"This is a season of giving. Gifts for suppliers. Gifts for customers. Gifts for employees. Seasonal gifts can be thoughtful expressions of appreciation for support and loyalty over the past year. All too often, however, that fruit basket, cheese platter, baked ham or Mont Blanc pen gets devoured during coffee breaks or tucked away in a desk drawer. Even that holiday bonus is spent by your employees weeks before they receive the check. Meant to be thoughtful expressions, these gifts often have fleeting value.
One way to promote the spirit of giving while achieving a lasting positive impact on employees is to provide your people with the opportunity to give their time, talent or treasure to others in the community who are less fortunate. Here a just a few examples of what you might do:
Encourage your employees to participate in United Way's annual campaign. Invite someone who has been helped by a United Way agency to speak at one of your employee meetings. Promote regular contributions through payroll deduction during the orientation session for new hires. Match employee contributions with corporate funds.
Provide employees with paid time off to volunteer at a social services organization of their choice. Invite them to describe their experiences in the company newsletter.
Organize an employee team to help you select a cause or agency that will be the focus of your company's charitable giving for the coming year. Permit the team to organize fundraising, coordinate volunteers and promote the program.
Allow employees to collect all those vendor fruit baskets and cheese platters and take them to the local soup kitchen or senior citizens center, where people really need the calories. Take those Mont Blanc pens and other gift articles to a resale shop, where they can be converted to cash for needy families.
If you give employees holiday gift certificates for food or merchandise, offer them the opportunity to donate those certificates to a charity of their choice.
Get employees to send a thank-you letter to everyone who provides your company with a holiday gift. Tell them that their gift was passed along to needy people in the community and ask them to consider a direct contribution to a charity of your choice in the future.
There are CEOs who say their responsibility is to earn the maximum return for shareholders, not to get involved in philanthropy. Some suggest they should not play a role in whether their employees engage in charitable giving. Others will cite non-solicitation policies as reasons for not permitting fundraising in their operations. In my experience, employees who are invited to participate in charitable work respond with generosity and enthusiasm. They feel good about helping others. Some do it on their own, and many simply need to be given the opportunity. Employees feel good knowing that service to others is part of their company culture and that they can play a role in bringing that culture to life. A clear and consistent policy of supporting specific charities does not in a practical way diminish the intent of non-solicitation policies. What's in it for shareholders? A workforce that is more engaged, more productive, more collegial, more loyal and more likely to be service-oriented when dealing with customers.
We can give the greatest gift of all to our employees: the opportunity for them to give to others. It's truly the gift that keeps on giving.
Louis Allegra is president of Allegra Management Consulting, Inc. He chairs CEO advisory boards in affiliation with Vistage, the world's largest CEO membership organization, to help Lexington-area executives become better leaders, make better decisions and get better results. Lou can be reached at Louis@AllegraManagement.com.