The Power of Aligning Culture with Employee Values
Shortly after our volunteer day with Habitat for Humanity, I sat down in my office to reflect. I’d just come back from working alongside Sea Island Habitat for Humanity and Bank of America. Together we helped build a house to support Brenda, a hardworking woman who’s never owned a home of her own.
The inKind and Bank of America team will all the inKind items
As I sat there thinking about the day’s work, I kept thinking about the power of companies aligning their culture with employee values. In under two weeks inKind enabled Bank of America in Charleston to engage 20+ employees to give hundreds of dollars of items alongside the bank’s generous donation of $15,000.
The value of the items is not what’s important.
What’s important is that 20+ people within Bank of America, who may not have ordinarily been able to participate in the Habitat program, connected with their company’s philanthropic efforts and helped improve Brenda’s life.
What’s also important is that Sea Island Habitat for Humanity connected with 20+ new donors and showed how their donation made a difference.
This is what giving back is all about — the personal and meaningful connections between nonprofits and donors that stem from the giving back experience.
Frank showing off the transparent gifts he made through inKind
Philanthropy and giving back are a large part of Bank of America’s culture. The Bank uses this culture to attract employees who want to work someplace where they can make a difference outside the office.
What I saw through the Bank of America and Habitat inKind project opened my eyes to the power of aligning company culture with employee values. With these two aligned, something special happened. When I spoke with the employees at the volunteer event they mentioned that they were proud to work for their company and were thankful for the opportunity to do something they’re passionate about outside the office.
I know first-hand that these experiences leave a lasting impression with employees.
Before founding inKind I worked at a large consulting firm. During my tenure at the firm I had the opportunity to take a sabbatical and volunteer for four months in Cape Town, South Africa. It was definitely my favorite four months of work, and maybe my life. Today, when people ask about my experience working at this company I always mention the sabbatical. The sabbatical directly aligned to my values. It demonstrated that my company was serious about giving back. And as a result, I’m still promoting the company today.
Deliberately shaping company culture can be powerful if implemented in an authentic way. It can be a major factor in recruiting and retaining top talent and lead to direct business results. The challenge is coming up with ways for employees to engage with the culture. It’s easy to write checks, it’s easy to get together a small group of volunteers, but it’s hard to give every employee the ability to participate and connect with the programs they care about.
In all honesty, the inKind project with Bank of America and Sea Island Habitat for Humanity was an experiment. I wanted to see if we could take what we’re doing for nonprofits and create value for companies by engaging their employees. The initial results from the experiment are positive and motivate me to keep exploring ways we can help.
What’ I’m interested in exploring next is whether companies are interested in using the data from our projects to quantify how their corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs drive results. As we continue to iterate the product, I’m going to think about how we can start to test the value of this data with companies.
If you work for a large company and have a point-of-view, let’s talk!
