How National Australia Bank engaged employees in workplace giving and volunteering

NAB Neighbourhood was an all-in-one solution to boost engagement immediately. But it was also designed to be sustained and scaled over the longer term to meet the needs of employees and their communities.

Launching loud and proud

With employees working remotely during the pandemic, the NAB Sustainability team knew they’d have to infuse something special into NAB Neighbourhood’s launch to capture people’s attention. Kate credits these four levers for making a difference:

1. Gamification — The launch was built around a “Race Around the Neighbourhood” campaign dividing executive leaders and their divisions into teams. The team that completed the most giving and volunteering activities over four months won. A leaderboard tracked progress of the race.
   
   
2. Executive advocacy — Not only did NAB Neighbourhood have an executive sponsor, but executive team members were responsible for leading efforts in raising awareness of the features they wanted to promote, like tracking volunteer time, getting rewarded through volunteering, and organising their own fundraising campaigns.
   
   
3. Rewards — All employees were given AU$10 in their Giving Account, with four randomly seeded with AU$1,000.
   
   
4. Communication — From multiple teasers to desktop wallpapers to their intranet, NAB built an extensive communication plan that used a variety of internal channels to keep employees informed and excited leading up to the launch. In particular, a detailed map of NAB Neighbourhood, and its various features, was revealed over time across channels to pique interest.
   
   

“We used every single communication platform we had available to get our people excited about the launch of NAB Neighbourhood,” said Twyford.

Doubling engagement, outperforming industry benchmarks

The impact of NAB Neighbourhood was immediate. The initial goal of 25% of NAB employees logging in to the platform within the first six months of launch was reached within two weeks. The goal was increased to 50%, which was hit within three months. Ultimately, 60% of employees participated by the end of the bank year.

The stats are in:

“We were particularly proud of hitting our goal of 60% participation in NAB’s giving and volunteering program — well above the financial sector benchmark of 33%,” said Twyford.

Thanks to its efforts, NAB contributed AU$42.8 million to communities overall in 2020. Beyond the numbers, employee feedback was positive and Twyford credits the program for building a more cohesive culture and creating greater connection among colleagues.

8 ways to boost volunteering and giving

So, what’s the secret to NAB Neighbourhood’s success? NAB identified these eight insights:

1. Involve executives and make it fun — Giving and volunteering jumps with executive advocacy. Give your leaders the chance to bring their personalities, competitiveness and philanthropic passions to support your campaigns.
   
   
2. Maximize incentives — Offer rewards to drive your program. Twyford and her team built the business case and secured executive support to seed employee giving accounts with initial funds to kick-start their giving on the platform.
   
   
3. Engage new hires — Tap into that new-employee energy by including information on your giving and volunteering program in onboarding and induction materials and provide seed funding for them to donate to a cause of their choice.
   
   
4. Deepen relationships with communities and causes — Work with employees who manage relationships with non-profit customers. For example, NAB colleagues shared dedicated toolkits with their non-profit customers that helped these causes get involved in their program.
   
   
5. Integrate communications — Link your employee engagement platform with other communication tools across the company to amplify your program’s impact. NAB used the platform to build a reporting dashboard that was shared company-wide through their intranet to demonstrate their program’s impact.
   
   
6. Partner with your communications team — Give your internal communications team the freedom to be creative wizards. They can share stories of impact and celebrations of your employees’ community contributions.
   
   
7. Make the most of micro-actions — Strive to keep them simple and strategic to support campaigns and make them as topical as possible. NAB chose vaccine equity and disaster relief.
   
   
8. Ask for feedback — Make tweaks and be prepared to quickly adjust your program. For example, NAB extended their volunteer reward expiry time based on requests from colleagues.

Keeping up momentum post-launch

So, what’s next for NAB Neighbourhood? Twyford’s team continues to build the company’s community involvement, which is making a difference not only through giving and volunteering, but through grants and special initiatives. It supports Indigenous success and aims to help customers, colleagues and their communities withstand and recover from natural disasters through a bank-wide program, NAB Ready Together.

Thanks to Benevity and NAB Neighbourhood we’re now able to set up campaigns to respond to events like natural disasters in a matter of minutes. 

Kate Twyford, Senior Associate, NAB Foundation, NAB

“We are here to serve customers well and help communities prosper. Benevity is helping us bring that to life,” said Twyford.