Empowering your employees to drive social impact

Sona Khosla, a leading architect of strategies to help companies maximize their positive impact in the world, talks about why such efforts need support from the bottom up as well as the top down in order to thrive.

As Chief Impact Officer at Benevity, Sona Khosla relishes the opportunity to make environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues resonate in her company’s C-suite. However, she also believes that even greater potential to drive positive social and environmental outcomes is in the hands of “7.9 billion armies of one” around the globe.

“Each one of us has the power to make a change and to influence change—to create a ripple effect,” Khosla told Alteryx employees and others during our Breakthrough Moments for a Better World webinar earlier this week. “When you start to elevate the awareness within yourself about even just one good thing that you can do, you can also shift other people’s mindset.”

Her remarks followed closely on the heels of Giving Tuesday, an annual appeal for people to put their time and money behind causes that make a positive difference in communities and the lives of others. Khosla said Benevity—which provides an integrated suite of software that supports organizations’ community investment and employee volunteer programs—is seeing massive growth in the number of companies and employees taking action.

“As people do something for Giving Tuesday and feel the impact, hopefully they’ll keep going year-round,” she said. “It’s a moment that creates a movement at the individual level and the collective level.”

Alteryx rises to One Good Thing Challenge

As part of our support for Giving Tuesday, Alteryx has teamed with Benevity to launch a new Alteryx for Good Giving Portal and contributed $10 for each of our employees to donate to the charity of their choice.

This initiative has the potential to put at least $25,000 behind the life-changing work of nonprofits in countless communities. Through their donations, Alteryx employees are also joining in Benevity’s Good Thing Challenge, which seeks to inspire 12 million acts of kindness worldwide by Dec. 31.

Small steps to achieving greater good

While corporate philanthropy has existed for nearly a century, Khosla said today’s organizations and their employees alike are seeking ways to engage more directly and purposefully in actions that drive positive social impact. Economic and social repercussions from the COVID-19 pandemic, widespread outrage over racial injustice incidents, and growing environmental concerns tied to climate change “have rocked people to the core,” she added.

“More and more companies are saying, ‘We need to do something—and we need to do it now.'"— Sona Khosla, Chief Impact Officer, Benevity

Khosla recommended some practical ways for organizations to deepen their social awareness, commitment, and impact:

1) Embed giving as a value within your culture. “That’s really about empowering every single person to act on their passion,” she said. Examples include offering paid time off for employees to do volunteer service and matching their charitable donations. Some companies, including Alteryx, have created online giving portals and provided every employee with a set amount of money to donate to a nonprofit of their choice (see related story on this page).

“You’re giving people at every level a chance to influence the company’s culture—which is really the whole point of culture,” Khosla added. “The support that comes back is phenomenal.”

2) Encourage people to spread the word. “Everyone has a story to tell about a cause they care about and how it’s touched their lives,” Khosla said. Creating opportunities for employees to share their experiences can help rally even broader support across the company as well as stronger interpersonal connections.

“A lot of people don’t talk about giving because it’s considered a private thing, and they don’t want to boast about being generous,” she said. “But that’s how you really build the culture, through those little moments.”

3) Provide trustworthy guidance. “Many people are looking to their workplace for information that helps them be more environmentally and socially conscious in their personal lives,” Khosla said. Cultivating robust volunteer and philanthropic programs can also serve to enhance a company’s overall reputation and expand the value that employees gain.

To that end, Benevity offers a feature called Missions which companies can use to provide employees with gamified and easy-to-complete activities that promote awareness, develop empathy and encourage socially conscious behavior. “Those are opportunities to elevate the conversation” around social impact and build affinity with employees, she added.

4) Show the actions behind your words. “Your ESG work absolutely cannot just be lip service, because people see right through it,” she said. The growth of social media and other online information sources is fueling higher expectations among employees, customers, and other observers to see concrete evidence of a company’s commitment.

Setting measurable targets, issuing regular progress reports, and being responsive to employees’ feedback are among the ways a business can influence how its social-impact work is truly perceived. “Again, it’s got to be part of the grassroots culture,” Khosla said.

Employees seek out—and stay with—purpose-driven companies

Organizations that build these strengths into their volunteering and philanthropy programs can also expect to reap added benefits across employee recruitment, engagement, and retention, said Khosla. For example, a 2018 Benevity study found that employees who engage in giving and volunteering are 57% less likely to leave a company.

This effect is all the more significant amid what’s being called The Great Resignation of 2021, in which record numbers of workers are exiting their jobs as the COVID-19 pandemic recedes.

“More people are prioritizing purpose over a paycheck. They’re being very selective about who they work for,” she said. “And if your company can’t attract the talent, then good luck building innovative products and delivering first-class service.”

By contrast, those employees who feel passionate about their company’s social impact and see meaningful ways to get involved are more likely to become the next generation of business leaders. Therein lies the power of bottom-up, purpose-centered impact programs, Khosla said.

“We are building a new system, and we are building it together,” she concluded. “We’ve never before had the power that we have today. So let’s use it.”