Ebook
Convince your CEO to invest in Employee Purpose
Table of Contents How to make the business case for Purpose in your company
Table of Contents
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Recent years have brought our world uncertainty and highlighted room for a lot of change. Pressing issues have positively snowballed into positive action plans among some of the world’s leading businesses, with 8-in-10 executives feeling that business can tackle today’s most pressing problems. Maybe you want to be one of these leading organisations, and kick off an Employee Purpose Program? Maybe, like many, you’re also struggling to get buy-in from stakeholders and decision-makers? Not to worry! You’re in the right place. To support this guide we’re using the insights from our board of experts. We gathered opinions and use cases in a panel to better understand how employees can convince their CEOs to buy into Employee Purpose and Corporate Volunteering initiatives. You should walk away from this guide with a wealth of knowledge, tools, and resources to make a business case for your boss! Let’s jump in.
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Every business is different, they have different missions, visions, customers, employees, and communities. It means their very Purpose is different and your business case for investing in employee Purpose at your organisation needs to be tailored to your niche. Keep the above in mind as you read through this guide and our experts’ advice.
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1. Define what Purpose is Before you even begin to write a business case to invest in an employee Purpose program you need to know what Purpose is. What is Purpose to your employees? What is Purpose to your organisation?
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“Purpose is the overall well being of people. As an individual, it’s what makes one happy and fuels someone with a sense of fulfilment. When you expand Purpose to an organisation, it can be viewed as a Venn diagram in four parts. What does the world need? What do employees and volunteers love? What is the organisation good at? What are the business outcomes you want to achieve? It’s the intersection of these four circles that is ‘Purpose’ for the organisation. If this looks familiar, that’s because it’s inspired by the Japanese concept of ‘Ikigai’. At Cognizant our Purpose is to engineer modern businesses to improve everyday life. From there, our Purpose has evolved to improve everyday life. It is a combination of organisational and personal Purposes coming together to deliver social and business outcomes. We call it our Purpose Ikigai.” PADMASINI DAYANANDA
Global Head of Outreach—Volunteering Cognizant
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Neil Edwards shared PwC's approach to Purpose:
“Purpose is a really fascinating place. A definition of Purpose that’s out there a lot is that it’s your ‘why.’ However, that’s often just not enough. PwC’s Purpose is to build trust in society and solve important problems. There was a large introspective research to figure that Purpose out. What it burned down to was, as a firm: What do we care about? What’s important to us? What are our values and how do we put that out into the world? It’s based on the identity of the organisation as if the organisation was a living being." NEIL EDWARDS
Senior Manager Purpose & Inclusion PwC
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What PwC and Cognizant have in common is that their definition of Purpose was built from a combination of their people and their organisation, not one or the other. Follow a similar route and conduct research on what Purpose looks like across the spectrum in your business. Lockdown its definition for your organisation, and then you can progress onto building a business case around it.
How to define an engaging Corporate Purpose DEFINE YOUR PURPOSE
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Source
"At PwC, we recognise Purpose is also about individuals and their identity—it’s identity-driven. When we talk about Purpose we connect Purpose and identity—Purpose is personal. It’s who you are, what’s important to you, and what your expression of that is to the world. We believe that a Purpose-led company needs Purpose-led people.” NEIL EDWARDS
Senior Manager Purpose & Inclusion PwC
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2. Start with Why In order to get buy-in from your team, you need to explain the why behind your thought process. The first step is to work out what the problem or opportunity is, explain it, and suggest a solution with a timeframe in order to address it.
Highlight the broad benefits to the business and employees Make sure to highlight how an Employee Purpose program can make a positive impact in many ways. It never hurts to spell them out! Here are some ideas, with reputable sources to back them up.
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Research shows that an Employee Purpose program can: Increase employee engagement which leads to better business performance —McKinsey reported that employees with Purpose-driven work are 4x more engaged with what they do and engaged employees lead to stronger business outcomes. Increase customer acquisition and retention. Create value for shareholders—Research found that Purpose-driven missions can increase company market value by up to 6% over a 15-year period. Improve employer branding. Lead to better employee wellbeing—a report from McKinsey found that employees who said they are “living their Purpose at work” have 5x higher levels of wellbeing than those that aren’t. Employee purpose can also reduce stress, improve overall health, build stronger relationships and extend your lifespan!
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“When you do good for others you reduce stress, improve mental health, improve physical health, reduce pain, boost popularity, build happier marriages, improve happiness—even from five minutes of volunteering and giving that happiness can last for weeks. Living on Purpose has also been found to extend your lifespan, and make you 24% less likely to die. In the workplace, you’re 40% more likely to get a promotion and 10% more likely to get a raise! Alan Rozanski (a cardiologist doctor) said: ‘Purpose is the most significant driver of wellbeing. It’s more important than exercise and quitting smoking.’ There is a business case for the wellness of our team members and it revolves around Purpose.” BEA BOCCALANDRO
Author of 'Do Good At Work'
There’s a wealth of information out there, it’s up to you to decide what ‘why’ factors are most attractive to your CEO.
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“Through our research, we’ve discovered a lot. Over 82% of employees say they believe their fulfilment is their responsibility. In order for them to have a fulfilling work experience, there are a number of things organisations need to do. Mainly, organisations need to remove barriers so that individuals can get connected with their Purpose and make meaning of it on their own. An employer needs to create space and provide opportunities for shared exploration of Purpose and to build relationships through shared experiences—which come through social Purpose. The most powerful influencer of longevity is Purpose. Whatever your predicted lifespan is, if you want to maximise it then live a Purposeful life. It’s a public health fact.” NEIL EDWARDS
Senior Manager Purpose & Inclusion PwC
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Once you’ve got your purpose definition and the why behind implementing a more formal structure to your purpose program and volunteering initiative, you can get stuck into solutions.
Source
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3. Propose possible solutions You may have some ideas in mind as to how you can manage your program already. Maybe you want to try and run it manually? Or, maybe you want to leverage a partner to maximise the impact and participation? Either way, you can offer several options to stakeholders, with specific details about each one. It’s also important to emphasise the pros and cons of each to show you’ve done your research and to give stakeholders as much insight as possible. When you’re proposing solutions there are a few things you need to remember.
Connect it to your company values It’s possible one of the solutions you propose ties in well with your company values, for example: Team building Improving engagement of societies around the world Putting values into action Connecting to communities Giving back Make sure to mention this connection in your presentation or pitch as it will help the stakeholder envision the solution better within the business.
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Connect it to any existing internal initiatives There’s a high chance you already have some initiatives ongoing, whether they're formally organized or not. This solution would only intensify and boost participation and engagement in those initiatives. This was the case with PwC as Neil Edwards explains.
“Ours was a ground-up and inspirational business case that started with humans and an idea. It was created through skills-based volunteering—societal Purpose. We saw the connection between inclusion and Purpose and made a case to continue to build that function.” NEIL EDWARDS
Senior Manager Purpose & Inclusion PwC
Make sure you link your solution to the departments that are working on CSR, engagement and community impact —this solution could provide an answer for several departments, their initiatives and their current struggles achieving them.
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Share your recommended solution Once you’ve shared the different solutions available, now’s the time to share your preferred option and why. Make sure to emphasise the benefits, and the gains that this will have for your company internally and externally. If you’re proposing using a tool or platform some benefits might include: 1. Boost participation in the program by giving more options 2. Scale the program to make more impact with more actions 3. Improve the efficiency of your program and save program costs 4. Be up-to-date with the latest trends in this field and be inspired by other company’s successes 5. Improve reporting of the program and measurement of its success
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4. Outline the implementation process Now you have shared your preferred solution, it’s time to explain the implementation process. There are some key questions that every CEO or decision-maker needs answers to: How long will it take to implement? Who needs to be involved? What will be the outcomes? What are your initial KPIs? How will you communicate the implementation? If your suggestion is to implement a platform, you could explain the benefits, the steps that will be taken to kick off the program and the resources that will be needed. (Your technology partner may even be able to support you with some of these steps.)
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Some benefits to communicate are: Think of focus areas (causes, type of activities, etc) and key goals of the program Identify partners to support and tools to promote the program Prepare internal communication for launch and beyond Track and report the program results, improve it! When you outline the implementation process you take work off of anyone else’s plate. You’re showing that you’ve already got this covered, and you won’t require anything else from the decision-maker—all you need is the green light.
Source: Alaya
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5. Last step: pitch it internally Fantastic! You’ve done a great job so far and now you’re ready to pitch all of your hard work and research to those important people that can give you the green light. How do you go about this? First up, put together your findings in one document, so you have an overview of all of your work. Pick a tool that works best for how you work. Perhaps this is a visual digital board (with a tool like Miro), maybe you’ve been working from a Trello board for this project, or maybe a Google Doc or Spreadsheet is enough.
Source
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There are several steps to sharing your plan, the first few involve: 1. An email to your manager/decision maker with the initial idea 2. A presentation for you to adapt to your internal branding
An email to your manager/decision maker with the initial idea ACCESS TEMPLATE
A presentation template for you to adapt to your internal branding ACCESS TEMPLATE
We’ve created email and presentation templates for each to help prepare you for that process. If you’d like to access these templates, just click on this link and we’ll send them over to you! Padmasini shared her insight on how they pitch Employee Purpose at Cognizant.
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“There are three things that I pitch when convincing someone to invest in Employee Purpose. Number one is ‘giving is the new branding.’ You may spend millions on branding but when volunteers go out, that’s true branding, with social impact. Number two is talent acquisition. For millennials and Gen Z, sustainability matters and so Employee Purpose is a huge business case for HR and talent retention. Number three is team building. Your employee Purpose platform is also a networking platform—it breaks down departmental barriers. Stop paying money to take a team out on dinner and drinks, and go out and do something good instead and create true team bonding. It’s so important that you talk to a business and their language.” PADMASINI DAYANANDA
Global Head of Outreach—Volunteering Cognizant
Of course, any resource that we share here, you’ll need to adapt to your program and branding— but, we’ve kept them simple so it’s easy for you to do this.
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It’s time to convince your boss to invest in employee Purpose That’s everything you need to know to give you the best opportunity possible to convince your boss and those important decision-makers to start investing on Purpose. There’s a high chance that if you don’t have a purpose program in place, it doesn’t mean it hasn’t been considered. For as great as they are, businesses can struggle to prioritize them. However, if they know you’re leading the charge with safe hands, then you give this project the best opportunity possible of coming to life.
Check out our convince your CEO toolkit for more! GET TOOLKIT
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