Social Impact as an Employee Engagement Strategy

We heard from Sarah MacDonald last week that part of the value of community impact initiatives lies in the opportunity to connect employees with our companies’ and clients’ mission in another way.

We’ve all seen stats similar to this one published in Forbes last year: Three-quarters of US survey respondents indicated they want to work for a company that is trying to have a positive impact on the world.

Even in our industry, as we’ve discussed here at T2B, making medicines is only a piece of that purpose-driven work we so often speak about.

Whether you’re supporting team outings centered around community service, clothing and food drives, or care kit assemblies for patients at local hospitals, as communicators, we have a responsibility to also incorporate this work into our companies’ and clients’ narratives:

It’s not enough to have C-suite support for your initiative. Work with the executive assistants to have all your leaders actively participate.

Regardless if your org has a formal corporate social responsibility program, don’t leave impact initiatives only to your HR and corporate affairs teams. Internal promotion starts at the top, but as Sarah reminded us, it needs to be in line with the leadership team’s expectations and priorities.

Assign your org’s leaders responsibilities, even if that means simply showing up and being engaged. Be clear about their role in the context of any planned activities.

Capture and celebrate with your org the impact your initiatives have, and talk with employees about how you’re going to continue building on that moving forward.

Incorporate the work you’re doing in your communities into your actual communications materials, whether that’s social media, corporate website, intranet or digital signage.

Take advantage of the long shelf life of this work by partnering with your People & Culture and HR teams on how to weave it into talent branding and onboarding resources.

Tell us how you’ve successfully engaged your companies and clients at all levels of the org to engender even greater commitment to living our values and working toward our mission.