By Meredith Woodward King
Research by University of Vermont scholar David Jones shows there's a simple way for businesses to keep employees happy, increase their company pride, give back to the community and, in the end, improve the bottom line: a well-designed, company-supported volunteer program.
Jones, assistant professor of business administration, will share his findings as part of a daylong seminar, "Creating a Workforce Management Strategy through Socially Responsible Business Practices." The seminar is one of five offered through UVM's intensive program on "Sustainable Business: Practices in Support of People, Profits and Principles," July 9-13. In the seminar, Jones will offer detailed discussion of his research, which, he believes, has "larger implications for the social responsibility side and also for employee treatment."
His research examined Waterbury-based Green Mountain Coffee Roasters' CAFÉ (Community Action for Employees) program, which allows each of its 700 full-time employees to use 52 hours of paid work time per year to volunteer. This year, employees will work more than 2,000 hours helping out at non-profit and community organizations in Vermont and in coffee-growing regions in Mexico and Central America. The program is voluntary, and employees may choose where to volunteer.
The program has been cited as one of the reasons for the company's various accolades: twice topping Business Ethics magazine's list of the "100 Best Corporate Citizens" and making the lists of Forbes magazine's "200 Best Small Companies" and the Society of Human Resource Management's "Best Medium Companies to Work for in America."
"I find interesting the company's motives for funding my research," Jones said. "I assumed they would love it if the data worked out, and they could go back to shareholders and say, ‘This program isn't a waste of money.'
"I couldn't have been more wrong," he said. "Their goal with the research was to convince other companies that this type of program can pay off. I was almost kind of skeptical at first: ‘So you're going to fund my research to help other companies?' "
Indeed, with funding provided by the Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Foundation, Jones prepared several reports that the company now shares with other companies. Jones and Michael Dupee, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters' (GMCR) vice president for corporate social responsibility, have traveled to conferences to promote the program, most recently speaking at a sustainable leadership conference attended by business leaders, including those from General Electric and Hewlett Packard.
And though smaller companies may not be as able to emulate and afford GMCR's program, there are other ways they can support employees' volunteerism, Jones said (see related story here).
How to Make Employees Proud – and Loyal
In his research, Jones set out to examine whether GMCR's volunteer program is, as the company believes, "improving the work lives of our employees and, in turn, is making them more motivated and loyal to our customers."
As a scholar in industrial and organizational psychology – his doctorate is in the field – he also was interested in understanding the reasons behind employees' responses to the volunteerism program. He studied surveys completed by 162 employees, with supervisors measuring the workers' behavior six months later. "Measuring behavior in this way removes all sorts of biases from the data and improves the credibility of the findings," he said.
He based his study on two broad theoretical frameworks: organizational identification, or why and how employees might identify with, and take pride in, their workplaces; and social exchange, or how employees' behavior in the workplace is affected by how employers treat them.
Although there are numerous academic papers on the two subjects, they haven't been applied to understanding how employees might respond to their company's corporate responsibility. "There has been more talk than action," he said. "There is not a lot of research to support – or discount – what many people assume about the positive effects of these practices on employees."
Jones' study is the first to take an in-depth look at corporate volunteer programs. It confirmed that the workplace is an important source of identity for employees and showed that a volunteer program boosts employee pride in the company – and improves their commitment and loyalty to their employer.
"When employees feel proud of their company and believe the company is considered prestigious in others' eyes, then they tend to identify strongly with the company," he said. "They tend to internalize the goals of the company as their own goals. … If the company has a setback, these employees feel like it's their own setback."
Jones' findings showed that employees who valued GMCR's volunteer program more tended to "feel more pride in the company and identified more strongly with the company. In turn, they were less likely to quit, they felt more obligated to help the company succeed, and they engaged in more behaviors outside of work that supported the company, such as promoting the interests of the company and telling people how great the company and its products are."
Engaging Employees Who Go ‘Above and Beyond'
Jones' findings regarding employees' citizenship behaviors – cooperative behaviors that benefit the company and its bottom line – were even more exciting, he said.
As national research shows, some employees have what's called a "low exchange ideology" – "their behavior at work isn't really contingent on how they're treated," Jones explained. "Whether the company treats them well or poorly does not have much impact on how they do their job." Others have a "high exchange ideology" – if they're treated well by the company, they perform well; if they're treated poorly, they don't, and, he added, they may even "repay in some sort of revenge behavior."
Jones' study showed that GMCR's volunteer program had dramatic effects on employees who behaved according to how well they were treated. Those who felt they benefited from the program engaged in higher levels of citizenship behavior, which Jones measured six months later. In other words, "there's a real benefit to the company if employees get benefits from the volunteer program," he said. "It's quite amazing that I found such strong effects on these behaviors."
There were numerous ways that employees felt benefits from the program, he said. "As an employee, it gives me new and exciting tasks; I get to meet new people; I really felt good about volunteering, and it's the company that made it possible. Other people may have more career-oriented reasons for volunteering; they want to develop new skills."
Such employees treated the company well, the study showed. "They're going above and beyond, whether it's staying an extra 15 minutes to do tasks, coming to work and saying, ‘I have a great idea. I think we can be more effective if we do it this way,' " Jones said. "They are more motivated to help the company succeed, and they are likely to stay working there longer."
Employee turnover is so costly and time-consuming that a well-managed volunteer program could pay for itself through its effects on retention, Jones said. "I would guess that if this volunteer program is causing even three or four people to stay at Green Mountain Coffee Roasters – longer than they would have – that, in the long run, it is worth the cost of the program," he said. "The results from the study also point to other positive outcomes beyond retention. When considering the potential benefits together, a well-managed volunteer program should be viewed as an investment rather than a cost."
Jones' research helps other companies realize the benefits of creating volunteer programs – and potentially seeing their employees' citizenship behaviors increase, as well.
That's important, he said, because "these citizenship behaviors affect the bottom line, and they're considered widely by scholars to be essential for functioning in today's modern economy."
Last modified May 24 2007 12:01 PM
