way to fulfill those two desires is to make cause central to your brand promise. When you insert charity into your consumer and employee engagement approach, you open the door to a rich conversation about what matters – to your company, to your consumers, to your employees, to your community – that can only help you build relationships (not just fans) and enhance loyalty.
Here's how you do it:
1) Say Thank You.
2) Incentivize Participation.
Trying to get more consumers to try your new product? Looking to get employees to show up for a volunteer project? Instead of offering coupons or springing for embroidered t-shirts that will get limited use post-event, give consumers and employees a pre-paid donation to allocate to a cause close to their hearts. The benefit of 'paying it forward' will motivate them to try something new.
Many companies offer ‘dollars for doers’ incentives to drive participation in employee volunteer programs. These rewards allow companies to accrue matching grant funds for their pet causes in exchange for volunteer hours.
While that's meaningful, charity incentives don't just extend to employees. Many market researchers are discovering survey participation increases when rewarding consumers with pre-paid donations. Big consumer brands are also engaging their customers through crowdsourced cause contests. These contests give individuals the opportunity to help allocate company philanthropic dollars to their local communities.
Here's how Liquidnet rewards their generous employees:
How else can you add cause to your rewards portfolio? Download our FREE eGuide to find out!
“People are telling us that corporate responsibility begins with helping ‘me,’ the individual consumer, before it expands outward into CSR-like initiatives. For it to be meaningful, corporate citizenship should first integrate the values that are important to people in their daily lives. After that is done, a corporation should connect people to something bigger than themselves – their communities, their country, people across the world, and the planet. That’s what we call Brand Citizenship.” - Anne Bahr Thompson, Onesixtyfourth
As it turns out, U.S. consumers are more interested in companies that treat their employees well, are truthful in their claims around products and services, and provide reasonably priced goods than ones that rely solely on “big-budget CSR initiatives.”
What does this mean for your company? Read more to find out.
All companies want their employees to be engaged. (Well, maybe that’s not as universal of a statement as I’d thought!) However, not all companies know how to engage staff on a consistent basis.
Whether you like it or not, your company’s employees are your front-of-the-line brand ambassadors. Think about it. Whether via social media or in-person interactions, your employees are fielding questions about your brand. Do you want them to be spreading good news about your company? Of course you do!
If you’re looking for a refresh—or have resolved to start 2013 with an employee engagement program—to your HR policies this year, look no further. Here are a few ideas worth considering:
Rich rewards: One of the main contributors to an engaged workforce is incentives. Incentives aren’t all about money. In fact, many employees would take a paycut to do work that is meaningful. Think about incorporating charity rewards as incentives for employees that are continually doing Grade-A work or perhaps to those referring solid candidates to join the company.
- Get outta here! Let your employees get involved in their favorite causes by granting them volunteer days. At Network for Good, we’re given these days to connect with charities in which we believe. Added bonus? A renewed sense of purpose.
- Have some fun: Is your office environment as monochromatic as your cube’s color scheme? Do people take a punch-in, punch-out approach to their work? Are bursts of laughter uncommon? Take a page out of Hitachi’s playbook and host a donation challenge. Whether you encourage employees to donate cash or products, the sense of doing good has a ripple effect of the best kind—smiles are contagious.
- Disaster strikes, you respond. There are myriad ways your company can help those affected by disaster. In-kind donations and grants to on-the-ground nonprofits are common responses. Don’t forget to involve your employees; set up a giving portal for your staff. For example, in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, Adobe employees donated nearly $60K to help those in need.
Need help setting up your employee rewards program? Contact us for more details.
We'll give you #5 on Monday, skip posting on Christmas, then countdown the rest.
Don't forget to share YOUR favorite cause marketing campaign of 2012 via Twitter with the hashtag #C4Gchat. We're pooling responses, and will share them in the new year.
Happy holidays from everyone at Network for Good.
Although it's amazing, it's not mine--the image was found here.
