“That’s The Way We’ve Always Done It”: Moving Workplace Giving From Okay to Great

I tripped over a little quote the other day that got me thinking (sadly I never stop!) about the landscape of workplace giving programs:

“The only difference between a rut and a grave is their dimensions” – Ellen Glasgow

Despite an increasingly changing landscape, a lot of WPG programs are in a bit of a rut. Most of the people that run the programs know it (and if they don’t, their employees likely do). Even some of the higher performing programs (in terms of participation rates) that we run across, aren’t necessarily fully delivering on the engagement goals that could get better notice in the C-suite. We’re talking the talk about all the right things – engagement as the goal rather than just fundraising, for instance – but many are not yet walking the walk.

Companies (and their targeted users) need and deserve best-in-class technology and passionate, responsive service. That goes without saying. If you’re trying to enlist the willing participation of an increasingly distracted, time-constrained and webby demographic and you don’t have a compelling, easy-to-use, user-centric solution, you need to get one. Throughout history, people with better tools prospered and those who failed to upgrade and to meet market needs are mostly no longer with us (think about that as your company phases out your Blackberry, if they haven’t already :)). Today, technology is our tool of choice and it is changing so rapidly that the ability to adopt and adapt new technologies is becoming not only a critical differentiator, but a survival mechanism.

But a compelling user experience and great client service are just necessary, not sufficient. We also need to freshly examine the way we think about corporate Goodness Programs, how/when/why they are executed, the distribution models and eligibility policies behind them, and the fact many of them haven’t changed in many years…

Keep reading "That's The Way We've Always Done It" here.