What if someone asked you, “What’s at the center of your community?” Hmmm, interesting question, you might think. First off, you might wonder what this person means by community. After all, given the rapid changes in technology and social media, a community can involve just about anyone, anywhere. For our purposes, though, we’ll focus on the notion of a community as the physical infrastructure of places where you live and work, and the people that live and work alongside you. That could be the greater metropolitan area of Dallas–Fort Worth, for instance, or perhaps just the streets that make up your suburban neighborhood.
Okay, with that out of the way, let’s get back to the original question: What’s at the center of your community? You could answer it in a very literal way—“Why, Main Street is the hub of my community, since it cuts straight through it”—or maybe in a more practical manner, as in, “My community revolves around my local Walmart, because I go there for everything.” If you’re not jaded politically, you might even have thought of an answer like “City Hall” or wherever you’d find the seat of your local government. Maybe you thought of your church or synagogue or a particular charitable organization. You probably didn’t think of your local hospital or physician’s office, though, because it’s the kind of place that you don’t think of until you need it. What’s interesting is that whatever your answer was, it should tell you a lot about yourself and your priorities. It says even more if your answer involved the place you work.
Regardless of what you consider to be the center of your community, the more important notion is that all of us have interests and passions that exist outside of our workplace. And they often extend beyond our own personal interests like, say, woodworking down in the basement. Go to a soccer field on any given weekend, and you will see a mass of humanity: soccer players attacking the ball, kids screaming on the sidelines, cheering parents enjoying the festivities. And behind the scenes is an army of volunteers who so selflessly give of their time and energy to make it all happen. Many of these volunteers no longer even have children of an age to play the sport, but they have grown to love being part of something bigger. This is their community.
It all seems obvious, right? It’s likely you already do engage in community-wide activities such as volunteering at local charitable events, coaching a youth sports team, or heck, even serving jury duty. You do these things because it feels like the right thing to do, or maybe because you just really like to do them.
But why should engagement with your community be limited to your life outside of work? What do you think begins to happen when you blur the lines between the organization you work for and the community surrounding it? What happens when you and your colleagues begin to think about having fun and sharing kindness not just with one another, but with the communities around you? Imagine the power when your organization embraces the team’s interests and passions outside the four walls of work!
We are inspired by those who see a greater good and work to add something to that good, by those who invest in obvious acts of kindness and offer up subtle and seemingly effortless acts of caring. You can find many videos making the rounds these days via social media that show individuals touching the lives of others—even if it’s just picking up a fallen book or randomly giving someone a handful of flowers. Sure, the advertising industry has captured the intrinsic goodness of these kinds of feelings for profit, but there is something else that goes beyond any commercial application, and it is pretty powerful.
Whether or not you realize it, the success of your company or organization—whether or not it operates within the health care sphere—isn’t limited to the actions that take place and the people who operate within its walls (virtual or otherwise). In fact, you and your colleagues are all parts of a larger whole—a particular community or even multiple communities. Think about it: When you operate a hospital, your mission is to serve your community. But have you ever thought about what that really means, not just to yourself but also to your employees and colleagues? Did you ever think about how they might answer the question about the center of their community, and how that might drive what’s most important to them? If your employees are active in coaching youth sports teams or organizing local food drives or taking part in cancer fundraising walks or whatever they are most passionate about, what do you think it means to them when their employer helps them in those efforts to give back to their community? In short, it could mean just about everything.
Here is an example: If you happen to be attending a swim meet or a soccer match in the Dallas–Fort Worth area, you will likely see dozens of ten-foot-by-ten-foot popup tents lining the sidelines. We need tents here in Texas to keep the heat off the spectators and give the kids a place to cool off. And how “cool” would it be for you, as a parent of one of the swimmers or players, to see a tent with your company’s logo on it? What if there were dozens of tents with that logo? Wouldn’t it give you a sense of personal pride, knowing that your employer was involved in your kid’s sport and that your neighbors knew about it?
Well, this is exactly why Britt set aside a budget every year for his hospital to buy some five hundred such tents, which were made available to any employee willing to donate $50 to the hospital’s hardship fund. While this is quite an investment made by the hospital—the tents cost about $100 each—the rewards are tremendous, because the employees themselves bring the organization’s logo and values out into the community with them. That’s when people begin to recognize that the hospital—the place where many of the community’s members were born or where their loved ones were cared for—remains an essential member of the community even if we don’t always think of it at the center.
Steve Rector, CEO of Regional Medical Center Bayonet Point, told us:
We feel very strongly that as an organization, we should be an integral part of our community. The problem is, everyone has different ideas about how they want to contribute, so we had to adjust our thinking. We developed a program within our evaluation process so employees could participate in any community program they wanted to and get recognition for it. Our staff did everything from church-focused events to health screenings to coaching youth sports. We didn’t care what it was—just be a part of the community!
Just as with the path to truly caring, it works only if you allow your people to rally around not what you think is important, but what’s important to them.
What’s the larger message here? Empowering your employees to engage with their community is also a tool for building greater engagement between you, your organization, and your employees—and, as you surely recognize by now (are we beating you over the head with it?), this will lead to greater experiences for patients and customers alike. To create this dynamic, though, as a leader you need to demonstrate the power and positive impact that results from serving others. As a boss or an employer, you must help facilitate that transaction, whether it involves handing out pop-up tents, organizing the cleanup of a local baseball diamond, or sponsoring a competitive dancing squad made up of your employees’ children. As we emphasized in the last chapter, it’s important to demonstrate caring and kindness to those you work with, so that they will do the same; likewise, it’s essential to contribute to the hospital’s community, as a way to give your employees and colleagues the “permission” to contribute to their community as well. Not only is it the right thing to do, but it will also drive your employee engagement levels through the roof.
Being part of a larger whole and working toward the greater good also happens to be a very personal issue for both of us—something that seems to have been hardwired into us at an early age. Forgive us for sharing a few stories here—they’re not intended to be self-serving; they are to demonstrate the very personal way we each have learned to appreciate the importance of community in our lives. Perhaps these stories will help you realize how you can expand (or how you have expanded) your own sense of community—and that your experience of “community” doesn’t need to end when you show up at the office.
For Britt, the importance of community struck home when he was nineteen and on a two-year mission to Peru with the LDS church. While visiting a hospital, he was deeply affected by the energy within the building—it was almost morgue-like, a place that people seemed to dread visiting. The staff ignored the two young missionaries and only pointed in the general direction of the church member whom they were there to visit. As the two young men departed, they were approached by numerous patients asking for help. They heard cries from adjoining rooms and felt compelled to stop and do whatever they could. And yet the staff just ignored those cries and even refused to lend a hand when the missionaries began to help the other patients.
The entire experience blew Britt’s mind. Somehow, he realized, this hospital had removed itself from the greater community. How could a hospital, of all places, not seem to care about the people in its community? The role of a hospital, after all, is to use—in the best and most efficient way possible—the resources the community has entrusted it with. How could a hospital, then, not entwine itself within the community to accomplish that mission?
When he eventually returned home, Britt dedicated himself to teaching hospitals and health care organizations about how they can play an important role in blessing the lives of the people in the communities they were built to serve. Little did he know that his devotion to that idea would come full circle when, one Saturday morning, he felt the kind of excruciating pain that immediately made him think heart attack. After driving to the ER, where shocked workers first recognized him and then immediately began caring for him, Britt felt a sense of joy in knowing the kind of care he could expect from the place where he worked. It was an important moment and an inspiring experience that made him proud to be part of this community.
Paul’s awakening to the power of community service occurred when he was in college. Growing up, he had always dreamed of being a doctor—something that pleased his mother immensely. But when he got a D in calculus his freshman year at UCLA, he knew his dream was over. That particular path wasn’t for him—but that didn’t stop him from reaching out in different ways, such as volunteering at the UCLA hospital’s pediatric wing, which specialized in treating young kids with cancer. It was during his twice-weekly visits that Paul met José, an eighteen-year-old Mexican immigrant who spoke little English and was afflicted with a rare form of leukemia. Even with a language barrier to contend with (Paul’s understanding of Spanish was limited to ordering from a menu), the two quickly bonded. So every week, Paul would wheel José in his wheelchair on long walks around the campus or over to the local Taco Bell to grab a bite to eat. It was during those walks that José got to show off his skills with the wheelchair—pulling wheelies and the like.
One day José asked Paul to push him to the top of a big hill and let him race down it. Figuring José was an ace with his chair, Paul agreed. You may not be surprised to learn that a near disaster ensued when the wheelchair quickly upturned, sending José flying. Fortunately, despite a few bumps and bruises, José got up laughing—which helped Paul deal with the guilt of nearly injuring his friend.
A few months later, José passed away. Soon after, when Paul ran into José’s mom at the hospital, he told her how much José’s friendship had meant to him. José’s mom began tearing up as she told Paul how often José had spoken of him—he had even told her about the wheelchair incident. She thanked Paul for making a difference in her son’s life—and her words were an act of kindness that has stuck with him ever since. The experience helped him understand the true meaning of being part of a community.
Perhaps you have memories of your own that have stuck with you, reminded you of the importance of community and giving back. The challenge, though, is that some of us might be more hardwired to serve than others—and some of us might not have had the chance to visit Peru or to meet someone like José. Not everyone has had an encounter that shapes their view of what giving back to the community can mean. Many people grow up without having any exposure to performing community service, thus they miss out on the tremendous sense of pride one gets from serving others. That’s where you as a leader can help teach, encourage, and empower your people to act in a way that is true to their heart and spirit. For those of us who have learned to appreciate the joy of giving in this way, the rewards are seemingly endless.
If you aren’t sure where to start or how to get your efforts off the ground, there are resources you can turn to for help. Just take a look around you, and you’ll notice many different types of charitable programs looking for help in your own community—surely there’s one that suits your organization and the type of service your people would like to provide. There are even groups that offer to help you find a way to serve. For example, an organization called Entrepreneurs for North Texas exists specifically to help companies that feel overwhelmed by the idea of offering organized community service for their employees. One event shepherded by this organization is Freedom Day; on each anniversary of 9/11, some four hundred volunteers representing twenty companies in the Dallas area show up at firehouses to help clean and repaint them, as a thank-you to those public servants who lost their lives on that tragic day.
At a recent Freedom Day, some seventy BerylHealth employees attended—which made a huge difference in the work that got done. Believe us, there’s nothing easy about the assignment at these area firehouses—you can bank on working your butt off from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Plus, it was an investment on the part of the company because that Freedom Day took place on a workday. BerylHealth gets paid according to the minutes logged on the phone by its advocates, so the company was literally making an investment in the event. But consider how those Beryl-Health employees who were participating felt. Perhaps they were thinking, Wow, my company is willing to give up some revenue to help reach out into the community. They are actually paying me to help.
Many leaders are hesitant and fearful about these kinds of efforts because it’s not something you can plot on a matrix—it’s tough to quantify the rewards. But when you allocate resources and give your employees the freedom to use them within the community in ways they know will make a difference, amazing things result. Do you see how this kind of mind-set drives employee engagement?
Freedom Day is just one community outreach program in which BerylHealth employees participate. In fact, we created a committee called the Better Beryl Bureau, or BBB, that decides where the company spends its money and time in helping the community. What makes this approach powerful is that the passion comes from the employees, not just (as you see so often in other companies) from the top, with Paul telling everyone what they should participate in or to whom they should give back.
Similarly, in the ten years that Britt was at Medical City, the associates at the hospital would choose one major charitable effort each year as their focus for raising funds and volunteering. This list included the North Texas Food Bank, March of Dimes, and Habitat for Humanity. In total, the hospital contributed more than $1 million to those organizations over the course of a decade; by any measure, this made a huge difference in the lives of the hospital’s community members. Again, the idea was that the leadership group would set the example and create an environment where employees feel empowered to act in what they see as the interests of their community. Standing shoulder to shoulder with all the other members of the staff, not just your immediate colleagues, as you worked toward a common charitable goal created an indescribable sense of unity. Collecting food items or carrying a stack of lumber to help a family in need reconfirmed to everyone that we are all in this together. As Bianca Jackson, the former head of Medical City’s community awareness group (who now is director of fund development for Genesis Women’s Shelter in Dallas), put it to us, “I firmly believe that the success of our community project has been because the executive team made it a priority and allowed us to embed it into our culture.”
To put it another way, when you give your employees the opportunity to pick when and how they give back to the community, you align their emotional incentive to serve. Set the example as a leader, and then let your people follow—but in their own footsteps. Just wait until you see how they lock arms and tackle the project ardently together. The result is an unmistakable difference in the community—and a tangible difference in the culture of your organization.
Of course, it’s not always easy to get everyone to see the kind of payoff on the investment in time and money that giving back requires. At Medical City, for instance, Britt had budgeted $100 for each and every employee to use toward a community-driven initiative. All that was required in return was for the person to fill out a request detailing what he or she planned to do with the money. When Britt’s CFO learned of the plan, though, he freaked out (to put it mildly). When he added up all those $100 grants and realized how much Britt intended to commit, he saw only one big hole in the budget rather than the potential payoff that would come from such an investment.
First off, not every employee has a cause he or she is passionate about. Those who did, though, were motivated to make a positive change—like the ten employees who pooled their money to sponsor their kids’ dance team with $1,000. Now, from the CFO’s perspective, this might have seemed like a waste of money. But what he overlooked was the investment an organization makes when it plows a ton of resources into marketing and advertising, buying billboard space and magazine advertisements in hopes of getting a return on that investment. Well, what happens when you hand just a fraction of that money to your employees, who then use that money to create a personalized, informal “marketing campaign”? Not only are those employees getting the hospital’s name out into the community, but they are also showing through their smiles and sense of pride that they actually enjoy working for the organization—creating a positive image that automatically generates new leads in terms of both customers and employees.
Promoting and sponsoring employee-driven service pushes the organization out into the community, and more than that, it also brings the community inside the walls of the company. But don’t let the free advertising be your motivational factor—that’s just an unanticipated by-product. The true ROI is something you can’t measure. Embracing the community as a whole means something special. It confirms what we already know: that investing in the community is a good thing that blesses lives. Dane Peterson, CEO of Emory University Hospital Midtown, reinforces this:
One of our goals in improving employee engagement is fostering the ability of engaged employees to bless the lives of their families and their extramural organizations by being better leaders and followers outside of work. We feel that improving employee engagement is a way to build better communities.
The result of engaging your employees in service is that the community rallies around your organization and what you want to support. That’s how you spread goodwill. A focus on the community also offers the bonus benefit of serving to break down barriers within your own organization, as members from different departments work hand in hand. Organizing these kinds of community-driven programs are truly a win-win-win: for the individual, who wins by feeling good about giving back; for the company, which sees higher employee engagement; and, of course, for the community itself, which reaps the benefits of its engaged citizens.
We need to circle back and reemphasize one point: The larger the organization you run, the more difficult it can be to get everyone to understand the connection between employee engagement and community service. At Medical City, for instance, the employees periodically contributed to the “hardship fund,” a pool of money used to help people in emergencies such as the sudden death of a loved one or their house burning down. But the hospital is part of a larger corporation, and here’s the rub: At some point, one of the bean counters up the line found out about the money stashed away in the hardship fund, and Medical City was requested to donate those funds to the corporation’s larger contribution effort to help support victims of a terrible disaster that was in the public eye at that time, Hurricane Katrina. Now, helping those whose lives were devastated by a hurricane is, no doubt, a noble cause. But even in such important efforts, when help is needed and given on a national scale, there is something missing. It is harder to connect with this sort of service, because the triggering event did not happen locally, and the results of your donation or service are not visible. The employees cannot personally connect with the cause, however worthy it is.
When it comes to the notion of community service, that’s where the rubber meets the road in driving true engagement and commitment. Just checking a box and giving away money is simply not enough to effect change in the community or in your organization. You really have to show a commitment to the effort by getting in there and getting your hands dirty, so to speak, which is really what we’re advocating. Taking visible action, not the amount of money involved, is the secret ingredient in the recipe for driving employee engagement.
There is an important footnote to the subject of serving your community: You shouldn’t overlook taking care of your internal community as well. This gets back to the theme of our prior chapter on caring for those whom we work with. It’s sort of foolish to ask your employees and colleagues to go out and give to the community if they are suffering themselves. Sometimes, helping the community begins with helping one another first. That means before we organize an outing to support a soup kitchen, we should be checking internally to make sure our own folks have everything they need. That’s why at BerylHealth, for example, there is a directory of both internal resources and external community resources that employees can refer to when they, too, need help. The point is, while serving the community is vital for the health of your organization, you also can’t forget who you are trying to serve in the process: your own people.
Remember, the way we define community might continue to change as well—it’s a concept that is well chronicled in Robert Putnam’s book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Putnam describes a shifting of communities in recent years as individuals are changing how they interact with one another. Whereas people used to sit on their porches and chat with their neighbors, today they sit inside their homes as they chat on IM and share pictures on Facebook. Social media has opened up how we interact with one another in ways we never imagined—which has also created different definitions of what the term community means, especially across generations. Everyone sees the world differently, and that’s okay. We can’t be fearful of change. Rather, we need to embrace it, to accept that if our goal is to engage our employees, we need to be willing to view the world (and the idea of community) from their perspective. Taking a new approach can even help you identify whom or what cause you and your organization might choose to serve.
So ask yourself: What’s at the center of your community? And don’t forget to ask your employees, too. Soon you’ll discover that identifying, creating, and serving your community are sometimes one and the same.
Unfortunately, in answering this question, you might also identify people who don’t want to serve, don’t want to get involved, don’t want to become engaged with their work! Despite our faith in the power of engagement, we don’t view this as a sort of heresy. It’s just plain fact: Not everyone is going to be a good fit within your organization. If, after your good-faith effort, some of your people don’t seem to get all the messages we’ve discussed so far, sometimes you have to learn to say good-bye—and that is the topic for our next chapter.