When it comes to creating a thriving workplace culture, looking beyond work itself can make all the difference. For Janeen Speer, chief people officer at social impact software company Benevity, that means being attuned to the causes that matter to her team and making volunteering a key practice. “This helps to infuse the company culture with a spirit of goodness and impact since everyone, regardless of team, gets involved,” she says.
Speer spoke with StrategicCHRO360 to share the initiatives she has implemented to help “Benevity-ites” thrive, as well as what other HR leaders can do to support their team and greater community.
What initiatives are you spearheading at Benevity?
This year at Benevity, one of our key focuses is on developing the next generation of leaders and creating formal programming to more efficiently and effectively help leaders grow their people management skills. We will do this through offering formal leadership programming for all of our managers this year.
We are also excited to launch a new change agent program, which will recognize some of our top-performing Benevity-ites. This could be an individual contributor all the way up to a director level who is known for getting things done while aligning with our values.
The goal of this program is to focus on accelerating their professional development now so that in a few years, they will be the next wave of Benevity-ites leading significant aspects of our business and their impact will be amplified. This program includes executive mentorship and training and will allow these change agents to provide their input into key programs like engagement initiatives across the organization that span all of our Benevity-ites.
In addition to these initiatives focused on upskilling and developing our people, we will continue to focus on creating longer-term goals for purpose that impact the business, such as diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging and ESG. Our DEIB initiatives are supported through our Benevity Purpose team, People team and teammates from across all corners of the business.
Our leadership team is deeply committed to advancing DEI within Benevity, and leadership involvement ensures that DEI remains a priority at all levels of the organization. We also actively engage with our communities through volunteerism, sponsorships and partnerships with organizations that are having impact in the DEIB space. This engagement not only impacts the communities we serve but also enriches our employees’ understanding and appreciation of diversity.
Additionally, we will continue to include volunteering in many things we offer within our employee experience this year. It’s more of a mindset than a moment, as it’s a powerful way to connect with our people and give back to our community.
Our teammates volunteer across their employee experience, from their first volunteer opportunity during their employee orientation week, to volunteer-focused team builders during employee on-sites and strategy sessions, to our marquee company-wide culture moments like our Homecoming and Community Days and observance days hosted by our ERGs like Black History Month, International Women’s Day and Pride Month.
We set up volunteer opportunities like river clean-ups, community garden projects and virtual volunteering for remote people as part of our own employee onboarding. This helps to create deeper social bonds for new employees, and a sense of impact as they ramp up into their roles across the company. This helps to infuse the company culture with a spirit of goodness and impact since everyone, regardless of team, gets involved.
Another key priority for this year we are increasingly leaning into is our Community First approach, which focuses on continuously strengthening our community and culture. We are encouraging our people to re-engage in our office community and have asked those who live in our hub cities to split their time between home and work in a way that works for them.
Our flexible approach allows the best of both worlds as our people can still design their lives the way that makes sense for them. At the same time, the increased connection time together will build empathy and understanding among our people and allows us to live into the “we are we” ethos of our culture.
With purpose at work at the top of employees’ priority list, what is your opinion on how HR leaders can address the issues their employees care about and speak up?
Employees today are highly vocal, passionate and demanding of the companies they work for. They want to feel a sense of purpose at work, and they want a say in what their company stands for. With employees valuing purpose over a paycheck at work, HR leaders must provide this purpose-driven workplace that individuals crave.
To address issues their employees care about most, these leaders must learn to actively listen to their needs and find ways to actually understand what’s going on from their employees’ perspective through tactics such as employee surveys and focus groups. This provides insights into the issues that employees care about which can help companies better plan programming for the future.
For example, if a lot of employees are passionate about climate, a company would consider building an activation for Earth Day in April of the following year. Or if employees gave a lot of support to racial equity and justice causes, companies could promote the presence of employee resource groups who are focused on these communities and look at running learning, donation and volunteer opportunities for events like Black History Month in February.
These types of events and promotions are important as they show employees that purpose and positive impact are part of a company’s M.O., which builds trust that the company is not just doing it for the brand, but to genuinely move the needle on societal and environmental issues.
Employee resource groups can also be leveraged as a mechanism for better understanding employee sentiment. The value of ERGs lies in their ability to amplify diverse perspectives, voices and experiences within an organization, contributing to a more inclusive workplace culture. ERGs have a proven track record of improving retention, and it’s obvious that the ability to connect with coworkers on a deeper level in a shared space is extremely important to many employees.
ERGs often serve as a catalyst for community engagement by organizing large-scale volunteer events that align with the interest areas of the group, and these volunteer opportunities can easily be expanded to become recurring events or facilitate donations. ERGs are a great way to strengthen the company’s social impact and DEI strategy while fostering a sense of purpose, equity and teamwork among like-minded employees.
What advice would you give to other HR leaders experiencing challenges attracting and retaining employees?
A strong corporate purpose program is often cited as a main driver in a company’s ability to attract and retain top talent. Almost every worker—from Gen Z to Boomers—prefers to work for companies that treat them well, but also enable them to live their values and make a positive impact on the world.
Purpose within a workplace builds a culture of connectedness that results in positive returns for business and the world. So it’s not surprising to see that many HR leaders are continuing to invest in these areas and are communicating their commitment to sustainability just as loudly as ever through their brand, employee and digital channels.
To make these efforts more accessible, many companies showcase their giving, volunteering, positive action and green programs to employees as part of their onboarding. This ensures that the company is seen as delivering on its brand promise, but also that they are enabling its people to have a positive impact through their relationship with the company from day one.
