You spend most of your days trying to maximize every resource. You watch the budget, boost productivity and encourage your team to optimize everything they do. Why would you turn around and spend valuable time and effort in a community volunteer effort that has no discernible impact on the bottom line?
Well, first off, it’s a good thing to do. You can marshal a lot of resources (and use them intelligently) in order to enact a lot of benefit for the community.
But beyond the broader value to society, your company can draw significant advantages from the endeavor. The benefits might not appear directly on an income statement, but they can permeate your dealings with a number of important stakeholders.
Consumer Brand Building
You spend a lot of money on marketing. Using resources for community projects can play the same role, only with the added societal benefits we’ve already touched on.
Participating in community volunteer efforts publicizes the company, expands your brand and improves your image.
It may seem cynical to think of a charitable operation in terms of self-interested brand building; however, you can view the situation from the other perspective as well: You were going to spend the marketing money anyway. This way, you also help the community.
Employer Brand Awareness
Along with the benefits you can reap by improving your image with consumers, a strong community profile can help develop a brand among potential employees. In an environment of high worker turnover, it takes more than salary and perks to recruit and retain top talent. Tapping into people’s deeper values can help your long-term team building.
Community projects play into this process. Potential employees are drawn to your company because they feel like they can be part of something bigger than just a corporate enterprise.
Nurturing Culture
These employee-facing benefits don’t stop with potential future recruits. Community involvement helps bind your current team together and develop a richer corporate culture.
With volunteer projects, work becomes something beyond profits and paychecks. Meanwhile, the programs become potential outside team-building opportunities.
Volunteer situations and community projects bring people together outside of work, prompting deeper relationships and chances to build trust and rapport. You can skip that expensive rope course this year and volunteer instead.
Develop Community Relationships
We’ve seen that community engagement can raise your profile with customers and improve your standing with both current and prospective employees. There’s another stakeholder with whom the commitment can improve your standing: the community itself.
You never know when you will need community support for a business project. Office expansion, local tax breaks, political influence – building strong roots in a community and making connections with local bigwigs can pay off down the road.
Raising the Company’s Purpose
Corporate life can get stale. Even if the work itself is enjoyable, the injection of higher purpose can add an element of spiritual engagement otherwise absent in a strictly profit/loss endeavor. Community volunteer projects can add that ennobling aspect.
When you hire employees, you bring in the entire package. You want people who go beyond mere competency. You want people with wide interests and a commitment to ethics … the kind of people who would feel invigorated by a company-sponsored volunteer program.
Finding these well-rounded, idealistic employees becomes easier with strong recruiting partner. Qualified Staffing can help you assemble a team well suited for all your endeavors, both in the company and for the larger community.
Contact Qualified Staffing today to find out more.