It only takes a few nudges to double the results of your employee giving and volunteering programs. Here’s how.
Corporate Citizenship is not achieving at its full potential.
Most Corporate Citizenship Programs Struggle
First of all, we should admit that mobilizing employees to give one donation or volunteer once a year may not produce meaningful results for the company, for the community or for the employee. Just think of how beneficial your gym membership is when you only visit once or twice a year. Some good things happened, but not enough to justify a year-long membership.
Without regular exposure to new perspectives, meaning-filled experiences and intentional guidance to understand and apply the resulting insights, employee volunteering and giving may be a gesture of goodwill, but little else.
Like that gym membership, employee giving and volunteering hold the potential of significant progress for all involved, but only if people participate on a regular basis. Most CSR managers intuitively know this but struggle with barriers that are common to corporate citizenship programs:
1 – Lack of awareness. Employees do not notice the constant reminders to access the multiple benefits offered to them through giving and volunteering programs such as; matching giving, time off to volunteer, volunteer grants (dollar for doers), learning resources, and more.
The 2021 Deloitte Workplace Giving Survey revealed that “just 37% of professionals who donated in 2020 leveraged a workplace giving program”.
In fact, the survey found that “more than one-third (34%) of these professionals had not donated in this way the year prior
Another 17% cited a lack of awareness that such a program existed at their company, demonstrating a greater need for communication between employers and professionals about workplace giving options available to them.
2 – Employees are too busy. As we all have the same amount of time each day this is an issue of salience and identity. We volunteer the same way we spend money: on things that are important to us, things we value, things we enjoy. Asking people to buy something they do not need, is not immediately viewed as personally important and for which they may have no experience to see as enjoyable, is a waste of time. The same applies to invitations to give and volunteer.
3 – Poor follow through. Between not showing up for employee volunteering events and recording volunteering hours, CSR managers are often left with few output metrics to show for all their efforts.
The Say/Do Gap
Despite concerted efforts, for most companies, employee participation rates in giving and volunteering programs have been stuck at around 30% for the past five years. However, over 70% of people say their employer’s culture of giving or volunteerism is important to them, indicating a clear gap between what people say they think is important and what they actually do.
So how can you start to close this say/do gap with your employees?
By applying behavioral science to the field of corporate citizenship, which is exactly what we’re doing with Nudge the Good, an initiative of the RW Institute.
Nudge the Good takes a transdisciplinary approach to understanding these issues and incubating ideas using evidence-based methodologies. The goal? To achieve sustained pro-social behavior among employees resulting in longer commitments, deeper investments and meaningful change in our workplace and communities.
Behavioral Science And Nudge Theory
Before diving in, here are a few high-level definitions of Behavioral Science and Nudge Theory to help frame the conversation:
Behavioral science examines how human beings make decisions when responding to the environment, social interactions, and emotions. The field encompasses many other disciplines such as neuroscience, economics, biology, psychology, social cognition, and many more. Behavioral science is primarily focused on how human beings use heuristics and biases to make 95% of our daily decisions (read more here).
A nudge is “low-cost signal or procedure that encourages, from the planner’s point of view, a socially desirable change in behavior while preserving individual liberty” (Thaler & Sunstein, 2009)” (read more here).
How do these two concepts come together to increase employee volunteering and giving?
A Practical Example
Consider the multiple communication channels used to promote employee giving and volunteering opportunities; email, flatscreens, team meetings, executive messaging, and word of mouth. The undisputed champion of effective invitation and response is word of mouth. But even this is not a given. Because of how human beings respond to their environment, the shortcuts we use and the cues we look for in the moment, attention to exactly how and where the message is presented and the choices offered determine the outcome. This is where nudge theory comes in: by designing and testing specific “interventions” and then measuring the outcomes.
For example when their CEO invited employees to donate, Deutsche Bank found that personalizing the e-mail (“dear David” instead of “dear colleague”) raised the numbers of donors from 5% to 12% (and to 17% among employees who additionally received sweets on the same day).
Partnering With Nudge the Good
The RWI Nudge Unit works with partnering companies to create a Behavioral Map, which outlines the targeted behaviors, existing barriers and opportunities for interventions. These interventions are then applied to a specified group with consideration to where the employee is (home, work, in transit) and when the message is shared (time of day, week and month).
From here, the partner receives a solution report including a refined list of behavioral solutions as well as criteria for assessing and applying the options.
Once the interventions are applied, the RWI Nudge Unit conducts testing (randomized control trials or A/B testing) to analyze the results. In this scientific approach, negative results are just as valuable as positive results in that both guide future interventions.
Next Steps
Does this vision of corporate citizenship resonate with you? Would you like to implement nudges as part of your employee giving and volunteering programs? Our Nudge Unit is comprised of academics, CSR professionals, behavioral scientists and subject matter experts (education, research methodology, philanthropy, nonprofits, marketing and more) from around the world. We can help.
If you are interested in Nudge the Good, you will be in good company as we are currently working with leading companies such as Target, SAP, KPMG, Starbucks, Nvidia, Nike and the World Bank. Here are three options to consider – which one is your next step?
Learn more about Nudge the Good by joining the Community of Practice
Drop us a line and we can explore how to apply behavioral insights to your existing program efforts (nudgethegood@rw.institute)
Listen in on a discussion about Nudge The Good with the Points of Light Community for Employee Civic Engagement.
(By the way, this article is full of nudges. Can you spot them?)