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Today’s Organizations Do Well By Doing Good
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Corporations are part of communities and must build and maintain trust while helping stakeholders, not just shareholders, says Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce. “If you put growth above trust, then all of a sudden you create a toxic culture.”
I think the word that describe that is “DUH”
These times are a new day. Our customers are changing and more demanding, not only in product innovation but they want to do business with companies that are ethical and are trying to do the right thing whether it be the climate, sustainability or ethics. They are watching and that is the filter they are using. A few tech companies recently have challenged immigration policy in the US because their internal customers – their employees — did not want to be part of a company that didn’t speak out against a policy they vehemently didn’t like.
If you think for minute that it was part of an anomaly or outlier, you are sadly mistaken. This is the new workforce. Organizations cannot get by just on financial results alone. The new dynamic is: “What are you contributing to society as a whole?” I once read a quote that no one gets up in the morning excited about a P & L.
Our internal customers (your workforce) are also using the same filter as our external ones. So if you are concerned about the customer experience, you must also be laser focused on your employee experience. Imagine for a second that your external customers’ feedback was, as a whole, negative. There would be wholesale hand wringing; How do we turn this around? What is going to be our approach to address this business challenge?
Even now, though, in many organizations the employee experience is taken as a wink-wink. This is going to have to change. Somewhere along the line organizations will have to realize both are important. We have to address both with equal importance. Both are critical to our success. We must attend to both with equal fierceness because with a dual approach we can have a win-win. A positive employee experience will lead to a positive customer experience.
Organizations must realize that both those approaches are symbiotic. They are joined at the hip and as one goes so goes the other.
If you wonder why specifically the customer experience is tanking, root cause is with the employee experience. If your employee experience is trending downward, then your customer experience is in the queue to trend downward, too.
Fortune Magazine has an annual Change the World list recognizing companies that make a positive social impact through activities that are part of their core business strategy. This type award to me is monumental because it shows the shift in corporate thinking: A new breed of leaders are putting their best foot forward demonstrating that their companies won’t sit idly by thinking societal problems are someone else’s concern.
Many companies are putting more resources into philanthropic work, and for good reason. Along with the warm feelings associated with altruism, business leaders contributing to the social good recognize the benefits philanthropy provide for a company.
Employees who believe in their organization’s mission and projects will invest more into their work and have a more positive attitude toward their employer. By setting up philanthropic projects in which employees can participate, it inspires workers and builds passion among them. An inspired employee is often more productive than an unfulfilled one.
“As a CEO, it’s all about building a great culture; a great organization, so it starts with sharing and effectively communicating your vision and aligning employees behind that mission,” says Albert Gjonbalaj, CEO of UA Builders Group. “We are a mission driven company and that works out nicely with millennials who want something more than just a job; they want a purpose. So, our challenge, in taking this organization to its next level, is to attract better and more engaged people who are mission focused, talented, resourceful and driven to a purpose.”
Great words from a true leader. What is more important is that it sure as hell beats the cliché, “People are our greatest asset.”
Connect to society in a meaningful way and the result in social currency will surpass that P&L statement.