5 ways companies increase employee engagement and fulfillment through philanthropy

As a leader in your company, there are vast benefits in encouraging social connection between employees. Creating an environment where members on your team are engaged, feel that they have a creative outlet, and like the people they work with is beneficial to everyone involved. People have higher morale and greater loyalty for jobs where they feel a deep sense of connection to their colleagues, and one can’t buy that kind of motivation with just monetary incentives. Finding ways to encourage that connection, outside of regular work projects, is an important responsibility of any leader.

Last week I wrapped up my time at Komodo Health. As I reflected on what I thought was an incredibly meaningful year professionally, my time as the co-chair of the internal philanthropy arm (Komodo Cares) also stood out as something that really helped me stay centered through an unusual year. Through the challenges of a sudden remote environment, which was difficult for a social person like me, I found a lot of solace through bonding with colleagues on shared passion projects. 

Besides that, the process of working together as a community was in itself a form of self-healing, especially during a time when the world was facing a trying time. Helping others when we ourselves feel unsettled and rudderless can add meaning and structure to our lives.

There is a lot of joy in expressing gratitude for our own situation, while using our resources to lift up others as well.

Here are my top learnings on how to best foster meaningful social connections in the workplace, through a focus on philanthropic programs:

Encourage employee-led ideas  

Some companies have a top-down philanthropic strategy. There may be specific projects that leadership cares about, and those are the projects that receive company resources in terms of time or funding. When you are a smaller team, flipping that strategy to allow employees to come up with their own ideas of what causes are worth supporting, is a great way to allow space for your team to prioritize and get buy-in for their passion projects. People will also connect with teammates, who they might not have realized, care about similar causes.

Another benefit of this style, is that it allows a faster response to new causes that are more relevant to your team, beyond causes that were part of the original annual plan. In 2020 for example, food insecurity, mass unemployment, resources for first responders, support for civil rights causes, voter rights etc - none of these were heightened priorities at the beginning of the year. Empowering your team to escalate important social issues they care about, can bring about a more thoughtful and human-centered response from your team and company.

A fair and transparent process outlined upfront that defines the eligibility criteria for what projects could get the company or team’s support, can go a long way in creating reasonable boundaries. For eg. you can have guidelines on the type of charity, its rating, its area of work, or require a clear financial proposal that checks some basic requirements. This way, employees have some guardrails on what type of causes they can focus on as part of their work philanthropy. 

Get leadership involved

It’s really meaningful to have senior leaders in a company visibly endorse or participate in an initiative, especially in small teams and start-ups. This helps confirm to employees that their individual values are aligned with those of senior leadership, and builds another layer of trust between employees and their leaders. I have seen many employees be incredibly moved to see specific leaders caring about the same issues as them, and a shared bonding based on that passion.

Leaders showing their genuine care for common causes also humanizes them. Nobody wants to feel their leaders are one-dimensional and only care about profits. At Salesforce for eg, the company’s leadership adopted the 1-1-1 giving pledge early on, as a way to give back. Even during the early stages, they committed to donating 1% of their time, 1% of their profits and 1% of their product subscriptions respectively, as a way to lift their community with their success. That early decision is embedded in the fabric of the company, and is a source of pride and inspiration for a lot of employees, including former employees like myself.

Leaders can participate by making suggestions, matching funds, providing resources from their own network, or just showing up as reliable cheerleaders for efforts that employees care about. Such an attitude goes a long way in encouraging participation from more employees, and thus improving overall outcomes for the effort.

When leaders bring their authentic selves to work, that is the clearest signal for all employees to be vulnerable and share their own areas of concern, where they want to make a difference.

Vary the ways for people to give back

Most philanthropic programs by default are focused on fund-raising. Raising funds is an important way to contribute and give back to important causes. There are many ways fundraising, even in a remote environment, can be fun and engaging. Encouraging healthy competition between teams, matching dollars of funding, and gamifying the fund-raising process are all ways a team can maximize engagement while prioritizing impact. 

Besides monetary ways of giving back, there are other programs that can include your teammates who may not be comfortable giving cash. For some people, donating their time may be easier and can be a very useful way to make an impact. Plenty of organizations need volunteers who even in remote situations can help them with important tasks like letter-writing, social-media amplification and phone-banking. These programs can also be done as a collaboration where groups of people work off the same list, share notes of their learnings or brain-storm solutions together.

Even gathering together to learn and educate each other about important causes is a great way for teams to bond and build awareness about important topics. One can do that via “Affinity Groups”. Your colleagues can often feel isolated if they feel their causes are misunderstood or under-appreciated. Creating a space where people feel comfortable sharing can really make a difference in them feeling included and supported. Colleagues showing up as an ally for other colleagues is a wonderful way to bond and build a connection.

Align with your corporate mission

People want to feel their work is important, and that they are adding something valuable to the world. Hopefully, your corporate mission is something that resonates with your employee base. Reinforcing the values of that mission, and its importance in the community around you is worth it to remind people why their work matters.

Tying in a philanthropic effort with that mission is a great way to highlight that value to all employees, and foster that shared sense of purpose.

There are many areas where a company is in a unique position to understand the challenges, because of how closely aligned it is with the core business, even if the company can’t actually do something to ease that challenge yet due to a lack of paying power. Perhaps solving the challenge would entail too much work that will end up distracting from the main business. However, the understanding itself can be utilized and big dents can be made in that space to start making a difference through Corporate Social Responsibility efforts. In the future, it can eventually become a part of the main business as well, if a sustainable solution is found through the charitable programs. 

At Komodo, our mission was to reduce the global burden of disease - and there were multiple programs that supported the awareness and fund-raising for specific diseases, which really made a difference to those disease outcomes. At Salesforce, the mission was to help companies connect with their customers in a unique way. The 1-1-1 giving pledge was something not just employees, but even the clients were encouraged to participate in, and the focus was on long-term programs that served the communities we existed in. At Fitbit, the company sponsored a lot of programs that invested in fitness and health initiatives across the country, and found ways to support them. At all of these companies, I’ve felt what a huge difference it makes to feel integrated with our communities and our mission. Feeling that sense of alignment was extremely meaningful and fulfilling to me.

Track your efforts and Share Successes / Learnings

All good programs need visibility, and reinforcement. Defining good metrics to track the overall impact of your philanthropic initiatives is a great way to hold yourself accountable. Without any real metrics, the efforts will eventually be de-prioritized, and people’s incentives to participate in things that aren’t taken seriously reduces. Instead, people are motivated by clear achievable goals, where progress towards them is celebrated as a group.

Giving importance to these initiatives by highlighting them in town halls, team meetings, and even listing them on a company's marketing encourages the teammates that made an effort to get involved with the projects. The support and acknowledgement also defines who you aspire to be as a company, and what kind of driven people you want to attract to your own mission.

Conclusion

All in all, employees increasingly care about working with leaders and colleagues they feel connected to. With a remote-first environment in most companies right now, happy hours won’t bring people together as much as a shared project that includes the satisfaction of giving back to the community. Philanthropy programs are good for employees, good for society, good for leaders who want to foster a happy workplace and good for growing brand goodwill.

I’m deeply grateful to have worked in a series of companies, most recently Komodo Health, where philanthropy was an integral part of the culture. Besides contributing to the benefit of the communities, being able to work on and lead philanthropic programs has also contributed to my satisfaction tremendously!