More Mileage Series: Team Engagement

Today’s episode of the More Mileage Series continues Kyle and Graham’s discussion on corporate social responsibility by relating it to team engagement. Most organizations already offer volunteer and community involvement opportunities, but too few maximize engagement.

We’ll share why it’s important for business success to make sure team members are aware of (and utilizing!) the opportunities that exist within the organization, as well as the company-wide efforts to create positive social or environmental outcomes. Having team engagement plans in place is important, but following through with them is even more crucial to team success. Kyle and Graham also bring up the importance of understanding your team members and state of the workplace today with some shocking statistics from Gallup.

Don’t hesitate to reach out if you want to learn more. Find us on LinkedIn and at www.seachangeltd.com!

Listen to this episode here!

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[Kyle] Welcome back to our More Mileage mini series. It's a collection of bonus shorts as part of The Stream of Conscience Podcast. As mentioned previously, we're co-founders of a business impact and philanthropy consulting firm. And as part of that work, we find that there are several terms, concepts, tactics, strategies that we think could just use a little bit of demystifying.

[Graham] So these episodes will be rapid fire. So don't hesitate to reach out to us. If you want to learn more, find us on LinkedIn and at wwwseachangeltd.com. In the last episode, we talked about the term corporate social responsibility or CSR and how that impacts operational efficiencies. Today. We'll keep talking about maximizing team engagement through corporate social responsibility.

[Kyle] Yeah, that's right. So team engagement takes a lot of different shapes. And again, you know, a lot of this is predicated on the fact that we have started at least at some level of listening. Right? So we wanna, we want to know what really resonates with our team members across the, the scope of a business.

If you don't know that that's a great place to start to start gathering that engagement and understanding of what will engage.

[Graham] Yeah. One of the pressure points we often hear from businesses is around that team members are just unaware of the various different opportunities for community engagement that exist within the organization.

And, and so, you know, I think that from that standpoint, not only listening, but then how do we, how do we find ways to really communicate that effectively and increase that, that visibility so that the team knows where they can be really leveraging or taking advantage of these great opportunities.

[Kyle] Right. Yeah. We often find, and, and if this sounds like you call us that, you know, underutilized volunteer time offerings and underutilized gift matching, right? If you're offering these great things, you obviously have an intention to empower your employees to do good in the community, but if they're not being utilized, then there's a gap in the communication, in the strategy, in the engagement.

And there's a lot of ways that can be that can alleviate some of those, those pressure points. And so that you can, again, get more mileage out of the offerings that you, that you are putting out there.

[Graham] Yeah. And, and also, you know, the number of times we hear stories about organizations that team members are calling on organizations to do more good and really wanting companies to be doing more.

And again, a lot of times what we find out is that businesses are already doing a lot of this great work. Right. So how do we, again, communicate that? How do we find ways to really increase that engagement? You know, it's the stakeholder listening and it's helping create these systems that increase the visibility of it.

It's about really finding ways to make sure that you're talking with your team members and your departments to make sure that there's ways that you can be tying it back to the individual objectives of your various different departments within the organization.

[Kyle] Absolutely. Yeah. You know, and you'll notice that these episodes sort of build on each other and there's, there's a method to the madness, right. So we have to, we have to start with really understanding what the people want. Then we have to develop a strategy around it, try things, right. There's programs, there's initiatives that, that can gather engagement.

You also want to be able to maintain flexibility sometimes, right. To shift or to, you know, sometimes it's team engagement, sometimes it's client engagement or relationship building. Right. So there's a lot of different functions that CSR and philanthropy can serve. And so we, we just encourage businesses to really understand that full scope of stakeholders as they develop a strategy.

[Graham] And as, as always, you know, we will always be a proponent of, of recognizing that this is also very good for business. The more that your team is engaged on these corporate social responsibility initiatives and more that they're engaged in volunteerism and community outreach and serving on boards, the better it is for the organization.

Kyle, I know you put together a list of some data points here. So let's let's roll through these really quickly.

[Kyle] Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So and this number seems to keep growing from Gallup the state of the American, and now the state of the global workforce, I believe it was 20%, 21% and 2016, 2017.

And now it's 23%. Businesses are 23% more profitable if they have a strong engagement with their employee versus their, you know, their competitors that don't have as much engagement.

[Graham] 75% of millennials would take a pay cut to work for socially responsible companies. Yeah.

[Kyle] And I think it's worth mentioning, you know, there's plenty of millennial based statistics here and we've got more for you, but 75% of the global workforce will be of the millennial generation by 2025.

[Graham] Shocking.

[Kyle] Yeah. Let that sink in 75%, three out of four workers at your business will be millennials by 2025.

[Graham] So we'll keep rolling here. 83% of employees are more loyal if a company helps them contribute to social environmental issues.

[Kyle] Okay. And 76% of millennials will consider the social and environmental outcomes or, or focuses of a business when they are choosing for whom to work or for what business to work.

[Graham] So, as you're hearing all of these statistics and hearing the implications for the workforce, hearing the implications for the productivity and, and ultimate bottom line of the business, let this one sink in as well, less than half, know what their company stands.

[Kyle] Less than half of employees understand what their company stands for.

That's that's earth shattering, frankly.

[Graham] It is. Yeah. Well, when it's, when it's becoming such a critical piece and component of the business, when you're looking for ways to differentiate, when you're, when we're facing the great resignation, you know, having team engagement with these programs is not only beneficial for the team members to be able to contribute and have that sense of, of give back and contributing to a greater cause.

[Kyle] And that my employer, my company. Is supporting me and doing that, giving me the, the vehicles to engage in what I love.

[Graham] Exactly. So, you know, it's not only, it's a kind of a double edged sword here that we're trying to think about with team engagement is we definitely want increased team engagement.

If we're gonna go to all the effort of doing these, putting on these great programs and having these great initiatives, we want team members to take advantage of them. We also recognize that this is really critically important for business moving forward. And so if, if we want to be successful as an organization, we have to do this well.

[Kyle] So next episode, you're gonna hear a little bit more about how this all frames, business visibility and community recognition components. We've got a lot of great insights to share with you here. And in the meantime, you can reach out to us, contact us at hello@seachangeltd.com, or you can reach us by phone and you probably think we're a little crazy for giving out our phone numbers, but we really do folks.

We really do want to hear from you. So call this line and, and donate. No, I'm just kidding. My cell phone number is (402) 430-1328.

[Graham] Hit me up (402) 430-6432. We're here to be your partners in purpose.

[Kyle] And if you can remember whose voice is who then one up for you.

[Graham] Good luck.