How Medallia built an authentic culture of belonging
Learn how Medallia increased employee volunteerism by 60% and fundraising by 111%, boosting employee retention and belonging in the process.
With over 2,500 employees, Medallia is a customer feedback management software company. Their mission is to help companies create a culture that values every person and every experience. As a truly global company with major footprints in the USA, Canada, Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, the UK, Spain, Germany, the Czech Republic, India, Singapore, Japan and Australia, they are committed to helping create a world where everyone has a voice.
The context
At Medallia, their corporate mission is to value every person and every experience. For their corporate social responsibility arm, Medallia.org, this is taken a step further with a particular focus on supporting marginalised communities – by partnering with mission-driven nonprofits serving the most vulnerable.
Starting as a grassroots initiative, their programme was originally conceived by a small group of passionate Medallians who dreamed of putting their product into the hands of nonprofit organisations. Over time, this employee-led initiative has grown to become a global-reaching programme featuring their signature Global Week of Giving Campaign. It works to provide support to underrepresented communities impacted by climate change, the mental health epidemic, the opportunity divide and more.
The challenge
With the goal of amplifying the good that was organically cropping up around the company, Medallia decided to scale these grassroots efforts into a company-wide programme. All with the hope of maintaining the heart and passion that originally drove their employee-led initiative.
However, as a global company with employees all over the world, they came up against a number of cultural, logistical and language barriers that challenged them when delivering a unified programme at scale.
Their main challenges were to:
- Turn an organic, grassroots initiative into a global programme with the potential to reach employees around the world.
- Embed volunteering and giving into an international company culture to increase their positive impact as a whole.
- Build a sense of belonging so that all Medallians, particularly those from marginalised identity groups, feel as though they have a voice at the company.
As Medallia grew so quickly across departments, acquisitions and internationally, it became necessary to have a one-stop shop so giving opportunities for employees were not only easy to find, but also easy to track.
Heather Jin, Global Head of Corporate Social Impact, Medallia
A centralised platform that delivers local content at a global level
With the Alaya platform, part of the Benevity product suite, Medallians around the world can easily discover relevant and compliant volunteering and giving opportunities in their desired region. This makes their personal contributions more meaningful to their local communities.
Heather said: “We needed a platform that allowed us to scale our giving campaigns tied to culturally significant holidays like Black History Month, operationalise our gift matching campaigns with our employee resource groups, recommend volunteering and fundraising opportunities all over the world – and be able to track all this goodness in an easy-to-read dashboard.”
Effective communication tools that increase programme participation
From communicating through a world crisis to calling attention to company-wide initiatives, Benevity’s products enable Medallia to efficiently connect with employees and keep them coming back to volunteer and give throughout the year.
A sense of belonging that improves employee retention
By offering a space where Medallians can directly contribute to causes that are close to their hearts, particularly ones that serve underrepresented communities, Medallia has seen an increase in belonging that is shown to keep employees working at the company.
... showcasing that this social impact programming is something that is adopted across the board, across these different geographies, across these different departments and levels, is really powerful to show.”
Heather Jin, Global Head of Corporate Social Impact, Medallia
The results
In their 2022 Global Impact Report, Medallia revealed there was an increase in all Voice of Medallia (Medallia’s employee engagement survey) key drivers from Benevity contributors versus all employees. Including a statistically significant 10% increase in belonging.
Heather said: “It’s very rare to see a platform be taken up by such a representative sample size within the company. Sometimes platforms are used far more in one country or far more in one department.”
When it comes to programme engagement, they not only saw an increase in volunteering and giving, they were also able to remarkably increase the number of participating countries by 288% after Benevity implementation.
Finally, they found that Benevity platform participation is positively related to higher engagement and retention across location, gender, race and management level and that Benevity users are less likely to leave Medallia.
She said, “Benevity is an incredible platform: what we were able to see is that they help us increase both our retention and our engagement. We have our 'Voice of Medallia' survey, which is our employee engagement survey that goes out every couple of months.”
And what we saw was that people who use Benevity, so people who volunteer and donate, have a higher score on all of those key drivers and a 10% increase in the sense of belonging.
Heather Jin, Global Head of Corporate Social Impact, Medallia
“We've had Benevity for about a year, it’s an incredible platform. What we were able to see is that they help us increase both our retention and our engagement. We have our 'Voice of Medallia' survey, which is our employee engagement survey that goes out every couple of months. And we have key questions that we ask: Do you feel that Medallia is a great place to work? Do you plan to be with Medallia this time next year? Do you trust our leadership? Do you feel as though your work is meaningful? Do you feel like you belong at Medallia? And what we saw was that people who use Benevity, so people who volunteer and donate, have a higher score on all of those key drivers and a 10% increase in the sense of belonging.”
HEATHER JIN, GLOBAL HEAD OF CORPORATE SOCIAL IMPACT