Purpose Heroes Report 2021

Purpose Heroes Report: Learn from top purpose campaigns

Purpose Heroes Report: Insights from purpose-driven companies

Corproate social responsibility is only growing in relevance, as employees continue to hold employers to new standards by prioritizing purpose at work. In response, companies have learned to shift the focus towards improving societal and environmental impact on a large scale in order to further engage, attract and retain a more socially aware workforce.

While CSR and ESG programs have been around for decades, it’s only recently that companies have taken their initiatives to the next level, pushing to bring purpose to life at work in a tangible way. From corporate volunteering to donation matching and challenging employees to take daily action in small ways, organizations are thinking bigger and brighter, as they work to spread goodness from the inside out.

But what makes a purpose campaign successful? And how can we apply these principles to our upcoming programs to generate even further success?

In this report, we’ll be highlighting the hard work of our Purpose Heroes - top organizations that use their purpose as a tool for supporting positive change, engaging employees in worthwhile causes, and, ultimately, making an impact.

Becoming a Purpose Hero

How top organizations leverage company purpose

When a company is able to infuse their organization’s mission with purpose, everyone takes notice.

Not only is the public positively swayed by a clear sense of purpose, it also inspires employees to more deeply identify with the core values of their employer. Meaning they’re much more likely to contribute to company goodness efforts and stay engaged at work.

This is crucial in today’s world, as seven out of ten employees are reflecting on their purpose following the pandemic. And the employees who say they live their purpose at work are six and half times more likely to report higher resilience.

Thus, it all comes down to imbuing purpose into the company culture and enabling employees to feel like their work contributes to a greater force for good. And thanks to our Purpose Heroes, we now have actionable examples of how to motivate employees into supporting our local communities through volunteering and giving actions.

With learnings from the following organizations, we can start to understand the most effective ways to build similarly successful programs.

Frontiers

Nestlé

NatWest

Nexthink

PwC

Medallia

EOS

EHL Group

University of Liege

BNP Paribas

Read on to discover how these organizations use company purpose to build impactful CSR campaigns. With these models in mind, we can set ourselves up well to improve our own promise to make the world a better place, one small act at a time.

Frontiers

Giving@Frontiers Frontiers is a scientific publisher whose goal is to “Make Science Open” to support healthy lives on a healthy planet. As a whole, they strongly believe that each of their employees - or Frontons - play an important role in having a positive impact on society. That’s why they build effective campaigns that enable employees to believe in the power of the Frontiers community and take positive actions that support their charity partners.

Purpose Hero Francesca Tettamanzi Industry Media

Employee count 1,000+

Campaign Mission In line with our mission, the aim of their "Giving@Frontiers Program" is to create a tool that centralizes their commitment to making the world a better place.

This work is done through their employee volunteering platform, Alaya, which gives employees a space to connect over volunteering activities and encourage further participation in the overall campaign.

Results The Frontons engaged in over 400 hours of volunteering spanning across a multitude of activities that highlight the personal skills of their employees. This includes field volunteering, such as meal preparation, and remote volunteering, such as proofreading, translating, and tutoring. They also put a focus on engaging with the NHS to support COVID vaccination efforts.

400 h

of volunteering

across a multitude of activities

Fields

such as

meal preparation and remote volunteering

NHS

support

COVID vaccination efforts

Nestlé

Nestlé Cares Cleanup Week With a Swiss origin that traces back over 150 years, Nestlé’s purpose has always been deeply focused on their local communities. Through their Nestlé Cares employee volunteering program in Switzerland, Nestlé provides all of their employees with concrete opportunities to participate in volunteering activities and contribute to causes in line with the company’s purpose and values.

Purpose Heroes Carmen Brand Nicole Melillo Industry Food

Employee count 8,541

Campaign Mission Nestlé’s campaign mission was to support their three pillars people and pets, communities and the planet - by selecting charities and activities that fit into these key focuses. Their Cleanup Week took place midSeptember 2021, in line with World Cleanup Day, to give their employees hands-on experience helping protect their local environment and supporting communities.

Results The Nestlé Cleanup Week saw more than 100 participants across Switzerland over 4 days with 6 Nestlé sites involved. With this effort, Nestlé managed to collect 110+ kg trash.

Additionally, Nestlé’s holiday food basket initiative supporting Caritas Vaud in December 2021 garnered positive participation, spreading holiday cheer to families in the local community.

110+

kg of trash

collected during Cleanup Week

60

employees

preparing food baskets in December 2021

2,000

familes reached

in the Canton de Vaud

NatWest Group

Giving Tuesday Campaign NatWest Group’s Purpose is to champion the potential of people, families and businesses making a positive contribution to society, which is embodied in our Giving Tuesday campaign. Michael Duncan, Head of Giving Strategy & Programmes, said: “Giving Tuesday is such an integral part of the charity work that NatWest Group does and we are excited to once again be involved at the forefront. This Giving Tuesday we will be encouraging our customers and employees to donate and support in any way they can on Nov 30th and beyond.”

Purpose Hero

Michael Duncan

Industry

Employee count

Banking

59,900

Campaign Mission NatWest Group are a Founding Partner of GivingTuesday and this is the 8th year the bank has been involved. To celebrate this year’s Giving Tuesday, NatWest Group are donating £425,000 to charities which its employees and customers support. Since their involvement in Giving Tuesday began in 2014, the bank has donated £2,300,000 to encourage employees and customers to get involved in supporting this global day of giving.

Results On Giving Tuesday, NatWest Group employees were invited to give their voice, time and money to good causes. First, they were invited to use their voice to share the causes they pledge to support. Then, they were encouraged to donate time by making use of 3 days of volunteering allowance - for example to register for their tree planting intiative, planting 100,000 trees this tree planting season. Finally, customers were invited to donate money to one of 11 partner charities through their MyRewards on their current account.

£425,000 (and counting!) in donations

to charities during Giving Tuesday

£150,000 donation matching

for customers using MyRewards

3 Days for volunteering

specified time-off for employees

Nexthink

Earth Day Challenges As a fast-growing tech company in the field of employee experience, Nexthink puts a focus on causes that support the development of sustainable technology, while encouraging green tech internally. They also work to offer a space for improving environmental best practices on a personal and corporate level, as well as mental health. To augment their impact, they even provide their employees with 3 days a year off for volunteering & giving efforts.

Purpose Hero Nina Zellweger Industry Tech

Employee count 800+

Campaign Mission At Nexthink, they are motivated to base their campaigns around key holidays, which is why they created their Earth Day campaign in April of 2021.

During the entire month, they encouraged their employees to participate in weekly challenges through the Alaya platform such as cleaning up local parks, deleting emails and unplugging technology. To increase engagement, they even incentivized employees by donating to the NGOs of their choice based on participation.

Results Their Earth Day campaigns successfully engage employees at all levels, as they magnify their contributions to partner NGOs.

150

With the overall goal of delighting people at work, they find that their challenges campaign is able to bring this core value into their work space in a tangible way despite working remotely.

3 days

trees planted

during their month long campaign

for volunteering

specified time-off for employees

33%

participation

in CSR activites in the 1st year

PwC

Avert Plastic Pollution The PwC purpose is to build trust in society and solve important problems, a commitment that goes beyond their business endeavors to support the greater good. For this reason, they dedicate themselves to engaging employees in volunteering initiatives that help to solve common issues that local communities face today and are in line with PwC’s Net Zero Committment by 2030.

Purpose Hero Jasmin Khalifa Industry Accounting

Employee count 3,250

Campaign Mission In collaboration with Let’s Talk Waste and the Alaya platform, PwC Switzerland gathered 30 interns to help clean up a strip in Bern with the goal of averting plastic pollution. Additionally, during a company off-site, 275 employees participated in a full day dedicated to volunteering.

This event included partnerships with Velafrica, Insieme, the Earthworm Foundation and FriendsInternational.

Results 81 aluminium cans, 59 glass bottles, 3,800 cigarette butts and 140 liters of residual waste were collected during their clean-up day. Plus, they held a team-building recycling activity and a workshop to discuss the impact of waste. Additionally, at their off-site dedicated to volunteering, the team repaired bikes for African countries and helped professionalize the businesses of their NGO partnerships.

141 liters

of residual waste

collected during clean-up

Workshops & team-building

to discuss the impact of waste

Partnering with NGOs

Eartherworm Foundation & Friends-Intl.

Medallia

Global Week of Giving At Medallia, their overall intent is to value every person and every experience. Keeping in line with this mission, they establish CSR campaigns that allow their global team to apply this sentiment around the world. With the help of their global champions, members of the team who lead the charge in their home countries, they were able to launch a global reaching program that made a real impact in local communities.

Purpose Hero Heather Jin Industry Tech

Employee count 2,500+

Campaign Mission Medallia’s Global Week of Giving is a company tradition which creates space for an entire week dedicated to giving back.

As the company expands their global footprint, the aim of the initiative is to empower the communities where they are present around the world. In 2021, their week-long initiative included 20+ events organized by champions across the globe.

Results Over 620 Medallia employees or Medallians engaged during their Global Week of Giving. This included participation in the form of skill-based volunteering, donating, fundraising, and purpose challenges or day-today actions. They were also able to contribute with practical solutions like providing job support to LatinX tech professionals and students from minority ethnic backgrounds in East London.

16

non-profit

partnerships during the campaign

20

countries

impacted by their efforts

620

employees

participated throughout the week

EOS

Employee Engagement EOS takes its core value of “Relationships First'' very seriously. As a multicultural firm working with global companies, they value the uniqueness of every individual and every relationship and strive to create workplaces that reflect the communities they serve. All of this is done with the intent that every team member feels empowered to bring their full, authentic selves to work.

Purpose Hero Miki Heinonen Industry Accounting

Employee count 170+

Campaign Mission The mission of their campaign was to encourage high employee participation to spread more goodness in their office spaces. To achieve this, EOS incentivized their teams by offering Starbucks gift cards to all of their employees who registered to their CSR platform, Alaya. In addition, the office that had the highest percentage of registered Alaya participants by a certain day would receive $1,000 to be donated to the charity of their choice.

Results The result of their campaign was an immense level of employee engagement with almost 75% enrollment across the firm. And the office that won the $1,000 donation to charity achieved approximately 90% enrollment.

Plus, they’ve committed to match individual employee donations of up to $200 per calendar year for any donations made to a Section 501(c) qualified non-profit organization of the employee’s choice.

75%

enrollment

during the week of their campaign

$1,000

donated

to the chosen charity of the winning office

+$200

donation matching

per calendar year

SCOR

SCOR for Good SCOR is a global company with offices in 39 countries. While volunteering has always played a role at the company, they wanted to supercharge their CSR efforts by creating a global-reaching program.

Designed to motivate employees to participate and contribute at a local level, SCOR for Good creates uniformity and structure at a group level, while giving more visibiltiy to the different engagement opportunities available to teams locally.

Purpose Hero Juliette Sarrail Industry Reinsurance

Employee count 3,000

Campaign Mission With an international team, it was essential to create a structured support framework to ensure the success of the program. With the help of Alaya, their SCOR for Good program connects employees by giving them access to a variety of different activities, plus the ability communicate internally about their efforts - all on one platform. Now their program can be managed globally, while helping local communities within each of their bases.

Results With SCOR for Good, the company was able to build a network of champions and ambassadors that would lead their CSR efforts in each country to engage more employees globally. By garnering support from senior management, they were also able to build a structure that sustainably instills these values into the company’s DNA. This strategy brought them 41% employee engagement with 67% of countries launched.

41% active users

in 7 months

39 countries

connected through a network of ambassadors

67% countries launched

the program in 7 months

EHL Group

Sustainability Week EHL addresses sustainability through four pillars: Education, People, Community and Environment. Each of these pillars is made of a variety of quantitative and qualitative objectives, which they tackle through various initiatives and projects throughout the year. Some of them are directly organized by the administration and others are brought forward by members of the student or staff community.

Purpose Hero Natacha Reymond Industry Edcuation

Participation 3,000

Campaign Mission By organizing Sustainability Week, EHL was able to improve employee engagement through Alaya’s Challenges Tool. Their daily challenges inspired employees to consider their personal impact on the environment in order to make slight changes that had a big effect. Using a a CSR platform, like Alaya, makes it easy to organize such events wherein employees compete to earn points for completing specific daily actions.

Results Thanks to their Sustainability Week, the EHL team completed 285 challenges with the dedication of over 195 hours to helping the environment. The output of which is equivalent to 1,692 kg of CO2 and 181,355 liters of water saved. Moreover, they’ve seen higher quality engagement, as the Alaya platform enables team members to share their personal experience with the challenges together in one place.

285

challenges

completed during the week

195 h

dedicated

to helping the environment

1,692 kg

of CO2

saved thanks to their efforts

University of Liege

Reducing Carbon Footprint At the Green Office of the University of Liege (Belgium), their goal is to reduce their students’ carbon footprint by educating them on sustainable development, SDGs, climate change and more. This is done by educating, generating awareness and integrating better policies into the daily lives of students with the help of social media and the Alaya platform.

Purpose Hero Sarah Robinet Industry Education

Student count 25,000

Campaign Mission Their aim is to inspire their 25,000 students into taking action and reducing their carbon footprint by 50% by 2030. In order to do this, they designed 30 unique challenges for students, and in March, they organized a hackathon for

students to share ideas about how to make the challenges more engaging. Progressively, they posted challenges on Alaya and social media, while advertising across campus.

Results 2,079 students created an account on Alaya (more than 8% of the community) and this number only continues to increase. Globally, students have completed 4,321 challenges through Alaya. Plus, in June, this project won the challenge "Campus 2030" organized by the UN. But more importantly, students have learned to understand the importance of recognizing their personal and collective impact and are more motivated to keep up their efforts past the campaign.

2,079

students

signed up to participate

4,321

challenges

completed during the campaign

78 tons

eq CO2 avoided

thanks to their efforts

BNP Paribas (Suisse) SA

Digitizing the volunteering program

BNP Paribas (Suisse) SA’s Corporate Social Responsibility strategy covers all of the economic, social, civic and environmental issues assiciated with making finance more sustainable. They are working to fully integrate ESG into the bank’s activities and business model to control and reduce their own ecological footprint, value diversity and inclusion in their teams and develop partnerships with a high socioenvironmental impact.

Purpose Hero Clémence Francelle Industry Banking

Employee count 1,000

Campaign Mission In order to build upon one of the main pillars of their CSR strategy - employee engagement - BNP Paribas (Suisse) SA decided to digitize their volunteering program with the help of Alaya. This move towards a digital CSR experience enabled their team to expand volunteer offerings to a larger number of nonprofits that are inline with the group’s priority targets. Moreover, their hope was to better manage the workload associated with an expansion of this nature.

Results Thanks to this digitazation

40%

campaign, BNP Paribas (Suisse) SA was able to engage 40% of

of employees

active on the Alaya

their employees on the Alaya platform

platform with 280 employees giving more than 2,551 hours of their working time to support the

850 h

work of local non-profit

time dedicated

organizations. The collective

to support local

enthusiasm and individual

non-profit organizations

engagement demonstrated during their events proved that solidarity engagement is a lever motivation for the bank’s employees.

16 h or 2 working days

of specified volunteer time-off

Spread your purpose to all What these top campaigns

Keep up communication

demonstrate is that corporate

throughout the campaign -

social responsibility efforts are

Internal communication is key

not only effective - they’re attainable. And by planning your campaign’s today, you could become a Purpose Hero yourself.

when it comes to inspiring participation. Make it easy for your employees to participate with clear communication coming from the C-level so everyone takes your efforts seriously.

To help get you started, here are our key takeaways from the work of our Purpose Heroes Find your focus areas - Don’t spread your efforts too thin. Your contribution will be worth more when it's focused on one cause rather than overextending to help them all.

Align your company’s purpose with the core values of the business - The more that your purpose aligns with company objectives and interests, the more your employees will want to contribute to these relevant causes.

Base your efforts around specific holidays or celebrations - Build focus directly into your campaigns by attaching them to particular international dates such as Earth Day or Black History Month. This helps to make them more relevant, while giving your employees a real reason to celebrate.

Measure and celebrate success Understand exactly how well your campaigns perform by accurately tracking and reporting on their success - this can be done with the help of a CSR platform. Then make sure to celebrate what you’re able to achieve together Improve organization, communication, and reporting with a CSR platform - Building an effective CSR campaign is a lot of work. Save yourself time by using a CSR platform to manage your campaigns, connect employees over their efforts and track your success just like our Purpose Heroes.

Are you ready to apply these learnings to your CSR strategies?

The more time you give yourself to plan, the better your campaigns will run. So we encourage you to start setting your company volunteering and giving intentions today!

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