Cisco was honored last year to win the top spot on People's 2023 List of Companies That Care, and a key factor was our employee culture of giving back.
We've been on a multi-year journey to engage our employees for positive impact at scale.
Not only did we see significant increases in donations and volunteerism to our global communities, but tangible benefits back to Cisco.
It all started with an audacious goal around 2016 to engage 80% of our employees in giving back annually by the year 2020.
We diligently adopted best practices in the field such as offering year-round donation matching, raised annual match amounts to $25,000 per employee, and offered 40 hours of volunteer time off per year.
Center on inclusion and make it simple for nonparticipants to take their first give back action.
We provided new hires with $15 donation credits to direct to their preferred charity on their first day at Cisco.
From virtual volunteerism to Webex chatbots that encouraged people to donate, we deployed digital features to keep it top of mind, make it easy to get started, and keep coming back.
We continued to iterate through 2019, and that year we hit our goal with 81% employee participation.
Hitting our goal felt like a feat unto itself, but what came out of it was even better-increased social impact and substantial business value.
Not surprisingly, engaging at scale grew our employee volunteerism and giving exponentially.
From 2016 to 2020 when we first hit 80%, we saw a 176% increase in volunteer hours and a 150% increase in employee donations and matching.
With the help of Cisco's Research and Intelligence team, we conducted a longitudinal study to explore the relationship between giving back at Cisco and individual, leader, and team performance data.
We examined the first three years of Cisco's 80% engagement data-who gave back, what they did, and how frequently-against performance data to analyze business factors like attrition, promotion, bonuses, and recognition.
Compared to employees who did not take any community impact action, those who took at least one per year stayed longer at Cisco, had higher bonuses, had higher odds of promotion, and received more recognition from others.
When a team collectively engaged in giving back, the whole team had higher rates of promotion and higher recognition.
Particularly compelling was that when leaders engaged in giving back, their team was more likely to give back as well.
When we put these elements together-social impact and business value-this is the foundation for building a purpose-driven employee culture.
Our journey has helped us demonstrate that doing good for the world is good for business.
While we continue to engage at scale, we also invite our broader ecosystem of business partners, customers, and suppliers to join us.
This Cyber News was published on feedpress.me. Publication date: Thu, 11 Jan 2024 08:43:04 +0000