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Founded in 2009 and based in Mountain View, Calif., Pure Storage delivers the world’s most advanced data storage technology and services.
Shortly before going public in 2015, Pure Storage employees banded together to donate their stock shares to form Pure Good Foundation, a 501(c)3 corporate foundation designed to empower employees and nonprofit partners to build a better world.
“Pure Good Foundation’s primary aim is to engage our employees in all things philanthropy,” explains Beth Michel, Head of Pure Good Foundation. “When Pure Storage moved out of the startup phase, we grew the foundation as well to operate on a Fortune 500 level.”
She needed a partner to help drive meaningful social impact experiences globally without requiring additional headcount.
A trusted employee engagement partner
Beth sought an employee engagement provider that could be a true partner to her mission — not just a vendor. Rather than simply connecting her with nonprofits, she wanted to work with an organization that she considered an extension of her team.
After just one conversation, Beth knew that Visit.org could deliver curated social impact experiences designed to meet Pure Storage’s unique needs.
“We had just opened up an office in the Czech Republic,” Beth recalls. “And although Visit.org didn’t then have a nonprofit partner in the country, the team was excited to add to their global inventory of experiences. That was the kind of creative energy I was looking for.”
Beth was also impressed with Visit.org because she sought experiences that went beyond traditional volunteering, such as fun team building activities, lunch and learns, panel discussions, new-hire onboarding, and more.
Visit.org’s proven best practices to increase employee participation — such as internal marketing support — were also an important factor.
Employee engagement success metrics
Initially, Beth measured the success of each social impact experience with Visit.org by identifying employee participation: But as Pure Storage’s workforce expanded, she needed a more sophisticated way to gauge event success.
The solution?
She and her Account Manager implemented Visit.org’s post-event survey functionality to capture qualitative employee sentiment data. After every event, employees are asked:
Do you think the event added value to your experience as a Pure Storage employee?
Did this experience help you feel more connected to Pure Storage?
Do you feel that Pure Storage is doing enough for your local community?
Now, Beth can craft a robust story from every Visit.org social impact experience. These metrics help her plan for future events and deepen her understanding of what effective employee engagement looks like at Pure Storage.
Creative iteration: employee training and onboarding with Visit.org
A successful employee engagement partnership revolves around continual improvement and iteration. In addition to recently implementing a Global Week of Service with Visit.org — a week that involved six virtual events in the U.S. and U.K.— Beth and her Account Manager frequently brainstorm new ways to infuse corporate social responsibility programming into other Pure Storage departments.
Currently, Pure Storage’s human resources team works with third-party corporate learning companies to train employees on topics such as harassment, gender equality, and DEIB unconscious bias in the workplace. Employees are required to participate in these training sessions. If they were led by Visit.org’s community nonprofit partners, an additional social impact experience would be created for every global employee.
“Instead of paying tens of thousands of dollars to a corporate education company, we could give this money through Visit.org to a nonprofit who would then be engaging and training employees from personal, lived experience in addition to decades of learned knowledge,” says Beth, who adds that she’s galvanized about the possibility of merging employee engagement, trainings and onboarding, and corporate philanthropy.
The value of an ongoing Visit.org partnership
Beth views the Pure Good Foundation as a pillar of Pure Storage’s culture. Providing ongoing programming — versus one-off experiences — is key to building a culture that permeates the entire organization.
“Our partnership with Visit.org helps keep ‘doing good’ a part of our culture as we grow,” says Beth.
Learn how Visit.org can help your company increase employee engagement. Schedule a call with a member of our team!
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