Learning Series | Competition to Increase Engagement

Summary: Want to know how to best leverage competition to increase engagement? We can help!

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Transcript:

Andy - WeHero: Well, Ben happy Friday. Thanks again for, for joining us. I know it's a sunny day in Ben. And what did you do last night with the team?

Ben - WeHero: We did a tree walk and so our team's really passionate about climate and trees. And so we have this gentleman, his name's Chris Madison, and he took us all through the, the area and explain how to ID trees. And what's kind of happening with trees right now was interesting. Two hours of that. And my brain hurts a little bit, you know, I feel like I was back in the high school classroom biology class. And so, but it was good. It was, it was exciting. So hopefully we can pass some learnings on, in the future maybe on, on how we ID trees.

Andy - WeHero: Yeah. Always challenged to get educated on what we're working on. It's a fun part. Yeah.

Ben - WeHero: Yeah. And it looks like a sunny day where you are up in the other part of the country.

Andy - WeHero: Yep. Sunny day in the north woods of Michigan. So summer is here and, and we're excited about that, but we have more, more important things to talk about today. We are gonna talk about the role of competition within a CSR program or a volunteering program and, and wanna talk. And I'll kinda kick it off with just a question here, you know, in your experience, where does competition come in and where have you seen it with companies?

Ben - WeHero: Yeah, it's a great question. I think, you know, a, it comes back to this big question of how do we engage employees with our volunteer program building the volunteer programs one step and having the opportunities is another, but getting them engaged is a big piece of that. You know, we have companies that want participation sometimes 30%, 40%, 50% or higher. And so competition is one of those levers that becomes really useful, especially if you know the dynamics of your team. So for example, we have we'll work with different divisions within a company. And when we work with a sales team, for example, we know right away that those folks are usually very competitive. And so the modeling of how we engage those employees very much around competition, and that gets people really excited, get some really engaged, it gets 'em competing against each other and when they're competing against each other and they have that competitive nature, they're making more impact cuz they're putting so much time and energy in into being competitive. And so that's just one of the many levers folks can pull. And yeah. I'm curious your, or take Andy on how you view competition as a lever for these companies, then we can get to some examples of that actually taking place.

Andy - WeHero: Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I think everyone likes friendly, fun competition and I think it increases engagement as you said. I think probably when we got started three years ago, we viewed competition in a, in a relat of constant way where, Hey, let's use competition to increase participation. But I think now that we've been doing this and working with a ton of companies, we've seen, there's a number of different ways to do competition. You know, the way that you said is can you have a sales team compete against each other to see how many people can participate? You know, I think the other two examples that pop up is within an event or within an experience, how do you build competition in? And we, we do, you know, just if you take a simple example of cleaning a of plastic and non-recyclable trash from, from the streets or from a park who can collect the most trash, who can do the best art competition.

Andy - WeHero: And I think that increases engagement within an experience. And then if you think about a crowdfunding campaign along with that, who can raise the most money with that. And so I think that's kind of micro competition. We've seen work so well when companies just wanna, they already have people volunteering, but make it the best volunteer experience. Then I think if you go all the way macro, one of the biggest challenges we we face is getting leadership and executive teams really excited about volunteering. And you know, some of the, some of the leading companies in the space really focus on this, have it actually built into their annual goals and annual OKRs. And so leaders are compensated based on volunteering and giving back to the community, but that's hard to do. And so a really good middle ground is you actually have the executive team competing with their teams around participation, the overall amount of good. And I think that can be really successful from, you know, the top down employee engagement tool because, you know, everyone's motivated by their leaders and what the leaders prioritize

Ben - WeHero: Understand we had a company worked with recently and the leadership team was so competitive. And you can tell that that culture starts at the top and passes through the rest of the company. I'll also say that the competition levers really interesting in the sense that volunteering creates all these positive of side effects outside of the impact being made. And one of 'em just that team building aspect and the competitive piece being brought into that just increases that positive side effect of while we have an incredible team building component to this now people are getting to work together in a totally different capacity and compete with one another in a very friendly, fun way. I think that's just a huge per for companies to like really lean on it's it's, you're, you're doing a, a combo meal, essentially. You're getting the volunteering done and the team building done all at the same time.

Andy - WeHero: Totally. And I think it's even more relevant, you know, with the international component. You know, it's, it's so hard to engage an employee in Europe and have them feel like they're part of a team with the us or in Asia. And so when you have competition there, it creates multiple touch points with those employees and ultimately just provides a better experience in my opinion.

Ben - WeHero: So a question for you is when should a company not consider competition? Cause I think every now and again, we get these cultures where it's just not a fit. I'm curious your take on when to not bring in that competition aspect to a volunteer experience.

Andy - WeHero: Yeah. I think it's so dependent on the company's culture. And I think where we've seen it not be successful is companies that are hypercompetitive right. So their, their day job is hypercompetitive, they're always competing with their fellow employees for whether it's for promotions or, you know, increased commission, whatever it may be adding. Another sense of competition is just exhausting for them. You know, it's actually a benefit for them to just cooperate and work together with their team outside of competition. And so I would say that's most important. I also think in certain events, so kind of the micro competition in events, it can, it can come off in a bad way if the competition is too lopsided to one group of people and the other people are demotivated from making impact and that's not the ultimate goal, but I think those are the two situations. Are there any others that, that we've experienced that you'd you'd highlight?

Ben - WeHero: Yeah, I think we're, we've been doing this long enough that we can identify specific job functions where people go into a specific role because of the dynamics of that role, almost not being competitive. Right. And so they just don't have a competitive nature and become uncomfortable or quickly get pushed to the side in a competitive situation. And I think that's something we always try to keep an eye and we always also depend on the, the company as well, to understand the dynamics of their culture and the people that work there on a given team. I think to your, or point too, that it's tough if you're doing a company wide event and you have very competitive teams and divisions of the company and very non-competitive teams and divisions, the way you handle that has to just be different. And so I think just some things we flag and raise awareness around one companies are trying to bring in a competitive aspect, just the positive, negative side of positive and negative side effects.

Andy - WeHero: Yeah. And I think there's a lot to be said on the level of competition and how you communicate competition. There's a big difference between, Hey, it's a friendly competition between two divisions within the company where, you know, you find out at the end of the year who wins and maybe they get to, you know, small reward versus all right. We're updating people monthly and you know, every month it's a chat new challenge. And so there's different ways you communicate, especially during events as well. Yeah. You know, in art competition where people get to choose who has created the best art is very different than, you know, who raised the most money and that person who raised the most money wins a big award. And so I think it's, it's also how you structure it and communicate it to the team.

Ben - WeHero: Yeah, I totally agree. What are some good examples, maybe you give a really good example that you've seen us do for a company, and that can give one as well

Andy - WeHero: Of any competition.

Ben - WeHero: Any competition for a volunteer experience that we've seen companies that we've worked with. Do.

Andy - WeHero: Yeah. I mean, I think there's a few ones and, and as you've probably heard, you know, us talk about is we're big fans of engaging people, not just in one off volunteer experiences, but longer term. And so if you think about our support of people in poverty and really wanting to focus on that, whether it be through education or, you know, actually doing things, you know, there's this great program where it's called virtual cope, which brings teams together to experience, put them in the shoes of someone in poverty and has them live simulation and make the decisions that someone have to make and what the impacts of those decisions are. So when you start with that, it's a really great educational component and puts you in the shoes. And I actually think that's a great motivator for competition. And so once you do that experience, it motivates you to whether it's crowdfunding or whether it's delivering impact to food banks, whether it's tutoring for adults to, to reeducate. I love that kind of competition that comes out of like everyone is so motivated in the right direction. And it's not a competition to who can be better than their colleagues it's who can deliver the most impact. And I think ultimately that's just, you know, I always get really excited about that.

Ben - WeHero: Yeah. That's a really good one to I'll bring up an example and I, it kind of doubles back to a point you brought up on how you bring in competition in an event experience with an actual overall event and strategy leadership. So on and so forth, we were working with a company that was in the design space. They create design software and I won't name the brands or the companies, but obviously they had a bunch people on their team that had artistic talents. And so it's like, okay, and they're competitive. So we're gonna bring that into experience. We did an event called skate, like a girl gives underserved youth, specifically women and girls of trans lesbian, et cetera the opportunity to go into spaces where they're welcome and have that opportunity to have a skateboard and do you all that, and it's just an amazing program and helps these kids with their education careers.

Ben - WeHero: And it it's an amazing organization skate like a girl.org, go check it out. But one of the things that we did was an art competition and one, the impact was being made to the art competition. That way of competition. It was a slow competition, right? Because people are investing all this time in energy and creating the, these beautiful skate decks, I mean, just amazing skate decks. And then people from the team would vote for who had the best art. And that person got to dictate where a grant of like a couple thousand dollars would go to a nonprofit of choice. And just a really cool, you know, not some of that head to head comp competition that you see, but a totally different dynamic for competition. It made it really fun and engaging for the team. And they got to do something totally outside of their, their work life. And so thought that was a really cool example of how you can bring competition into an experience and make it really fun for a team and understanding that right. Flavor of competition for that company, that team, for those people.

Andy - WeHero: Yeah. W when done successfully, I think you would agree with me that bringing competition not only increases engagement from employees, but also increases overall impact to the nonprofit. And those are two, two of our main goals as a company. And I think all of the people that we work with, that's some of their biggest goals as well. And so I think we'll continue to, to suggest it and bring it in as we, you know, build out these strategies and engagement exercises for companies.

Ben - WeHero: Yeah. I would say to anybody listening, if you want more ideas for your company on how to bring competition, reach out to us, we have seen so many companies do this successfully and unsuccessfully, and we'd love to help and guide you and point you in the right direction. Cuz competition's really fun, makes a huge amount of impact and we wanna support.

Andy - WeHero: Yeah. Awesome. Well, I look forward to the next one. I already have the next topic brewing after this one. So excited about it.

Ben - WeHero: It stay tuned next, next video.

Andy - WeHero: Next video. All right. Thanks for the time, Ben.

Ben - WeHero: All right. See ya Andy.