Blue Helps Explorance Give Back

In my last blog I mentioned how Explorance took part in Great Place to Work in Canada survey and how we made it in the top 50 list. Even though the accomplishment was thrilling there is always room for improvement. One of the initiatives for this year is “giving” and what giving means to Explorance employees. Throughout the years, Explorance has been supporting different organizations but without employee involvement. This year we hope to change this and together as a team help our community.

Where to start

The major question for me was how to start. Do we randomly select a charity organization? Do we enroll our employees into a money raising event and force them to run 5 km? We did exactly that; I worked with our event department to randomly select a charity and an event. This event was convenient for everyone to attend, at least we assumed so. We began planning the event and just after a few steps we stopped. Why? The project was ready to go…

Oversight

We made a crucial mistake by not involving employees in the charity and event selection. We never asked them how they would like to help our community and which charities have meaning for them. To increase engagement and participation we now realize that we need employee input. So, we were back to square one in terms of planning, but at least we learned how valuable employee feedback is for this process.

Blue & results

This was when Blue became very, very integral. How else we would get comprehensive feedback from all employees in such a short time? We created a survey ‘Explorance gives back’ to seek input and to give us guidance. Questions included the way of donation (time, labor, money) and charity options. A very simple survey, but it gave us everything we needed to know and more. Some employees even shared a story of why a particular charity has meaning for them. Now our events could be elevated to another level, not just helping the community but supporting our employees together as a team.

Looking forward

A new plan for ‘giving back’ is now in development but we expect it to start being active this October/November. All ideas were taken from our survey and we are happy to start working with Sun Youth and other organizations.

Let’s make a difference together!