As corporate America continues to migrate back to the office following an unimaginable two-year-plus stint at home, many companies are now hyper-focused on how to keep employees engaged. Corporate citizenship has long been an important area of business, but we are at a pivotal moment where people are reevaluating their path in life and their careers. Employees want to make a stronger personal impact in society and are increasingly turning toward their employers for support in this mission. 

Many of us are fortunate to work for companies that provide meaningful opportunities for good corporate citizenship. But it’s time to take charitable giving and volunteering to a new level — one that puts employees at the center of a corporate social responsibility strategy. In doing so, we can keep employees engaged and support long-lasting careers at our companies. 

This is something NBCUniversal recognized several years ago, as we sharpened our focus on how to make our charitable dollars go further for both our nonprofit partners and our employees who want to be involved in a more profound way. The result is a reimagined volunteer program and giving strategy that gives new meaning to the phrase “corporate perks.” 

Here are some of our lessons: 

First, put the power of giving into employees’ hands. Taking time out of one’s workday to mentor or pack supplies for community members are important experiences that employees enjoy devoting time to, but what’s missing in some of these endeavors is context. Workers need a more intimate understanding of the communities they’re helping. This background helps build a great sense of empathy among volunteers and makes community service feel even more rewarding. 

Over the past few years, NBCU has created an educational component to community service, offering training that shares in depth knowledge of our nonprofit partners, who they serve and the needs of those communities. It’s also important to make volunteering more immersive, allowing employees to devote several days out of the workweek to in-depth projects on an annual basis, as opposed to doing an hour of mentoring in the office conference room. 

A fulfilling, motivational job is not just about having the perfect role, it’s about working for a company whose values align with yours; a company that empowers you to make a positive difference and be an active agent.

For example, in partnership with buildOn — a nonprofit that helps break the cycle of poverty and empowers low-income students through service work — a group of NBCUniversal employees were paired with students from under-resourced high schools, jointly participating in impactful leadership-building and service-learning opportunities over several days. Next, there are plans for employees to spend longer periods of time in communities like the South Bronx doing service work side-by side with low-income students in their neighborhoods. 

Second, employees also need to feel like their charities and personal causes matter. They want to work for a company that recognizes what they are most passionate about, not just the causes and organizations that senior management embraces. Employers need to create ways for their staff to play a greater role in deciding where charitable dollars are spent. For example, some companies have contests for employees to pitch their favorite nonprofits for grants. 

NBCUniversal created a Community Impact Fund that awarded each of the company’s employee resource groups and diversity councils grant money to donate to up to two 501(c)(3) charities, and the response to this program was overwhelming, as these groups were able to raise awareness about their favorite charities among their colleagues and financially support nonprofits that they are collectively passionate about. 

Through this fund, NBCUniversal awarded 172 nonprofit grants in 19 locations around the world. Eighty-one percent of the grants awarded were to organizations who had not previously received funding from the company, allowing us to broaden our philanthropic footprint and recognize the causes and organizations that are meaningful to our employees. 

Third, employees are also keen on developing leadership skills, a critical component to advancing their careers. One of the greatest and most meaningful ways to support this goal is by offering employees opportunities to serve on nonprofit boards. NBCUniversal has secured board seats with each of our corporate nonprofit partners, as well as with other nonprofits, through Boardlead (an outside organization that matches people on nonprofit boards). 

Rather than simply placing interested employees on these boards, we offer a long term course on nonprofit board service that provides essential background on each of our partner organizations and what it takes to be an impactful board member. At the conclusion of the training, we help match employees with nonprofit boards that align with their interests. This is a financial investment in both our employees as future leaders as well as in our communities, which has been an incredibly successful program. 

Finally, we need to make social purpose a corporate priority. Our recent cultural shifts, and the new ways in which people desire to work moving forward, have given us a different perspective. A fulfilling, motivational job is not just about having the perfect role, it’s about working for a company whose values align with yours; a company that empowers you to make a positive difference and be an active agent of change. There has never been a more important time to reimagine the employee experience and make social impact an integral part of it.