Australian companies including LBG member Suncorp highlighted the business benefits of work place giving programs during an event in Brisbane to celebrate Work Place Giving month, hosted by LBG, Work Place Giving Australia and Good2Give.
The event, which was held at Suncorp’s HQ, was attended by more than 40 representatives from business and community partners who heard how Australia’s largest home entertainment retailer JBHiFi had saved millions of dollars in recruitment costs thanks to work place giving programs (WPG). Data presented at the event showed that staff who participated in a WPG program had a 43 per cent longer tenure with the company.
As well as celebrating work place giving, the event explored the barriers to participation and how companies could encourage greater levels of participation among employees. LBG data shows that on average only 5 per cent of employees currently participate in programs.
Although participation levels are low among staff, work place giving remains popular among LBG members with 56 per cent offering programs as part of their corporate community investment programs. Speakers provided evidence and outlined business cases to encourage more companies to offer WPG programs.
Addressing one of the barriers to more widespread participation among staff, Good2Give spoke about their new peer to peer platform Fundraising@Work, using technology to enable ever more effective fundraising in the work place.
Corporate Citizenship’s Simon Robinson outlined how work place giving and employee fundraising could be used as a key part of an effective community investment program, explaining how employers costs and matching can be reported alongside employee’s contributions as a component of the company’s overall community investment.
He also explained the importance of measuring and tracking work place giving programs alongside other CCI activities.
“Companies can only realise the full value of engaging stakeholders and building reputation when they have effective and transparent measurement and reporting in place and LBG is the international standard which offers this to business,” Simon said.
Work Place Giving Month is an initiative of the One Million Donors campaign aiming to see one million Australians making donations to charity direct from their pay by 2020.