Lendlease maximises programme engagement with a flexible community week
Learn how Lendlease organised a community week that engaged 46% of employees and saw a £68,000 SROI.
Headquartered in Sydney, Australia, Lendlease is a globally integrated real estate and investment group with core expertise in shaping cities by creating strong and connected communities. With more than 60 years in the business, they believe in finding better ways to build places that will leave a positive legacy, putting a focus on safety, innovation and sustainability.
The context
Laura Caporossi, External Partnerships & Programme Manager at Lendlease, has spent the last 8 years managing the company’s internal regional programmes, enriching employees with meaningful experiences based around the company’s pillars of education, diversity & inclusion and sustainability.
Building strong and connected communities has always been at the heart of their business, making serving them a key component of their efforts as a company. For that reason, their employee volunteering and giving programme enables their dispersed team to get out into the communities where they are located and make a difference at the local level.
The challenge
Lendlease was founded with a strong internal culture of looking after their employees and an external focus on supporting their communities - both of which feed their need for a compelling social impact programme. But with a team spread across multiple regions, they needed a better way to facilitate this programme that would engage employees within their local communities.
With busy schedules, varied interests and remote working, Lendlease realised it was crucial to bring more flexibility into their programme if they wanted to maximise participation. From sourcing personalised activities to offering adaptable scheduling, there was a lot to consider if they wanted to launch the Community Week initiative that they had in mind.
Their main challenges were to:
- Define a strong policy that establishes how employees can lend their time during company-wide initiatives.
- Create a flexible programme that enables employees to personalise their experience without too much manual work for the team.
- Connect with nonprofits related to their core business within their desired regions without being on the ground in each area.
“Benevity is the home of all our volunteering opportunities. It’s the key that kind of allows everybody to access activities, choose what they want to do, and get the information that they need. It's very easy to navigate from the member and administrator points of view and is also incredibly easy to use.”
—Laura Caporossi, External Partnerships & Programme Manager
Lendlease
A flexible programme adapted to employee tastes through the Benevity platform
With the help of Benevity’s database of international nonprofits, Lendlease is able to provide compelling volunteering experiences throughout their Community Week that account for employee locations, languages, preferred causes and scheduling.
A team spread across regions connected in one space
Despite the physical distance, employees are able to connect through Benevity’s user-friendly dashboard to spur on more Community Week engagement and celebrate the team’s joint efforts.
Instant impact reporting to inspire further engagement
Lendlease captures the attention of stakeholders and motivates teams to contribute more by measuring personal and company-wide impact through the Benevity platform, then sharing their results internally and externally.
“Since we’ve launched our programme in both the UK and Italy, it’s great to have virtual opportunities that can be accessed by both countries. So for a global company, like Lendlease, it’s a big advantage to have a platform like Benevity that can adapt and bespoke opportunities across different regions, while still using the same portal.”
—Laura Caporossi, External Partnerships & Programme Manager
Lendlease
The results
- 46% participation
- 3,000 hours donated over 5 days
- £68,000 social return on investment
- Supported 30 charities in 5 days
"Through our 66 Volunteering initiatives, we supported 30 different charities in five days, which created a social return on investment of nearly £68,000 British pounds. It’s incredible to actually know that by giving two or three hours of your day, you, your colleagues, the people on your team, and everyone together can create nearly £68,000 of social value in one week. Just imagine if every company had the opportunity to do that once a year. It would make this world a better world, I would say."
LAURA CAPOROSSI, EXTERNAL PARTNERSHIPS & PROGRAMME MANAGER