Align Your Corporate Giving With Employee Values To Help Retain Talent

With the holidays here and end of year donations in full swing, to whom, how much, when and how an organization donates goods, services, talent and money, reflects the organization's and its leadership’s values. They are also important to employees, who can do a quick online search to find out what the company does and does not do, from political donations to charitable giving.

One of the key factors that employees consider in deciding which companies or organizations they want to work for is how well the organization aligns with their values. This is especially true of female talent, as the 2022 McKinsey-Leanin.org Women in the Workplace survey found. “Women are demanding more from work, and they’re leaving their companies in unprecedented numbers to get it,” and that includes insisting that their employers do more to support employee well-being, Which organizations the company donates to are a reflection of those values.

Employees, especially women, Millennials and Gen Zers, assess the organization’s sustainability profile, diversity profile and how open they perceive the organization to be. That’s where an organization’s ESG profile – for environment, social and governance – can be a valuable tool. ESG ratings and reports can demonstrate to current employees, new recruits, and potential clients, that your organization walks the talk, which includes the organization’s philanthropic giving and community involvement, as reported in the “S” part of the ESG profile.

In the “E” part, high-quality ESG reports data on the organization’s carbon emissions and other elements of its sustainability profile including the use of recycled materials, the amount of waste that is reduced, reused or recycled, and water and energy use. The “S” part, for “social,” reports data on how the organization treats all its stakeholders, including employees, suppliers, customers, shareholders, and the communities in which it operates, as well as the wider society. The “G,” or ”governance” section, is about transparency, reporting, accountability and how the organization is governed, including its board of directors and leadership’s diversity profile and behavior.

Finding out what your employees value

A 2022 Qualtrics survey that “More than half of US employees (54%) would be willing to take a pay cut to work at a company with better values, and even more – 56% – wouldn’t even consider a job at a company that has values they disagree with,” according to the press release about the study.

“Values by and large don’t really change…What changes is your behavior around your values,” said Erin Michelson, (no known relation to the writer) CEO and founder of Summery.AI, an A.I.-based culture support tool. She explained that their technology measures employee values and priorities, from the environment, to social causes – which Summery frames as gradations of “kindness.” She said their technology can identify the areas that employees on mass are most aligned with, helping to direct the corporation’s giving strategies. When people take Summery’s KindQ short survey, for example, their results show the types of organizations that they might want to donate to or volunteer with based on the survey results. An organization can get a report from Summery that aggregates the results of all the employees who take the survey to see the types of causes with which their employee base is most aligned.

Blackbaud, another software system, also helps employers target their philanthropic giving, in part my assessing the types of volunteer work and donating that the organization’s employees are currently doing. Rachel Hutchisson, SVP of Blackbaud, said employees want a voice in how their organization gives back. “This idea of ‘voice and choice’ is, ‘ask me what I think and then listen to what I have to say and then give me a choice as to how I can participate. Don’t forget that I’m an individual’…That’s a really big trend.” Hutchisson explained in an exclusive interview previously on Electric Ladies Podcast.

Corporate branding has to be authentic today more than ever – and that includes philanthropy

As we see every day on social media when companies are called out for inconsistencies and scandals and policies that go against the grain of their employees and/or customers, an organization’s brand today is very conspicuous and scrutinized – the corporate giving policy included.

Anne Bahr Thompson, author of “Do Good: Brand Citizenship to Fuel Both Purpose and Profit,“ says that “brand citizenship is a way of doing business – from a company’s core purpose; to its delivery of goods and services; to its responsibility to its employees, community, the environment and the world – that people trust, believe in and rely on.”

So, as your organization starts writing checks this holiday season, the leadership might want to include its employees in the decision making process, either directly or indirectly, to ensure that your organization aligns its giving policies with its employees’ values.