Getting involved in your local community and leverage the benefits are not as straightforward as you may think. Here are a few things to think about when making community outreach apart of your company.

• To have the best and most productive employees, work needs to be about more than just work. It is no secret that work and personal lives blend. What can be a secret is leveraging it. Employees like to feel that they personally make a difference, because of this when introducing a community outreach program let them have a say. Find out what organizations and causes are important to your employees. As a group, select two or three per year to support. This sets limits, encourages employees to speak their mind, allows the company to create a unified message in the community, and most importantly makes volunteering enjoyable and not “just more work.”
• Volunteering is not the same as advertising. While the results of volunteering and advertising are similar, it is vital that a company does not mistake them as interchangeable. A company’s outreach within the community creates and builds relationships while advertising is about a call to action. Abusing your volunteering time or money is sure to damage your brand far worse than a bad advertising campaign would.
• Donating time, money, or both is a tough decision. There are three main approaches you can take with community outreach: donating money, setting aside so many days (donating time), or allocating a certain number of hours that your employees can go be a part of events of their choosing. All three have their strengths and reasons behind why they are valuable. Once you choose what organizations or causes your company will support, it will be easier to decide what approach is right for your company. Most often it is a blending of the three that makes community outreach effective for all involved.

People want to do business with those that support their local community and give back. Making volunteering a part of your culture and brand will provide results: creating brand awareness, allowing the market to attach faces to your brand, increase profits, reduce hiring costs, and providing a personal connection for your employees. It benefits the employees, the company, and the community.

I once met with a company who openly admitted and bragged about their hiring criteria. They were certain they had figured it out—perfectly. This I had to hear! The company prided itself on being a ‘green company.’ Being green, they felt was a core aspect of the business. Decisions were made and green policies were enforced around this concept. Being green was a key aspect in all of their marketing and they even educated customers and prospects about it.

I commend this company for taking such an active role in the green movement, but when it comes to hiring they showed how little they know about ‘being green’ and making decisions. Once this company made the decision to bring someone in for an in-person interview they ultimately made their decision based on the car the prospect drove to the interview!

They felt that anyone hired had to be personally active in the green movement and was expected to drive a Prius (the only mainstream electrical car at the time). If a prospect showed up in a truck or Hummer they were automatically disqualified even though it has been reported for years now that the Prius is no more environmentally friendly than any other car mainly because of the nickel battery—in fact it took almost 50% more energy to drive and build a Prius than a Hummer.

Ok let’s set aside the technical environmental aspect of the situation and look at how this company makes decisions. This company felt being green outweighed the prospective employee’s skills, traits, or interaction with the rest team. Is this right? Is judging a prospective employee by the type of car they drive really going to tell you if they would be an asset to your team?

I wonder if they have the same expectation for their current employees. Are all current employees expected to just go buy a new car, or house, or boat because it is marketed as green? How many highly qualified and skilled people have they turned away because of this narrow-mindedness? I also wonder how this hyper-obsession has caused them to make poor decisions in other areas of their business.

Oh and it doesn't look like hybrids are making much improvement, check this out.