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CSR INSIGHTS

It’s Time to Spread the Good News

They say it’s hard to keep a good thing a secret and your corporate social responsibility program

should be no different. If you struggle with communicating your CSR initiatives to your

employees, then you may be cutting your program and business goals short.

Therefore, we (at YourCause) wish to share insight to improve internal communication, whether

it’s within our CSRconnect platform or any other for that matter. Why? Because we believe if

you’re doing good, the good should continue to thrive. So, we invite you to read about Dell Inc.,

which proves to be a successful case study of internal communication. With more than 183,816

hours logged through their Make a Difference volunteer community, we think it’s a secret worth

sharing.

Internal communication relies heavily on team commitment and creating a plan. For the Dell

„Make a Difference‟ community, a key team member from Dell assesses their audience and

determines how to answer these four main questions:

1. What do you want people to do?

2. How do you want people to feel?

3. What do you want people to know and/or better understand?

4. What do you want people to believe?

Next, the Dell team creates annual and monthly communication strategies that involve every

department and avenue to achieve their overall goals - from the marketing team to human

resource department (domestically and abroad).

1 Start with a plan.

2 Communicate – often and in different ways.

Dell utilizes all forms of internal communication available. These include corporate blogs,

business unit blogs, employee emails, internal Chatter, staff meetings, VP director

meetings and more. They even hold weekly „Make a Difference‟ (MAD) training sessions that

guide as many as 200 employees to learn the platform within an hour.

The fact that the Make a Difference system translates into five languages enhances their global

employee engagement programs. In addition, the components within the MAD system (group

messaging, event messaging and wide-spread community messaging) make it super easy for

employees to stay engaged. “In fact, Dell gets the most hits when they use the tool itself,”

according to Jennifer Friday Jones, Dell Giving and Sustainability Employee Engagement

Manager.

3

“The single most important thing to remember is to put yourself in an employee‟s place,”

Jones said.

Ask questions like ‘what would make ME get involved?’ and „What would motivate ME to log

hours?’ Answering those questions honestly could help you find the best methods for

employee engagement, such as reward programs or recognition titles.

What you want to avoid is asking your employees at large what THEY want. Surveying your

employees will always lead to some negativity because, as the saying goes, you can‟t satisfy

everyone. In addition, opening up the decision making process to all employees can bring an

entire effort to a grinding halt, trying to satisfy the endless „wants‟ and opinions.

“It‟s our team‟s role to be the thought leaders,” Jones said. “Employees rely on our insights to

deliver the best possible solutions for the company. But we are only able to gain the trust and

willingness from our employees if we can demonstrate that we are able to place ourselves in

their shoes.”

Take a look from an employee’s perspective.

About YourCause, LLC

YourCause, LLC provides corporations of all sizes with the

CSRconnect Employee Engagement Platform. CSRconnect is a

fully-hosted, managed and highly customizable community tool

that centralizes employee engagement in Corporate Social

Responsibility (CSR) Programs including: volunteerism,

fundraising, grants, disasters and more.

Topic: Internal Communications

Interviewee: Jennifer Friday Jones, Dell Inc

Corporate Responsibility Program Manager

YourCause Consults Jennifer Friday Jones

The chart demonstrates the rise of NEW users in the MAD community— resulting from organized programs

executed by the Dell Make a Difference team. Large spikes in new users can be observed in the last 6 months.

February 2011