Top Ten Tips To Improve Employee Motivation With CSR

Working for a company that cares is a great morale booster. Understanding what makes their staff tick and what causes are close to their heart is a great motivator for employees to go that extra mile. Developing a CSR programme should be entrenched into an organisation’s strategy and understood by all staff members on all sites in all territories.

Here’s our top tips to creating a top CSR programme:

1. Don’t just write a cheque and think that your job is done. Create a policy that effects every touchpoint of your business from customer services through to recycling policies.
2. Create a joined-up strategy from all divisions of your organisation to ensure your CSR strategy is embedded into your company’s vision and values.
3. Healthy workplaces are happy hardworking places: when creating your CSR strategy consider how you can boost your employees’ levels of health and fitness - consider offering fresh fruit, lunchtime yoga and aerobic sessions.
4. Never enforce your CSR plans onto your workforce. Consult with employees and gain support/ideas for the development of the plan from everyone in the organisation from all levels – MD to the factory floor.
5. Create pride in your organisation and tell everyone about the good work that you do. This will really help improve talent retention, recruitment and ensure your employees are bursting with fresh ideas and energy to help you succeed.
6. It’s time to get your hands dirty! Don’t just organise a fabulous gala dinner for a deserving charity, visit their organisation and help them out to see where your funds are really going. Group activities with a charity can be a great team-builder and you’ll soon reap the rewards.
7. CSR generates more engaged employees and research has proven that these individuals are likely to take fewer sick days. So, why not create a rewards scheme for unused sick days?
8. Don’t forget to set targets for what you want to achieve and remember to review these and share your successes with your teams.
9. Generating highly motivated employees is often down to a good manager. Never forget to treat your staff with due respect and a ‘thank you’ really does go a long way.
10. Never think that your efforts are a drop in the ocean. Altering climate change, or getting enough mosquito nets and clean running water to the third world has been a challenge for a very long time, but if we all step-up and undertake our responsibilities we will make a positive difference.

For more information about employee engagement and employee research, visit www.surveyinitiative.co.uk.

Gary is a partner at The Survey Initiative and has managed numerous employee research projects for a variety of organisations. Gary’s initial grounding was in the areas of sales and marketing, in the mid nineties he joined Longman Software Publishing to head up the business development of SURVEYkits (the worlds first employee opinion survey toolkit). After spearheading its growth over an 18 month period, Gary joined EMPLOYeSURVEYS, the original developers of SURVEYkits, helping to establish EMPLOYeSURVEYS as a leading provider of employee surveys. Following its successful growth, in 2006 employesurvey was bought by a leading consultancy group. Gary enjoys sports, in particular table tennis and football.