How can you tie community experiences back into work?
The challenge is to try to put those in concrete terms. I’m a firm believer that it’s happening all the time, and we’re seeing the benefits and that’s why we’re successful. But to try to prove that to my board, it’s probably a little more difficult. There aren’t easy ways to track how that’s happening.
But one thing you can build on is that through those programs, we’ve seen people take more and more ownership. We started the program a couple of years ago. There wasn’t as much volunteering going on so, as a company, we decided, ‘Well, let’s tie it into the bonus.’ What you saw, over time, was that, because people are interacting with other individuals in the company and they’re building teams slowly, people sort of take ownership of volunteering. Our target is six hours [per employee] a quarter, and last quarter, the employee that did the most did 13 or 14 hours and we had 100 percent participation. We didn’t need 100 percent participation to get to our bonus. The target this year is 80 percent.
Often, an employee will say, ‘I have this volunteer event that I’m thinking about going to. Is anybody interested in participating?’ The employees are encouraging other employees to join in.
What that shows is that employees are taking ownership. And I think anytime employees take ownership — regardless of if it’s directly related to work — they’re going to take more ownership internally.
How do you encourage employees to get involved?
Start small. We started with a target of four hours per quarter and 60 percent participation two years ago. Starting with a low threshold … takes the pressure off people. If they don’t want to participate, they can choose to not do so.
Since we’re rewarding with PTO and talking about it as part of the bonus, these are all upsides for employees. Right now, one-fourth of the calculation of the bonus is determined (by meeting community involvement targets). So instead of making it mandatory or trying to push it down, we’ve given additional bonuses for participation.
That’s the way you avoid ostracizing employees that don’t want to volunteer. Make it flexible enough — especially when you start out the program — that people see that we’re not trying shove it down on them but we’re giving them an upside.
How to reach: dash Carrier Services LLC, (800) 815-5542 or www.dashcs.com