Does money really motivate people?
BBC – Science & Environment May 2012
“A growing body of evidence suggests that increasing financial rewards may not boost performance, as is often claimed when justifying the rewards given to bankers and business executives.”
Why we need purpose at work
Crunch Time – The power of purpose report May 2012
“Purpose provides context and rationale. It helps people understand why the company is pursuing a certain direction. If they can understand why, they are more likely to deliver on it. People will give more. For the average employee, delivering on shareholder value does not seem that exciting, but delivering on a purpose is.” – Helena Christopher, QBE Group Link to full report
“Good” Companies Launch More New Products
HBR April 2012
“In an era of open innovation and rapidly diversifying knowledge, companies can no longer rely solely on internal resources; they must find ways to bring external ideas into the firm.” Thus, “CSR engagement broadens a company’s access to outside knowledge, market preferences, and new technologies.”
What Drives the Business Case for CSR?
3BL 10th April 2012
“One of the ways the business case is determined is that each region, country or community has a different combination of CSR drivers. The art of finding a ‘glocal’ business case is to determine which of these 10 incentives and pressures are the strongest and most applicable to the local context.”
Should Your Company Pay for You to Volunteer Abroad?
Forbes 21st March 2012
“Eli Lilly & Co. does. Last year it launched an international volunteer program, which pays for employees to travel to developing nations to work with and for the local populations.
According to the report, the program is more than just a do-gooder mission: “It’s important for our cultural IQ. The more we understand about different cultures, the more effective we can be in a global marketplace,” says Rob Smith, Eli Lilly’s senior director of corporate responsibility.”
“Put Your Hands Up” for Incentive Voluntourism
Voluntourism.org March 2012
“It could be argued that some corporations are moving in a different direction. Looking at B Corporations in the United States, for example, gives one hope that businesses truly do understand that profitability includes the well-being of the planet and its inhabitants. And in the most recent Forbes Insights coverage of Corporate Philanthropy – – “The New Paradigm: Volunteerism. Competence. Results.” – we definitely see that the majority of companies realize that engagement by employees in voluntary service is both necessary and highly valuable on many counts. From the report:”
“Through volunteering programs, companies motivate their employees to follow passions and support causes, resulting in increased employee loyalty. Moreover, the knowledge gained during hands-on volunteering enriches creativity in product and market development, while the showcasing of companies’ capabilities in skill-based philanthropic efforts brings new business prospects. The belief in the effectiveness of volunteerism is a common denominator among companies of all sizes and regions of the world.”
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Top 10 Ways to Use CSR to Motivate Employees
INCENTIVE March 8th 2012
“Let your employees participate. While it is important that the company demonstrates its commitment by sponsoring events and writing big checks, letting employees experience the commitment firsthand is critical—like when Conifer employees were invited to join the company’s partnership with Habitat for Humanity International and help build homes across the U.S.”
Incentive Travel: The participant’s viewpoint part II: Motivational Value of Incentive Travel
Site International Foundation Study
The opportunity to interact with senior executives was seen by two thirds of participants as motivating. Also, seventy two percent of atendees felt it was a great way to connect with peers and form friendships way from work.
Incentive Travel: The participant’s viewpoint part I: Incentive travel as a meaningful motivator
Site International Foundation Study
Sixty-seven and a half percent of non-earners agreed that they want to work harder in order to be an earner in the future. That degree of motivation in non-earners demonstrates the strength of incentive travel as a motivator.
Employee Engagement Is Strongly Tied to Customer Experience and Productivity
Temkin Group Research January 2012
Compared with disengaged employees, highly engaged employees are:
- 480% more committed to helping their company succeed.
- 250% more likely to do something good for the company that’s unexpected of them.
- 250% more likely to make a recommendation about an improvement.
- 370% more likely to recommend that a friend or relative apply for a job.
- 30% less likely to take a sick day.
The Dollar Payoff from CSR and Sustainability
HBR November 2011
“We provide evidence that High Sustainability companies significantly outperform their counterparts over the long-term, both in terms of stock market and accounting performance. The outperformance is stronger in sectors where the customers are individual consumers instead of companies, companies compete on the basis of brands and reputations, and products significantly depend upon extracting large amounts of natural resources.”
Is It Time to Ditch the Annual Bonus in Favor of Recognition Programs?
Forbes 23th December 2011
“A human resources executive at a global software company recently told me that his company’s employee recognition program was far more productive than its annual bonus plan. Yet the company’s recognition budget was only a tenth as big as its annual bonus pool. He wondered how to change this.”
Millennials to business: Social responsibility isn’t optional
The Washington Post 20th December 2011
Millennials want to be hands-on when it comes to community service supported by the work place. According to a June 2011 Deloitte study, Millennials who participate in workplace volunteer activities are more likely to be proud, loyal and satisfied employees.
2011 Cone / Echo Global CR Opportunity Study
December 2011
“When price and quality are about the same, 94% of consumers are likely to switch brands to one associated with a good cause.” And the most important issue consumers want addressed is community development.”
CSR is answer in time of crisis
The Korean Times 22nd November 2011
“Corporate social responsibility doesn’t help companies increase their profit next quarter. But it helps companies become more transparent in customer practices and achieve good relations with customers and communities,” Ernst Ligteringen, chief executive of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI).
Catalyst Study Links More Women Leaders to Greater Corporate Social Responsibility
22nd November 2011
“According to a press release, the study, “Gender and Corporate Social Responsibility: It’s a Matter of Sustainability,” companies with more women at the top may be better practitioners of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Prior Catalyst research has shown that such companies also financially outperform, on average, those with fewer women in senior leadership roles.”
Gen Y seeks responsible employer who listens
The Globe and Mail18th November 2011
“Corporate social responsibility ranks “quite highly” for Generation Y workers – those employees 30 and under – who are in a position to choose where they work, according to Adwoa Buahene and Giselle Kovary, co-founders of n-gen People Performance Inc., a Toronto-based company that specializes in recruitment, retention and engagement.”
Why Corporations With a Social Purpose Perform Better
Forbes CSR blog 7th November 2011
“Great companies go beyond ubiquitous statements of corporate values to nurture a dialogue to keep “social purpose at the forefront of everyone’s mind and ensure that employees use the organizational values as a guide for business decisions”
How Great Companies Think Differently
HBR November 2011
“Institutional logic holds that companies are more than instruments for generating money; they are also vehicles for accomplishing societal purposes and for providing meaningful livelihoods for those who work in them. According to this school of thought, the value that a company creates should be measured not just in terms of short-term profits or paychecks but also in terms of how it sustains the conditions that allow it to flourish over time.”
Why CSR can include painting walls
Guardian blog 28th October 2011
“The school were thrilled, as evidenced by the glowing letter of thanks from the headmaster and various pupils. But it was the impact on the staff that was most revealing.
I’ll never forget the buzz that went round the call centre after one small team of less than 10 people, went to do up a school playground (which did involve painting some walls).”
Four Motivation Mistakes Most Leaders Make
HBR blog 17th October 2011
“Money is the most expensive way to motivate employees, but it’s still many leaders’ first choice. Our experience and numerous studies, however, show that big bonuses are less effective.”
Employee Engagement Hits New Lows as Workers Feel Stuck
Modern Survey 11th October 2011
“The engagement components which have seen the furthest erosion in the past year include “discretionary effort,” down ten percentage points from 58% favorable in August 2010 to 48% favorable in September 2011, and “belief in the future of the organization,” which has tumbled most severely from 48% favorable in 2010 to just 34% in the most recent study.”
The Destructive Power of the Disengaged Employee
1 to 1 Media 6th October 2011
“According to the Towers Perrin numbers, just 8 percent of global workers are “fully engaged.” Meanwhile, another 71 percent are categorized as either partially engaged or partially disengaged, or what Hamel refers to as those workers who “don’t really give a poop” and simply want to collect a paycheck.”
Create Ethical Businesses From the Ground up
Huffington Post 23rd September 2011
“Our regular support for this (CSR) mission is driven by an expectation from our clients, staff and management that ours should be a firm which proudly wears its heart on its sleeve.
It would appear that such an approach to CSR rings true. In 2006 the Federation of Small Businesses found that smaller companies were likely to be motivated by more altruistic tendencies, with 90% driven by a personal value system.”
Team culture boon or bane for corporations?
International Herald Tribune 5th September 2011
“This is why now a lot of organisations while aware of the benefits of team building, are also concerned about not allowing employees to settle or become too comfortable in their comfort zones.”
Reward travel for employees makes a comeback
USA Today, Money, 5th September 2011
“It’s really a relatively small part of our total employee budget and has such a big impact,” says Hagan, CEO of DriveSavers Data Recovery in Novato, Calif. “It seemed even more important to continue to do it when things were slow.”
On Leadership: Motivated by charity
Washington Post 27th August 2011
“What would motivate you more: a bonus you could spend on yourself, or a bonus you had to spend on someone else? Most people, surely, would instinctively say the former. Why on Earth would I work smarter or better, or be more satisfied in my job, in exchange for something I had to turn around and give away?
But a paper by researchers from Harvard Business School, the University of British Columbia and the University of Liege finds otherwise. (Hat tip to behavioral economist Dan Ariely, who points on his blog to the not-yet-published paper, noting that “our intuitions are leading us down the wrong path when we assume that we will be happiest and most motivated when we earn money to spend on ourselves.”)”
For Brands, Being Human Is The New Black
Fast Company 29th August 2011
“We are hard-wired to respond to [human] traits,” Luna continued. So, “if you’re doing good, [think about] how do you communicate that to your users, especially in a human way, through traits like honesty, openness, and humor? If you have practices that you’d like to improve upon, that you’re working on, [think about] how might you be honest and open with your users, even when it’s not all perfect.”
Offer more rewards
Employee Benefit News 31th August 2011
“According to a recent survey by Staples Advantage, 85% of those who participate in company-driven incentive programs feel more valued at work, while 70% say they are happier and more motivated at work, thanks to their incentive program. Sixty-five percent, meanwhile, say they are more loyal to their company because it offers an incentive program.”
Setting Employees Free To Do Good
Forbes CSR Blog 29th August 2011
“If a company understands the value of engagement, it is going to understand that this takes a number of forms, including individual leadership training activities, work committees, diversity or gender based resource groups, or involvement in the local community. Building multi-faceted employees means giving them opportunities to hone skills in a number of different contexts.”
Metrics of motivation
Travel Weekly 23rd August 2011
“We see the people who cancelled (their incentive trip), and the ones that didn’t but maybe reduced it or cut from business-class to economy airfare, and they were (the ones) able to increase market share”
Incentive Travel Recovering from Belly-flop
The incentive travel council, 20th July 2011
“Our employees are motivated to earn the rewards and work harder and more efficiently in order to achieve them. And it’s not because they are chasing a carrot. It is because travel makes them happy.”
People Are Not Cogs
HBR Blog, 2th June 2011
“It showed that high employee engagement brings an uplift of every business performance number. Profitability up 16%, Productivity up 18%, customer loyalty up 12% and quality up an incredible 60%.”
Taking CSR to the next level
The Guardian, 6th July 2011
“Improved (employee) engagement includes them taking 3.5 fewer sick days and staying in the company longer than disengaged employees. Furthermore, over half of employees (51%) actually believe their company has a duty to commit to charitable acts and CSR.”
Incentive travel is no longer just for sales teams
Incentive Magazine, 7th June 2011
“Incentive travel programs have been a popular and successful method of pushing salespeople to excel ever since the growth of airlines made them feasible. But as the growing recognition of the bottom-line value of employee engagement spread throughout corporate America over the past decade, incentive programs have been trickling down from the sales force to the wider general employee base.”
Innovative CSR report delivery 
Marketwire, June 7, 2011
“With a focus on increasing engagement, this year’s Softchoice’s CSR report takes a different approach: a blog-style format that details Softchoice’s sustainability journey in ‘real-time’ while promoting discussion and idea sharing with stakeholders as well as with the people responsible for driving positive change within the company and across the IT industry.”
Iceland and the Netherlands:Great models for CSR
Forbes, May 31st, 2011
“We’re not asking ourselves the hard leadership questions about how to ensure all our employees are as bought-in to the big picture change we’re trying to create.”
How CSR Yields Higher Investment Returns With Lower Risk
TriplePundit, May 27th, 2011
“Inclusive of governance issues and abbreviated as ESG (environmental, social and governance), factors pertaining to ESG are now included in mainstream corporate stock and bond analysis in numerous investment firms, funds and managers globally. Why? Because it provides analysts better insight into companies and a possibility of producing higher investment returns with less risk.”
Don’t abandon CSR for creating shared value just yet
The Guardian, May 25th, 2011
“Although CSV has many virtues, it is unlikely to deal with the thornier CSR issues such as human rights or corruption.
Talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see,” Schopenhauer noted.”
The Return of Incentive Travel 
The New York Times, March 7th, 2011
“Incentive trips were long used by companies to motivate employees to sell more, make fewer errors or otherwise contribute to the bottom line. But in the depths of the recession, as millions of workers were being laid off, companies generally avoided any signs of excess. Now, as the economy begins to return to health, companies see a need to give their employees an incentive to work harder.”
Disengaged Employees Are Seeking Refuge
Businessweek 13th March 2009
This is a slightly older article but the need to engage employees is more relevant than ever. “The number of disengaged employees increased by 45% in the past year, and they are doing something worse than quitting—they’re staying, says the Corporate Executive Board”
