Co.tribute: How do you handle corporate giving and philanthropy at New Horizons?
KL: Well, to start, we ended up getting tired of all the requests to sponsor everyone’s kid’s soccer team…not that we don’t support that stuff, but it gets tedious when you have 100+ employees.
So we got together and decided on a corporate philanthropy program to go do charity work with pay for two days every year. On day 1, we tell them that they can go do whatever they want. Whatever is dear to their heart. The only caveat is that they have to take five pictures and give us a short write up about it. For their second day, we ask that they spend it working for one of the company-supported charities. We’ve selected two charities that we want to be supporting: Wounded Warriors and the Special Olympics Program.
What we’ve discovered is that people really get into this, and they go above and beyond, sometimes doing more than two days in order to complete some more charity work without pay. And we don’t judge on what the employee chooses to support, we’re just proud of how they’re contributing to the world.
Co.tribute: How do you take the pulse of your team and stay in touch with how they’re doing?
KL: We have a monthly meeting in every office where, for about an hour, we review the prior month’s activities: financial performance, sales performance, delivery performance, celebrate success, address concerns and areas of improvement. We’re fairly transparent, so people have the ability to ask questions and weigh in.
We also do a monthly survey of every employee where we simply ask them, “How do you like working here?” Rate it 1 to 5. And if you rate it below 3, please tell us why. We give them the opportunity to either be anonymous or to put their name down. We get so many great suggestions, because they are much closer to the day to day operations than I am.
The other thing we ask is that people don’t make it personal…that they don’t take shots at another person in the company. And I’m proud to say that in the two years that we’ve been doing this, we’ve never had one of those submitted. And we put every comment up in front of the company every month, sharing it for them to see. There’s no filtering, which makes for great round table discussions.
Co.tribute: Do you involve your clients in your giving initiatives?
KL: Yes, we have one client that is actually a large casino. One of the owners is good friends with one of our executives. So at a get-together one evening, they were talking about an event they do every year with a Wounded Warriors softball team. It’s basically a weekend gala event at the casino, and we supported them with our employees working as servers and helpers for their event.
Some of our events are client-sponsored events where the client has got something going, and so our employees who work with that client will be there supporting that charity event. This all wasn’t by design, though, it’s just that through the years, it organically took on a life of its own and has worked out very nicely.
Co.tribute: How have the giving programs affected your employees in the area of morale, motivation, energy, and so on?
KL: We give people the opportunity to stand up and talk about the event that they helped out on, and it really gives us a chance to get to know them personally and see what their true passions are. When people are talking about something that they have a real passion for, their true emotion comes out. As a result, we’ve had our eyes open to what really motivates our people, and therefore it’s given us the information needed to foster a better working environment for everyone. Because if the employee’s objectives align with our objectives, it’s going to be a win-win for both the employee and the company. The offer of choice as far as how they spend their charity day helps them see that we’re here to support them and celebrate them.
Many thanks to Kevin and his team for sharing their story with us. New Horizons is doing some amazing work, and engaging their employees in the process. We hope you're inspired to take some of these ideas to your own team, and promote a healthy culture at your organization.