Increasing employee engagement is among the top three items of the to do list of many Human Resources Managers. And it has also caught the eye of many CEOs due to the well known fact that
there is a clear correlation between the level of employee engagement in a company and the level of organizational performance.
The “Employee Engagement Report 2011” of Blessing White, Inc. where nearly 11,000 people from all over the world were surveyed, revealed that fewer than 1 in 3 employees worldwide (31%) are engaged. Nearly 1 in 5 (17%) are actively disengaged.
An engaged employee is defined as a person who is heartily involved in, and enthusiastic about his/her work. The level of commitment an employee has towards the organization can create a competitive advantage.
Today, I want to share with you one tool for increasing employee engagement that is less conventional, often overlooked, and with which I have made great experiences: employee volunteering.
During my time as Chairman and Managing Director of Merck Ltd., Thailand, we offered regularly volunteering opportunities. Initially only to our employees, but later on, we allowed their family
members and friends to participate. Finally, we even involved our customers and their families and friends.
Like this, we were able to create very big events, like e.g. a mangrove tree planting event where we were able to mobilize on a Sunday morning about 1,200 people (although our company had only about 200 employees at that time)to plant 11,864 trees, the biggest tree planting event ever in Thailand by that time.
During such activities, a lot of emotional bonding took place among our employees, but also between them and our customers, strengthening the relationship with our company.
While we started our employee volunteering activities with projects created by the Management, things got even better when we decided to ask our employees to submit proposals for volunteering projects developed by their own and to be funded and supported by our company.
I still remember the first project where a lady in our Logistics Department came up with the idea to do some renovation work in a school in her home town. We agreed to fund the project and provided various materials like paint, tools, plants, food and beverage etc.
About 25 people carried out the project. Most of them were employees who were interacting with each other regularly in the company, like people from the Sales Dept., Logistics Dept. and the Warehouse. It was a great success, a source of inspiration for other employees and other departments to follow. The school and its staff were very happy and so were our employees. And I was very proud about my colleagues who did such a wonderful job.
Let me share with you one of my favourite quotations by the American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson: “It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that you cannot sincerely try to help another without helping yourself.”
Involving our employees in suggesting and choosing volunteering projects was a great step and resulted in volunteering becoming a tradition across our whole organization. The surveys that we carried out every six months at our company always showed high employee engagement scores (obviously, employee volunteering was not the only reason for that). The highest scores we got were in the area of our volunteering programs and activities.
So, if you want to bring up the employee engagement scores in your company, your department or your area of responsibility, touch people’s heart. Develop and conduct some volunteering activities together.
