CHAPTER 7

Get Hands-On Purpose

FOR MANY YEARS JOHN WAS A REGULAR KEYNOTE SPEAKER AT THE annual Inc. 500 conferences, where the 500 fastest-growing privately held companies gathered. In the mid-1990s, shortly after Awakening Corporate Soul was published, the socially responsible business movement was just getting started in a serious way. After John’s talk one year, the CEO of an up-and-coming retailer asked him a question about an experience the CEO had had with his employees.

“We are a very socially responsible business,” the CEO told John. “We give a great deal away to charity, we have a great set of values, we care about our people, and we offer an amazing product to our customers. Last month a group of 50 employees volunteered together to work with inner-city kids. People came back buzzing and engaged like I have never seen them before. How do you think I can get that kind of energy back at the office?”

His question was important, and it’s related to an issue that we have experienced with many organizations over the years. His company was doing many of the right things: it had a purpose, it was generous, it was good to its customers and employees—and yet something was missing. As John probed more deeply, he soon discovered that most of the purpose-related activities in the company were headed up by the senior leaders. Aside from the volunteer day, the majority of the purpose-oriented work they were doing was in the form of charitable donations.

The company’s values and mission were inspiring, but when John asked how much employees got to shape those values, how involved they were on a day-to-day basis with the company’s social mission, and how much influence they had in deciding where the company donated money, the CEO shrugged and said, “Well, they don’t.”

His employees felt remote and isolated from the process—and rightfully so. My advice to him was simple: “Get your people more involved. Get their hands on your purpose. Right now, the purpose is yours, and you need to find a way to make them feel like it’s theirs.”

Traditionally, as discussed earlier, businesses have tried to activate purpose in a top-down way: the leaders determined the mission and values and then disseminated them to the people. The company decided what philanthropic efforts it would support, but most of that was in the form of ceremoniously handing a check to the chosen charity. Employees may have been encouraged to donate a small portion of their salary to well-known charities like the United Way, and customers were the passive receptors for one-way advertising messages about the company’s philanthropy.

We are not saying that charitable giving is not important, nor that there aren’t times when a company must act without wide consent of its stakeholders, but thriving in the age of social good requires new thinking. Today’s talent, and customers as well, are eager to get involved, get their hands dirty, and feel that they are directly contributing to making a better society and planet. They want to help shape a company’s values and take part in decisions about where it focuses its efforts to change the world. Employees also want the workplace to help them participate in this change.

This is an important shift. In the past, if an organization was seen as doing good, employees and customers were happy to sit on the sidelines. In the purpose revolution, they want to be on the front lines. Your team members want to help shape your company’s purpose and values, and your customers want to work with you to make a better world. We call this shift from bystander to participant, and to thrive in the age of social good, leaders need to find ways to get what we call hands-on purpose.

FROM BYSTANDER TO PARTICIPANT

The shift from bystander to participant has major ramifications as it’s taking place across society, with business in that larger context. Millennials, certainly in North America, have grown up with a much more egalitarian parenting style than did the previous generation. In part as a reaction to the more “because I said so” approach of their own parents, the baby boomers involved their children in negotiating their lives to a large extent. A casual observation of parents with their children in the grocery store, debating which cereal to buy, is witness to the change that has occurred.

The same is true of schools in North America. Almost every baby boomer has a story about a friend in Catholic school, suffering the proficient aim of a ruler in the hands of a stern nun. By contrast, their children often negotiated with their teachers the criteria for the success of projects. From the ability to choose whatever you want from a million options online (books, movies, music, groceries, clothes—the list goes on!), to a world where social media invites us to regularly connect and interact with people at any time, to open-door policies at companies in which leaders are regularly accessible and often called by their first name—this shift from bystander to participant is happening everywhere. We can argue about the merits of more-participatory parents, schools, and business environments, but it would be hard to argue that people today don’t expect to be involved! The observer age is obsolescent.

Developing countries have also experienced this shift, as seen in the Arab Spring that swept across the Middle East in 2010 or simply the increasing ability to connect in a nanosecond with anyone in the world. Today’s employees and customers no longer wish to sit on the sidelines; they are eager to get involved. Organizations that are truly thriving in this new world are practicing hands-on purpose. Team members are helping shape a company’s mission, values, and purpose—and are being offered ways to get their hands dirty at work in making a difference—and both employees and customers have a say in how companies engage to make a better world.

MAKE INVOLVEMENT YOUR PASSION

Companies need to constantly look for ways to engage team members directly in efforts to make society better and to define the company’s values and goals on such issues. It is important that companies have lofty visions about making an impact on large issues, such as climate change and poverty, but unless your team feels that they are directly part of a meaningful effort to make the world better, purpose will fall flat.

Emzingo cofounder and managing partner Drew Bonfiglio has a bird’s-eye view of the emerging purpose-focused employee. His company designs programs for young talent to experience meaningful work both within and outside the company. One example is the company’s work with Everis, a Spanish information technology (IT) consulting firm. Emzingo designed and facilitated a series of workshops with Everis for its high-potential employees and managers in training. One two-day workshop was based on action learning and using social impact as a vehicle for practical learning to find meaning and purpose in their jobs.

By connecting with local field partners, including NGOs, nonprofits, and community-based organizations, Emzingo identified challenges that these employees could confront. Employees then used their prior experience and new knowledge from the workshop to find solutions to these challenges. In these types of programs, participants are encouraged to regularly reflect on the role of business, how social innovation can have a positive impact on business, and how their individual roles in an organization can have meaning and purpose.

Bonfiglio told us that when people feel empowered and excited by Emzingo programs, they often get “really frustrated” when they return to work and their companies or leaders don’t understand how important purpose is to them. He also explained that when people get to be involved in projects that make a difference, it not only engages them but also makes them hungry to replicate the experience at their jobs. He emphasized that younger employees want it all at work: they want to have a great career and feel that they are getting to make a difference in a hands-on way. He told us, “These guys just don’t want to settle.”

At 3M sustainability has increasingly become core to the company’s mission, and team members there tell us that this emerging focus is deeply motivating. The emerging company purpose centers around the concept of improving every life. It is expressed in a three-part mantra: 3M technology advancing every company, 3M products enhancing every home, and 3M innovation improving every life. On its website 3M communicates the inspiring nature of its purpose: “Improving every life is an exciting endeavor and an ambitious one. It’s the right thing to do and core to who we are.” But improving the planet and every life, which is central to its core purpose, must include ways for team members to get their hands on that purpose.

Historically, 3M is famous for granting employees 15 percent of their time to work on creative projects of their choosing. That time is increasingly being spent on purpose projects related to a sustainable future. Jean Bennington Sweeney, 3M’s chief sustainability officer, says, “One of the things we are working toward is helping each function see their role in sustainability—not just the people who have sustainability in their titles.”

Among other activities, 3M holds a Sustainability Week that involves workshops and contests to successfully engage employees around the globe. One competition includes developing ideas for sustainable solutions to major problems. Teams compete, and the winners present their ideas to a panel of senior executives, including the CEO, senior vice president of research and development (R&D), chief marketing officer, and chief sustainability officer. Employees vote for their favorite idea—whether it relates directly to products and services or to corporate programs—and the winners get marketing and R&D funding to put their plan into action.

Winning product and program ideas have been in areas ranging from road safety, to energy production, to human health. Through this program 3M sends a clear message: every person in the company is a sustainability leader and can truly make a difference. In other words, you as a team member are at the center of purpose, not merely observing it.

Like 3M, German company Henkel AG & Co. has made sustainability core to its business: “‘Creating sustainable value’ is our purpose that unites all of us at Henkel.”¹ As a company that proactively seeks ways to activate its purpose in the workplace, society, and the environment, Henkel strives to “balance between people, planet and profit” and takes a “long-term, entrepreneurial approach toward all elements of sustainability, aiming not just to comply with existing standards but also to shape new ones.” A commitment to sustainability has always been “a major driver” of its success.

But how does Henkel make these ideals practical in the real world? In a 2014 interview with McKinsey & Company, then Henkel CEO Kasper Rorsted shed some light on this question: “Many companies have sustainability strategies and targets, but sustainability can only become an integral part of people’s daily work if all employees understand the underlying principles. When I am asked how many employees are working on sustainability at Henkel, I always reply: 47,000. Each employee has the responsibility, and each makes a contribution. But in order to do this, they need to know and understand our strategy.”²

Rorsted went on to describe the importance of getting everyone engaged around sustainability. The company sponsored workshops for its 2030 sustainability strategy, where “managers at all levels and their teams developed a sustainability action plan for their own particular areas.” In all, the company conducted 670 workshops around the world, “which yielded around 6,000 initiatives for implementation.”

One notable outcome of these workshops was “the idea of supporting employees to become ‘sustainability ambassadors.’” Their role is to be proactive, to “talk about sustainability to coworkers, suppliers, customers, and students.” They also provide sustainability classes and visit schools—and their results have been impressive. According to Rorsted, “We have trained more than 1,300 sustainability ambassadors, and more than 6,700 children in 23 countries have attended a sustainability session.”

Volunteering Pays Twice

To close the purpose gap and help employees get their hands-on purpose, it’s necessary to support and advocate for their personal enrichment through contributing to others’ well-being. Employees want to work for a company that makes a positive impact on the world, one that offers programs where they can join with colleagues to tackle local or global challenges. It’s not enough to simply say your company believes in the important social or environmental issues of the day. You must demonstrate involvement, both within the company and outside, and make sure your employees have the chance to be a part of it.

Forbes Insights reported in 2011 that 60 percent of companies surveyed agreed with the statement Philanthropy and volunteerism are critical for recruiting younger qualified employees.³ Developing in-house volunteer programs, allowing sabbaticals for volunteer opportunities, and setting up social and community events are just a few ways to enable your employees to get involved with issues that they care about.

The purpose revolution has renegotiated the social contract between company and employee, expanding beyond the transactional pay for time and output contract. Employee learning and development programs are undergoing radical changes as companies realize the value of nonjob experiences, such as community enrichment and volunteer programs.

For example, Cisco’s global program, Time2Give, provides employees 40 hours of volunteer time annually—paid! This time does not come out of their other vacation days or paid time off. In addition, volunteer events are often part of Cisco’s offsite meetings, as the company considers “giving back” as part of its DNA. In 2015 employees gave more than 155,000 hours of volunteer time to nonprofits or causes that they individually chose.⁴ That year Cisco posted revenue earnings of $49.2 billion.⁵

A purpose organization case study by LinkedIn demonstrates how one popular microfinance company, Kiva, gives employees an opportunity to make a difference outside of work while also learning more about how the company directly affects its customers. Kiva’s mission is to connect people through lending to alleviate poverty. Most people join Kiva to help others, but with the company operating a digital platform with lenders and clients around the world, that experience could get lost. Instead, Kiva makes a deliberate effort to weave impact into the employee experience.

Every other year Kiva funds an international trip for each employee to travel to a client and directly experience Kiva’s impact. When they return, employees formally share the experience with their colleagues. This practice yields a constant stream of powerful stories. Each employee’s trip is repeated every second year to keep the emotional connection between work and purpose alive.⁶

Companies find that volunteering pays twice. It not only is a key attractor for top talent in a competitive labor market but also helps improve the health and vitality of the workforce. Studies show that 78 percent of people who volunteered in the past year reported lower stress levels, 76 percent said that volunteering has made them feel healthier, and volunteers report coming back as better leaders and performers.⁷ Millennials are especially keen on philanthropy and social participation. One survey found that most—63 percent—gave to charities, 43 percent actively volunteered or were a member of a community organization, and 52 percent signed petitions.⁸

How One Leader Turned Purpose to Profit

Giving people a chance to get hands-on purpose can have a large positive impact on a company, or even a team, regardless of size or scale. Take Deb Elliott, who years ago took over a high-profile retail outlet of The Body Shop on Robson Street in Vancouver. The store was performing quite poorly in terms of sales, and the staff weren’t all that engaged. When Elliott took over as store manager, she could have focused on sales, prodding her team members to win more customers. Instead she took time to find out what causes her young staff members cared about most deeply. Soon it became apparent that raising awareness of the then expanding AIDS epidemic was something everyone on her staff could get behind.

The team started volunteering together, and the more they got involved in making a difference, the more deeply engaged they became in the store as a source of meaning. Sales grew steadily, and the store moved from a chronic underperformer to a high performer on business results during Elliott’s tenure. This story is a great example of your not needing to be the CEO to reap the benefits of hands-on purpose. It also shows that a good way to engage people on the path of purpose can often be unrelated to the core business. Elliott discovered that when you get people engaged in making a difference, their overall commitment to the business grows.

Facilitating volunteer opportunities for your employees gives them exciting new learning experiences and the chance to take action, directly confronting a societal ill or issue that they care about. It also shows customers and investors that you care about more than the bottom line and that you’re willing to lead your team in the right direction. Today no one wants to work for or buy from a soulless, faceless corporation. You need to highlight your company’s efforts to effect positive change or you risk becoming irrelevant and missing out on the success of those companies wholeheartedly embracing the purpose revolution.

HANDS-ON PURPOSE AT IBM

When we interviewed Jen Crozier, the vice president of corporate citizenship at IBM and the president of the IBM Foundation, she told us that “paycheck philanthropy is out; involvement is in. I speak at a lot of universities, and students tell us, ‘Don’t just give me an opportunity to give some of my paycheck; give me a chance to get involved in making a difference.’” With that dynamic in mind, IBM established the Corporate Service Corps, a pristine example of getting hands-on purpose.

The program selects top management prospects and then trains and dispatches these leaders-to-be to emerging markets around the world. Participants spend four weeks in groups of 10 to 15, helping solve economic and social problems of their selected community. Teams work collaboratively with their government and community counterparts to implement socially responsible business practices with measurable results in a global context.

The IBM Corporate Service Corps shows how purpose can drive many different benefits all at the same time. The most obvious benefit is directly to the participants. People we have met who get to be part of these kinds of programs often find them life changing, and they cement their relationship with the company. Serving alongside deeply engaged colleagues is rewarding itself, but doing so while associating your work with making the world better is invaluable. Employees appreciate the company’s providing them with meaningful time that would otherwise be used for normal, day-to-day duties. In the process, team members learn firsthand about the emerging markets and can help the company tailor its services to those communities, and they gain new skills in leading from a global perspective.

According to IBM, since its launch in 2008 the service corps has had a positive impact on the lives of more the 140,000 people, by helping communities learn new skills and build their capacity to take action on their own in the future. The program has sent more than 4,000 participants on 250-plus teams to more than 40 countries. Participants hail from over 60 countries and have served communities in Argentina, Brazil, Cambodia, Chile, China, Colombia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Nigeria, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Romania, Russia, Senegal, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Tanzania, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, Vietnam, the United Arab Emirates, and Ukraine. The program continues to expand to new locations each year.⁹

Crozier says that this program, and others like it at IBM, “are like helium for employees, lifting all the metrics such as engagement; it develops leadership skills, and 90 percent of those who have participated in the service corps call it one of the best development experiences of their lifetime.” She says that thousands compete for the 500 slots available each year.

IBM says that the turnover rate for team members who take part in the program is basically zero. Having associated making a hands-on difference with their employment at IBM, the relationship between participants and the company becomes profoundly deeper. Not every person in a company can be sent on such a mission, but even the chance to potentially do so, and the knowledge that your company is performing such important work, augments the overall goodwill that employees associate with the company. As one IBM’er said to us, “This whole idea of ‘creating a smarter planet’ makes me proud to be part of this company.”

At IBM employees and retirees can also take advantage of less ambitious efforts, including volunteering at a school or community organization for kids and connecting with other participants on the future of volunteer service. The idea, Crozier says, “is to give people a menu of opportunities, then let them choose.”

Whether it involves volunteering for a day of service or a long-term project, helping shape the values of the company, working in a soup kitchen, having time on the company’s dime to brainstorm sustainability ideas or to be a champion of sustainability—the point is that making society better can’t just be something the company does. You need to find a way to help your people get hands-on purpose. In the process, you’ll also develop ideas for involving your customers directly, as well.

IBM earns a great amount of goodwill among potential customers in the communities and countries it serves through the Corporate Service Corps and other programs. In addition to connecting with your employees over purpose, you need to connect with your customers as well, showing them how you’re making an effort to effect change but also providing ways for them to get their hands-on purpose as well.

JOIN HANDS WITH YOUR CUSTOMERS

In the purpose revolution, it is more critical than ever to engage your customers in the same way you involve your team members. When focusing on social good efforts, always ask, How can we work with our customers to make a difference? This is a profound shift from simply asking, How can we show our customers we are making a difference? Involving customers in such efforts, however, is a novel concept for many companies, and they may not realize how much careful planning is required. Most importantly, the effort must be connected to your core mission and be implemented strategically.

Pepsi made headlines in 2010 when it abandoned its buy of Super Bowl ads and instead ran its Refresh campaign, in which it gave away $20 million to charities based on consumer nominations. The campaign was well intentioned and generated lots of news before and after the game. Pepsi directly reached out to customers and potential customers to get them involved, providing a way for their voices to be heard and their chosen charities to be supported.

Yet the reviews of the campaign’s success were quite mixed. First, there was voter confusion over the process. Second, having people nominate charities and crowd-source votes is fraught with all kinds of dangers, such as having charities nominated that your company, or a large number of customers, may not approve of. Ballot stuffing, so to speak, is also an issue, as charities can rally people to vote for their cause. Pepsi also didn’t connect with a charity related to its core mission or purpose. As result, customers couldn’t necessarily connect Pepsi with a specific cause, either. Without that connection, the campaign appeared to many observers as forced or disingenuous.

Pepsi also cast a wide net regarding the audience. It’s good to involve as many people as possible, but it’s more important to know your customers and how they’ll approach such a campaign. The company’s instincts were good, but if you recall the Seventh Generation toxic chemicals effort discussed in chapter 1, you’ll see an instructive comparison.

In the case of the toxic chemicals campaign, it was 100 percent aligned with Seventh Generation’s brand and purpose. The full-page ad in the New York Times felt authentic and was focused on engaging the very kinds of customers that the company aimed at winning over and getting involved. The act of signing a petition was simple and straightforward, lending itself to little confusion about what the company was trying to accomplish and how customers could help.

The Pepsi campaign’s execution was confusing for customers, who were unclear on the voting process. The campaign also failed to focus on core issues that Pepsi was tackling. And while it caught headlines (BIG COMPANY FOREGOES ADS IN FAVOR OF MAKING A DIFFERENCE), it lacked a strategic connection to the company’s purpose. Without that kind of focus, such efforts fail to truly engage people in getting their hands-on purpose.

Contrast this with a 2017 video produced by Heineken in the United Kingdom focused on building bridges.¹⁰ The video featured real people, with fundamentally different viewpoints on such issues as feminism and climate change, who were put together and given a task to build a bridge together. Once the task was completed, they showed participants videos of the person they built the bridge with, expressing views diametrically opposed to their own. They were then given the option to sit down and have a beer together to talk about their differences or leave the room. Unlike the Pepsi campaign, this video had no celebrities, did not focus on the product, and connected to a deeply felt issue of our time: the capacity to have authentic conversations to bridge our differences.

It’s a great feeling for executives, leaders, and employees when the right campaign is properly executed, helping customers get their hands-on purpose and having a direct impact on a cause they care about. But it also contributes to the company’s success—remember, doing good has become good business. To maintain that feeling and success, however, a new type of company has been gaining popularity since the mid-2000s. This model is sometimes known as one-to-one and is based on the idea that every time a customer buys a product, the company donates the same product to a person in need, typically in a developing country. Let’s take a look at one company following this model, doing great work and performing extremely well.

The Warby Parker Story

Warby Parker, the online eyewear provider, is a great entrepreneurial success. When founded in 2010, like so many businesses it sought to solve a real problem: figure out how to manufacture and sell affordable, fashionable glasses. This is how the company tells its founding story:

Every idea starts with a problem. Ours was simple: glasses are too expensive. We were students when one of us lost his glasses on a backpacking trip. The cost of replacing them was so high that he spent the first semester of grad school without them, squinting and complaining. (We don’t recommend this.) The rest of us had similar experiences, and we were amazed at how hard it was to find a pair of great frames that didn’t leave our wallets bare. Where were the options?

It turns out there was a simple explanation. The eyewear industry is dominated by a single company that has been able to keep prices artificially high while reaping huge profits from consumers who have no other options.

We started Warby Parker to create an alternative.¹¹

The company’s first purpose was to help customers access high-end eyeglasses at a lower cost (recall the primary purpose of all businesses discussed in chapter 2). But the founders also knew that more than a billion people globally don’t have access to eyeglasses, meaning 15 percent of the planet is at a disadvantage in both work and life (recall that a commitment to society and the world is the second purpose). So, from the very start, Warby Parker collaborated with a nonprofit called VisionSpring. The idea was simple and easy to understand: for every pair of glasses sold each month, the company would contribute an amount to VisionSpring, resulting in that same number of glasses being distributed to people in need around the globe.

Warby Parker doesn’t physically donate a pair of glasses. Through VisionSpring, local people are trained to conduct low-cost exams and sell ultra-affordable eyewear, thus meeting the need for glasses and enabling new small businesses in developing countries. Customers receive an inexpensive high-quality product and directly contribute to two important causes: eye care and job creation in places that may have few opportunities for either.

This is a prime example of hands-on purpose with customers. It is simple, it is fully integrated with the product itself, and customers can see how their purchases directly involve them in the company’s efforts to make a better world. Warby Parker also claims to be carbon neutral, and though that’s excellent, it is unlikely to attract and retain customers in the same way its main purpose does. While being carbon neutral is important and even critical to the planet, the eyewear one-for-one is something customers can get their hands on and feel like I am part of this. The company’s purpose is my purpose too.

Though this model may be easier to implement in start-ups or new organizations, it’s still a viable approach for new initiatives, products, or services at large, well-established companies. For example, if your company is launching a new product, consider how you can connect its purchase with a charitable donation or cause. You don’t need to rewrite the whole playbook of your company’s processes, supply chain, or distribution; you just need to come up with a way to help your customers help others by using your product or service. Remember that it must relate to your core values, mission, and purpose as an organization. Without that authenticity, your customer won’t connect to the cause.

The TELUS Transformation

TELUS, the Canadian telecommunications company based in Vancouver, has embraced the idea of hands-on purpose to significant benefit. The process began when CEO Darren Entwistle first came on board. Since he joined the team almost 20 years ago, TELUS has been one of the most profitable telecommunications companies in the world. It also has among the highest employee engagement numbers of any company of its size and composition. Under Entwistle’s leadership, TELUS has staked its reputation on leading the drive for social good and has won numerous awards and distinctions for being socially and environmentally responsible.

Entwistle, like Steve Jobs, is a bit paradoxical. He can be very tough, does not suffer fools, and is unabashed in communicating how great his company is. But his passion for the business and for the role that social good plays both in the success of TELUS and the good it can do for society is off the charts. An hour talking to Entwistle about purpose and what it means for both his company and the world leaves one ready to join the revolution.

“We have three great pillars of challenge and opportunity that face us as a society,” he told us, “environment, education, and health care. We need to do something about all three of these things. We need a sustainable environment, we need opportunity for equal access to education for a broader group of people, and we need to meet the growing health-care challenges at a cost we can afford.” He is unequivocal that he sees TELUS playing a critical role in solving these issues, and this idea permeates the company culture.

Sandy McIntosh is the executive vice president of people and culture and the chief HR officer at TELUS; she sums it up when she says, “Every day our team members across the country are improving the lives of Canadians and the communities in which they live. Giving back is in our DNA—it’s core to our values and at the heart of our culture.” TELUS team members also told us that Entwistle’s personal sense of purpose around the company’s true purpose have motivated them to find personal purpose in their work.

When Entwistle joined the company in 2000, he launched an effort to define a new set of company values. The senior team could have gone off and written the values on their own, but instead he commissioned an internal effort to ask thousands of employees what values they held personally and what they felt made TELUS great. The core set of values that emerged from that process has stood the test of time. More importantly, the tone was set from the get-go that These values are ours!

TELUS leaders then focused on how they could give team members opportunities to directly serve society and causes they care about. One of their most successful efforts is the TELUS Day of Giving, an annual effort where the company, over a period of about a month, sources out opportunities for team members to volunteer (and bring their families and friends along too). Employees volunteer in community programs that are building schools, improving parks, and supporting local hospitals. Team members have volunteered more than 6 million hours, performing the work on their own time, often on the weekend.

“We have measured it, and team members who participate in the Day of Giving opportunities are more engaged at work,” says Jill Schnarr, vice president of community affairs at TELUS. The company’s employee engagement scores are in the high 80s.

The effort works because it moves people from observers or bystanders of purpose to participants. Millennials volunteer on average almost twice as much as their baby boomer counterparts, but two of the biggest barriers to volunteering are time away from family and finding a place to volunteer. TELUS’s program removes both barriers. But the company doesn’t stop at engaging its employees to get hands-on purpose. It involves customers as well.

TELUS has given about half a billion dollars in philanthropic donations. Before Entwistle such money was granted to charities in the traditional ways of large companies; customers and communities had little say about where those funds were funneled. With Entwistle at the helm, they set up community boards comprising citizens from 12 Canadian regions and five international communities where the company has a large presence. The company empowered these community boards to support grassroots efforts in their respective geographic areas.

This unique approach allows the broader community to feel that they are partners with TELUS in creating a friendly future—the company’s core mantra. They joined hands with customers when it established the community boards. The shift from We give to You help us decide where to give bonds customers in new ways.

TELUS has measured customers’ views of the company over the years. “We use something called the Omni survey every six months,” says Schnarr. “We ask if people know that our company is active in the community and if it influences your decision to continue to do business with us. We used to be at, like, 15 percent; now it is at 50 percent.” She adds, “Increasingly, we hear new team members say that one of the reasons they joined the company is because of the work we are doing in the community.” Though the TELUS stated purpose is to create a friendly future, it could easily be Get employees’ and customers’ hands-on purpose.

Entwistle says that the same principle is at play when matching employee charitable contributions as another way of getting hands-on purpose: “When the focus was just on giving money, of course, people cared; but once we were matching our giving with things our people were already passionate about, engagement went off the charts.”

BEST PRACTICES FOR
GETTING HANDS-ON PURPOSE

   Develop competitions, programs, and companywide initiatives to get your employees not only thinking about purpose but coming up with ways to enact it throughout the company.

   Brainstorm all the ways your team can be involved in purpose at work—inside and outside of the company. Encourage each team member to commit to one or two volunteer programs or activities each year.

   Sponsor an annual Day of Giving or something similar for team members to volunteer on a regular basis. Or simply do it with your team.

   Recognize employees for their good works related to sustainability and corporate and social responsibility.

   Develop a one-to-one model within your organization, finding a way for a customer’s purchase to directly connect to a worthy cause or charitable donation related to the company’s mission and purpose.

   Take the pulse of your customers through a simple social media survey to understand how your campaign or product launch will resonate best with the target audience.

   Establish community boards or other regional committees to support grassroots efforts in deciding how and where to make charitable donations, connecting more directly with customers and their personal purposes and values.

   Recruit champions to develop or lead grassroots efforts to support CSR initiatives and goals.