What are the tools to mobilize as many employees as possible around your CSR strategy and sustainable development goals? That's what we're going to see in this article! On the program: 3 main levers to allow you to integrate commitment into the daily life of your teams. Let's go!

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Involve governance and decision makers in your engagement process

Involving managers is essential to the success of any approach to engaging teams on CSR issues, although it can often be a challenge! So, what are the key arguments to convince them of the importance of employee engagement? Here we share with you some of the main benefits of an engagement approach, to be used without moderation.

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Employee engagement: a driver of HR attractiveness and team loyalty

In particular, an engagement approach allows:

• To strengthen your employer brand and to attract more candidates

83% of employees involved in a company initiative would recommend their employer. (Employee engagement study, Korn Ferry, 2018).

• To develop the skills of its teams and to improve career paths. Employees are also more likely to come up with new ideas and take more initiative.
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• To reinforce the pride of its teams in its company‍

The Korn Ferry employee engagement study (2018) shows that the stronger their commitment to CSR approaches, the more proud they are of their company (90% compared to 66% for an employee who is not offered an initiative).
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• To improve well-being and quality of life at work (QWL)‍

77% of employees say they enjoy working in their company, where there is a CSR function or service, compared to only 60% in companies that do not have one. (CSR perception barometer, MEDEF, 2022).

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Employee engagement: a performance vector for its CSR approach

Having a committed corporate culture includes:

• Be more efficient in obtaining CSR labels and certifications.

Chez Electro Depot, for example, employee engagement helped to obtain the “Positive Workplace” CSR label.

• Facilitate extra-financial reporting and regulatory compliance. A team that is aware and committed is a team that is more easily mobilized around cross-cutting projects such as CSRD.
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• Strengthen a committed brand image. Commitments embodied by teams are more concrete commitments, with a real impact. Customers and consumers will be particularly attentive to this!
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• Benefit from social and/or fiscal advantages. The skills sponsorship, in particular, has a legal framework that allows tax exemption.

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Employee engagement: a concrete social and environmental impact

Enabling its teams to engage around social and environmental issues also allows:

• To contribute to 17 ODD (Sustainable Development Goals) defined by the UN
• To strengthen its territorial anchoring
• To support the associative ecosystem
• Or to encourage the adoption of new internal practices

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Creating the right framework for your engagement policy

To successfully mobilize teams, it is essential to create an adequate framework by prioritizing themes, structuring associative partnerships, and organizing engagement days. We invite you to discover how to formalize an ambitious and structured commitment policy around these three levers!

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Define priority engagement themes

This will make it possible to create a coherent and structured engagement policy, and above all, to focus first on the subjects that are priority for your company and its teams! To define your priority engagement themes, you can:

• Basing yourself on the Sustainable Development Goals From the UN
• Focus on priority themes of your CSR strategy
• Conduct a survey with your employees to find out their areas of interest

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Identify priority actions or key associative partnerships

Once your priority themes are defined, it is now time to move on to the 2nd stage of structuring your engagement policy: the establishment of priority actions or key associative partnerships. To help you better identify the various possibilities, here are some examples of partnerships or priority actions:

• Program to participate in a Mural
• Mentoring program
• Recurring donation of equipment...

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Set up commitment days at work

Les days of commitment to work allow employees to devote paid time to social and environmental actions during their working time. On average, businesses allow 3 days per year for these activities, although some allow only one.

These days can be used in several ways, for example:

• Give a helping hand to associations in the field
• Carry out skills missions by sharing its expertise
• Become aware of social and environmental issues through workshops or challenges

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Animate your commitment process all year round

Once the milestones of its engagement policy are in place, it is time to put it into practice. This is when concrete questions arise, and in particular: how to make your commitment process live continuously, all year round? We give you three levers to animate this process continuously!

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Create and animate a community of CSR ambassadors

Your employees are the best ambassadors of your commitment process! Here are some tips to enable you to animate your engagement process thanks to the ambassadors:

• Identify potential ambassadors by organizing a first action or by relying on managers or HR;
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• Have a diverse group of ambassadors (located in different sites, working in various departments, with different levels of hierarchy, seniority, varied ages...)
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• Create a real community for your ambassadors by creating their own communication channel, regular meetings and by promoting their commitment to the entire company.
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• Establishing a framework to empower your ambassadors : dedicate working time to them on this subject, set concrete goals for them...

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Organize CSR highlights to animate your commitment process all year round

One CSR highlight, it is a key moment in the year to maximize the commitment of its employees around an important theme for its company. These highlights can be longer or shorter (a day, a week, a month...) and are generally focused on a key theme: health, environment, gender equality, diversity...

Organizing CSR highlights is a real lever for animating your engagement process and mobilizing your teams widely. Here are some tips for organizing them well:

1. Choose your highlights carefully, based on the priority themes of your CSR strategy and on the global days or thematic weeks.
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2. Plan a schedule for the high season, containing actions in various formats. These can be both collective and individual actions; face-to-face and remotely; short or long...
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3. Rely on your ambassadors to organize your CSR highlights.
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4. Prevent and involve managers and management. For example, you can start your highlight with a speech from your managers.
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5. Organize a closing event of the highlight to highlight the commitments of your employees (photos, videos, speeches, etc.) and celebrate the impact generated.

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Communicate internally and externally on your commitment process

Animating your engagement process also requires, of course, regular and effective communication. It is also the frequency and impact of this communication (internal and external) that makes it possible to identify whether the commitment is integrated into the company's culture! Here are some ideas for communicating effectively about the process of engaging your employees:

• Prioritize transparency, by being honest about the actions carried out and the real impact generated.
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• Ritualize the moments of communication about commitment. This will create a regular appointment and help integrate engagement into the company culture.
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• Integrate engagement communications at key moments in business life : when onboarding new employees, during annual interviews or seminars...
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• Rely on your ambassadors to communicate very widely. That's what they're there for!
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• Involve managers in your communications. We saw it: they are key people to have by your side to get the right messages across.
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• Diversifying your communication channels: Display, email, messaging, meetings...

‍ Also worth reading:
‍CSR: How to animate your employee engagement process?
‍How to frame an employee engagement policy?

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Setting up an employee engagement policy: our support to help you step by step

Thanks to our platform, our experts and our cultural change methodology, we can help you in the implementation and success of your engagement process. Click here to make an appointment with one of our experts.

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