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How to Boost Employee Engagement With Community Involvement

By Jon Bradshaw | Business Tips | No Comments

Community involvement is more than a branding opportunity for your business. While showcasing your values is never a bad idea, there’s more to the story.

Your employees are also members of the community. Their sense of how your company gives back to that community can affect their engagement levels at work. Companies that are heavily involved in their communities have high levels of employee engagement.

Why is that? Because employees want their work to be aligned with the things they value. When your company makes an effort to improve where they live and work, they see that.

The good news is, there are many ways for your company — and its employees — to get involved. Take a look at the following ideas to jumpstart your company’s local involvement:

1. Institute volunteering days.

Many local organizations need manpower just as much, if not more, than monetary donations. Volunteering takes time: That’s why employees would probably appreciate a day off centered around volunteering.

One way to make this happen is to give employees paid time off to volunteer. Let them choose the day and organization. Link employees to local opportunities they are interested in.

Another way to do it is to volunteer as a team. In this case, you’d get your team together to figure out what organization to serve. After reaching out to the organization, you’d all take the day off together. Not only can this scale your contribution, but it acts as an opportunity for your team members to build stronger social bonds.

The key to company volunteering is that it’s ongoing. Continue to reach out to organizations in need. Build service into your company calendar on a monthly basis. Volunteering isn’t just an investment in the organizations you’re helping; it’s also an investment in your employees.

2. Sign up for sponsorships.

Another great way for a company to get involved in its community is by sponsoring philanthropic events or programs. People call companies for these kinds of opportunities all the time.

Don’t ignore them. Better yet, go the extra mile and seek out initiatives to sponsor. Common opportunities include:

A charity race, such as a marathon or triathlon
An annual festival that is a staple of your community
A local art gallery
A library or nonprofit bookshop
A local school’s theater production
An afterschool program for kids
A sporting event

Look around: The opportunities are endless. And if you’re not in a position to donate money, you could always offer to do pro bono work. You could provide free samples of your product. This way, you’ve both marketed your company and helped make an event possible.

3. Organize your own local event.

Although other organizations would appreciate your help, why not throw your own community event? It could be something educational or artistic. It might be something purely fun, such as a block party with food vendors and performers. You could even get other companies in your network involved.

The key to event planning is to know who will attend. That knowledge allows you to tailor your event to the audience you expect. And while it might be appropriate to organize an event that directly correlates to what your company does, don’t feel limited. Planning something with a wider appeal is a great way to get attention for your company.

Encourage employees to help you plan the event. Those who do will get to witness their community impact firsthand.

4. Invite students for a company visit.

The students in your community can benefit from engaging with your company. Bringing them in for a field trip can be inspiring, while giving your team a sense of gratification.

Reach out to local schools. Let them know what you could teach young people. For younger children, you could discuss what your business does and show off product concepts.

For secondary students, talk through your industry as a possible career path. You could pair employees up with students and have them discuss what they do. What does the work look like? What difference does it make? How can they follow in your team’s footsteps?

Another option is young adults. Bring college students in to talk through internship opportunities. Work with local colleges to offer course credit for the work they do. Put students who might not be a perfect fit for you in touch with other companies in your network.

Contributing to your community boosts your company’s image within your community. Your employees will see that, and they’ll feel all the better about their role within it.

6 Remote Volunteering Opportunities That Are Perfect for the Pandemic

By Jason Barnes | Business Tips | No Comments

Volunteering doesn’t just do good for the world; it’s also good for a team.

Giving back reminds everyone to be grateful for the opportunities they’ve been given. It also gives them something to talk about other than work. Volunteering is a great way to bring a team together around a shared purpose.

Over the last few months, teams have had to find new ways to bond. No longer can they eat lunch together, work side-by-side, or meet up for an after-work happy hour.

Unfortunately, the same goes for volunteering opportunities: You can’t simply waltz into a children’s hospital to read to kids during the pandemic. But if your team wants to help, there are still plenty of ways to do it.

Giving Back From Afar

If you’re willing to get creative, you’ll see that there are almost as many opportunities to volunteer remotely as their are in-person:

1. BeMyEyes: Lend your sight to people with visual impairments.

As long as your team members have their eyesight, they can volunteer for BeMyEyes. People with vision impairments use BeMyEyes to check expiration dates, read instructions, look for lost items, and more.

Start by downloading the BeMyEyes app. Once you’re matched with a user who needs to see something, you’ll receive a video call. All you have to do is describe what you see on the screen in order to help them out. From the comfort of your own home, you can join over 3.8 million volunteers in giving a gift it’s entirely too easy to take for granted.

2. Amnesty Decoders: Dig into international human rights violations.

With easy access and tons of opportunities, Amnesty Decoders makes it easy to become a digital activist and do meaningful human rights work. To get to work, all you need is internet access and a smartphone, tablet, or computer.

Amnesty Decoder volunteers help researchers sift through large data banks of social media messages, images, video, and other documents for evidence of human rights abuses. Decoders help researchers avoid information overload so they can focus on the root issue.

Since its release in June 2016, Amnesty Decoders has tackled seven projects for the betterment of humanity, including digitizing a large data bank of oil spill investigation reports, identifying misogynistic social media content targeted at female Indian politicians, and more.

3. Crisis Text Line: Support people experiencing mental health crises.

If you’ve never experienced a mental health crisis before COVID-19, odds are that you have a better sense of how difficult they can be. Turn that into positive energy by volunteering on behalf of Crisis Text Line.

Remember, a crisis doesn’t necessarily mean someone is thinking about ending their life. In many cases, it means that someone simply needs an attentive ear to listen to their challenges. Just be prepared to talk about tough topics, including abuse, anxiety, suicide, loneliness, bullying, and self-harm.

With just a four-hour-per-week commitment and free training — valued at over $1,000 per volunteer — you can change someone’s life. You’ll become a more compassionate, empathetic, and understanding person, not to mention learn strategies for addressing your own mental health needs.

4. Project Gutenberg: Transcribe print literature into digital documents.

Project Gutenberg is a free digital library with more than 60,000 e-books and cultural works. To improve access to information around the world, Project Gutenberg has a range of volunteer opportunities available:

Proofread an e-book.

Joining as a member of the Distributed Proofreaders team means that you can proofread as few or as many pages as you want. That way, readers don’t have to deal with transcription errors.

Procure eligible paper books.

Producing new e-books for the site means getting a hold of paper books with expired copyrights. Because most content published before 1923 is no longer under copyright, the site mostly contains older works of literature.

Burn CDs and DVDs for people without internet access.

Even within the U.S., not everyone has access to the internet. Share information and materials with those who otherwise might not have it.

5. Ancestry World Archives Project: Build a publicly accessible genealogy database.

Genealogy sites like Ancestry are not only fun and sentimental, helping people find long lost relatives and learn about their family’s history, but they also benefit society. Family history data can be used by detectives to solve crimes, while medical experts can leverage it to understand a person’s predispositions to certain diseases.

Ancestry’s World Archives Project houses free searchable records gathered from historical documents. Volunteers review scanned documents and make the material searchable by typing out its contents. They not only get a firsthand look at historical documents, but they may also be eligible for discounts on Ancestry’s premium services.

6. CareerVillage: Answer students’ career questions and share work experiences.

Landing a job is all about who you know. Unfortunately, a lot of talented students don’t have industry connections. Worse, some of them don’t even know what working in the field is like.

CareerVillage volunteers give promising students that leg up. Ranging in intensity from full-on mentorship to casual question-answering, volunteering opportunities come with no specific commitment or training requirements. CareerVillage’s network of volunteers advise more than 4 million learners, including those from underrepresented backgrounds.

Just because teams have to work together differently during the pandemic does not mean that they can’t still come together to do good. Try it: There’s never been a better time to get involved.