EP8 - Stephanie Bormann (DPR Construction)

Hi everyone, welcome to a good force. The podcast exploring how businesses are using their power for good. I'm Charles Rashid, CEO and founder at Giving Force. Today I'm joined by Stephanie Ballman, Executive Director of the DPR Foundation and VP of philanthropy at DPR construction. Stephanie spent 14 years at H.P. building what became one of the most recognised employee giving and volunteering programmes in the world. Under her leadership volunteer hours grew by a staggering 369 percent giving participation by 124 percent and employee donations by 163 percent. Her team won Time Magazine's team of the year in 2023. She's now taking her experience and expertise to DPR, a construction company that's been named one of the best places to work with that deep community commitment isn't a tech sector thing, it's a leadership thing. Stephanie, it's great to have you. Thank you, Sue Jazz. Thank you for inviting me. It's great to be here. So is there anything like in the dark side of your character where you kind of go, you know what, I wish that was different. Have you got anything to share with us? Yeah, I think Salesforce does a really good job of saying like within their ethos they're going to donate 1 percent of their profits, 1 percent of their employee time to kind of figure your good and choose social impact. And I think even like the government of India has said, you know, for profit companies need to give 2 percent of their profits to CSR activities. Honestly, I wish that more companies would take it upon themselves to do this, right? And to just say, you know, we know that we can do well and we can do good at the same time. And when we do good, we do well. So I really, I wish more companies would follow Salesforce as example, say that they will give a certain, even if it's giving a certain percentage of their profits to their own foundations, you know, in their communities or globally, I think that would be really, really powerful. I entirely agree, it doesn't require an entire shift in an approach and thinking just small differences. And you know, 1 percent is not a big difference. No. You'd hope that, you know, if the situation allows that that should be, you know, anyone's reach. So what got you into this space? Why are you here and not just, you know, an investment banker, you know, printing money or, you know, or making t-shirts or, you know, whatever else you could have been doing. Well, now I think I was always interested in policy. I was always interested in kind of helping people, being a native grad, living in different countries. We went to middle school on a base in Cuba. And then I went to high school on a base in the Philippines. And being able to kind of travel around like areas that were under development or developing and just kind of really opened my eyes to seeing people that needed, that needed help. But I was backed at the original Kila Packard company. I was working in supply chain, making printers and just kind of feeling I fulfilled. Like, you know, the world doesn't need another printer. Like, what am I doing? I love this company about like my day to day is not super fulfilling. And I saw an article in our like internal web page about how the HP philanthropy group was helping the hospital and heady that had been ruined by the earthquake. And they've gone in and donated like all of the computer equipment and money to help get that hospital going again. And I'd been the Haiti in middle school. And so that really resonated with me on how much they needed assistance. And I thought, wow, I didn't really even know HP had this group. And I was able to take my kind of background in operations and my graduate work, which was in international relations and policy and management and move into that group. And that was really a school for talent. I mean, there were a lot of people in that group that had been doing this work for a long time, had been incorporate philanthropy for a very long time. And we're really able to show me the ropes. And so I had something that you needed with my operations background. And then I was really able to learn from them. So it was it was really amazing. Fantastic. Either HP or or elsewhere in your journeys, is there is there anyone you'd give a shout out to someone who you who helped you own that process to be who you are today? I would really shout out. I think B. B. Aqlondro, she was an original consultant to our group. She has taught purpose-driven work at numerous you know universities like Boston College, Georgetown, and still continue has written books on being doing purposeful work. And then also I think Rebecca Wang is still amazing. She works at Service now that is really kind of really I learned a ton from her on employee engagement. And how do you get people to volunteer? What motivates them? I think between the two of them. Among kind of a bunch of other people, it was really amazing. Yeah. There's always a lot of people. I mean, no one does this journey on their own. They're going to learn at the feet of both of those people was really fantastic. Fantastic. Fantastic. So again, you've had quite a career already. I mean, the numbers that are quoted at the start. I mean, people would give a limb to be able to be able to repeat the same sort of success. Is there any particular program or initiative as part of that, you know, that history that you're particularly proud of? Yeah. Carol Amstin and I were able to create a program at HP called 40 Days of Doing Good. And that was really fantastic because it involved kind of grants, it involved skills-based volunteering. And then it also involved a fair amount of gamification. So basically what we said is if you do during this 40 days, if you do a volunteer project with five or more employees because the research we've done kind of showed that five was sort of, you know, a tipping point. And it was a skills-based project around digital literacy. Then you could put in a grant application on behalf of the nonprofit that you had on the project at. And then we were able to kind of further gamify it by saying, okay, and each of you, each of those five people will get a $25 credit, like reward, crumb it, in our giving and volunteering system that can be donated to a charity of your choice. So at least that way if you pull some that he in to the project, but their heart is really in an unrelated charity they can donate it there. And then we kind of took it and kind of kept gamifying it by saying, okay, we're going to have like get in the action award. You have to post picture of people in the project wearing our T our volunteer t-shirts, actually doing the work, not a selfie. And then you can also win another $25 reward. And then we have the team spirit award where, you know, whoever, whatever group or project has the most hours and most volunteers wins like another $1000 on behalf of their charity. And so that really helped us really drive numbers like much bigger. And then I think we were able to then say, okay, now what's missing? Well, what's missing is communications collateral. So this woman Jean Matten came in and developed all these wraparound communications so that people had all kinds of different communications to really inspire people to get them going, to send to organizations, like all kinds of things people need just to make it as easy as possible for them to just show up and see their best work. That sounds fantastic. I mean, layering on each of the sort of incremental improvements, sounds fantastic. Was that, did that feed well? Obviously, it did feed well into HP culture. Yeah, a lot of our engagement around it drove a lot of our volunteer hours. So that that was really great. Fantastic. Fantastic. So that's a program that you're proud of that went, well, not everything goes smoothly. So, was there was there a, like, a particular, you know, to more than you were trying to make progress and you didn't and then you had a light bulb moment and that lit up, you know, how to progress. Or did it all come really easily to you once you went to your Australian operations? You know, I think what we really, we kind of hit a little bit of a plateau. So 40 days, we started. That was going great. We were making progress. We got kind of a big, bigger bump and then it started sort of plateau. And what we did is we surveyed out to people people who had been part of it, but also people who hadn't been part of it. We said, "Okay, what's holding me back or what are your challenges?" And honestly, what we came up with was the biggest challenge was leadership. People felt like either they didn't have time, they just couldn't take the time off work or their management didn't support them taking the time off work, whether that was real or perceived, right? Or even at the highest levels, we didn't have enough leaders modeling that volunteering works. The volunteering is that they were supportive of volunteering. And so, you know, and that was always curious to me because I know Deloitte has done a lot of research in this area and, you know, if there's numerous groups, right, that all say, "I'm doing you volunteer with your manager, you're kind of good juju about your company, your job, it all increases," right? Even more than if a manager were to take, you know, a whole team out to have the hour. People love alcohol. Like, it's surprising data to me. And so, what we were able to do because of our kind of leader at the time was to start something called weed A, where they business units would pick a day during 40 days of doing good and all of our volunteer together. And that really helped us kind of pull out of our slum and then get, you know, kind of at every level trying to get managers and their teams to do an activity together. And that, that again, increased our results year over year, like 100% because all of a sudden it was like, "Oh, my manager's going, I need to be there," right? I don't want that. Or, "Oh, I'm allowed to go." This gives some permission. Yeah. We've seen some fairly bizarre myths that grow up. Certainly away from the head of the official communication isn't quite as easy to get out there. You know, some odd things like, almost the opposite of what's being communicated. It's like, "We don't do this, we do do that." Did you find that a challenge? Like, you know, reaching, because I mean, HPs huge. So, you know, reaching all the regional offices, you know, how did you manage to keep everyone on the same page? You know, I think what we did is we definitely asked that our top leaders said every across every leadership position, a point one person that, sort of, volunteered to lead this Rite activity. And then I got all of these people to gather in a weekly meeting. And they ended up cascading to having their own teams, right? All these different regions or different kind of segments of their business crew. And that was very helpful. I think it was a little bit challenging trying to kind of keep people on brand with, we're really trying to do skill volunteering or digital literacy when you have a huge group, right? Because you have, let's say, a hundred people, it's hard for a charity, you know, a nonprofit to even absorb that, right? So trying to figure out, okay, if you have a hundred people, maybe we divide them up into five or six groups, they go on different things, you know, how are we going to kind of do it that way? So that's not to be able to swamp them with like a hundred people. And because otherwise, you know, it was really hard to tell people like, oh, it's awesome that you're all volunteering to gather. And a beach cleanup is not what we're trying to do here. So it would be hard to like, that was probably the bigger challenge. Yeah, yeah. You've got really excited about it and really, really into it. So that was really fantastic to see. Did you see, did you see a progression from sort of people who wanted to almost have a break from their day job and not necessarily use their, you know, their works fields like over the years. Did you see that progression where people are coming back and wanting to add more value? Yeah, definitely. I mean, I, you know, point taken, I think sometimes people, you know, don't want a busman's holiday, right? Yes. If they, if they use digital skills at work, they want to maybe feed, you know, at a soup kitchen or pack meals at a distribution center, right? They don't necessarily want to do digital equity. I think what they, what they come saw is that it still was different. When you're sitting next to someone and you're teaching them, like, here, let's help you set up, you know, an email account or here, let's, I'm going to review your resume and let's, let's kind of go through your LinkedIn together. There really is sort of a different skill anyway than what you do at your day job. So we tried to kind of give people those options. We tried to also give them virtual options because that, you know, I think that helps think people where they are for all the people that maybe couldn't go in person and do things for people who've had what we saw sometimes those people who have large disparate groups, like globally, they wanted to all kind of be in a Zoom together doing something that we did, you know, work with career village where people could answer questions for kids about careers. Because even though HP is a tech company, obviously we have a near out of people who do a near out of things. And even, you know, answering questions like, what's the difference between a software engineer and an electrical engineer? Or, you know, so yeah, which I don't know the difference. I didn't, I was reading career village, right? So there are all kinds of different, you know, questions that people could ask and just again, tried to game a file at get a together in a zero room, get on career village. Career village was awesome in that they set up a fun platform so that you could see the number of questions that employees answered by business unit. And again, that was a competition and a game of occasion, you know, and they were even able to tell us like, we had one woman, I can't remember how many thousand times her question was her answer was red, but it was like off the charts. So like that also made it really fun. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and small activities that actually have like a very big, you know, fact, right? Was it was there anything that was particularly hard along the journey? Like, you know, that hard one lesson or that thing that just could have been easier, but really was. Yeah, I mean, I think sometimes, you know, just I wouldn't say it was hard, but I think, you know, I think you can have a leader that's super supportive and they leave and then a new person comes and that kind of makes things, you know, difficult or if there's kind of like a last minute wrinkle that or change that leadership wants, I mean, these volunteer projects because especially for we day where they're involving tons of people over many, many global, you know, locations, think of them months in advance. Yeah, occasionally we get, you know, a change requested, it's like, well, that project's that sweet. I don't know how that's going to go. So that that was sometimes difficult, right? And yeah, no, no, absolutely. And you don't want to people to know that or out of place where they've committed to nonprofits and then something's got to change, right? So I think sometimes that got cool. Yeah, no, no, no, absolutely, but that's where embedding that goal, that behavior, that in the culture means that people carry on. You know, even if there are last minute changes, when I set up giving force, one of the reasons for it was to embed giving, whether it's time or money or in other forms as part of a company's culture so that when a CEO or someone changes, you're not going in a different direction. This take us back to, to, to, to, to, yes, to us, yes, are, you know, what, what advice would you, would you offer to someone who's on the journey, maybe facing a difficult moment or just getting into, into this space? I mean, it is a fantastic career. It really is. I mean, you, you won't regret it. So I would say just, you know, I, I think that it can be, I think, challenging to break into, particularly, you know, what's fantastic is now a lot of universities are doing, like, they're specializing in corporate impact or doing certificates in corporate impact. I know Boston College has one that, that people can do, even where I'm, I'm in my undergrad college will play across, they're starting something in social impact. So I think that's fantastic. But if you're kind of already out of that, again, you can go back and do the Boston College certificate program, or you can just start, you know, if you're able to move internally into some sort of program where, like, I, or, you know, department like I did, where you take the skills that you already have, I have a very comprehensive background in operations and was able to use that for the social impact team and then kind of continued to learn as I went. So I think sometimes the internal moves are a little easier in that way. I think if you're being tasked with setting up a program, I see a lot of times people who maybe work in like corporate communications and smaller companies. They'll say, oh, as part of your job in corporate communications or in human relations, can you please start some sort of like, you know, do this part time start some sort of practice in either greyhunts or like, you know, getting volunteering. And I think there's a lot of companies like yours out there that will help you really start, you know, just I think just starting anywhere is great. And I think once you give your employees a taste of it, they will want more because people want to feel purpose and I think sometimes they don't realize that. But they really do they want to feel purpose at work and so it think that's really fantastic once you start it gets like you said embedded in the culture and then it becomes something you can't try to take away from your workforce because they will mount it and they'll afford it. And they'll see that it builds the engagement of the company and that's what you really want our employees for whom you know this is a central attractor to the company. This is a central retainer to the company. I think it becomes that stickiness that glue that keeps people at a company, if done well. Fantastic point very well made. Is there anything you want to leave us with, you know, what you're working on next or, you know, any any any kind of feedback on where you're at. Yeah, I mean, I feel really lucky to you. Very fortunate to be stepping in my new role as community initiatives leader at TPR construction. I also feel very fortunate that I mean their builders. So I guess I shouldn't be surprised that they are very thoughtfully set up the framework of their program of their community initiatives program. I just feel really fortunate to work with this team and their, you know, building possibilities for the end of years, so many of which are you. And so I'm really just excited to jump in and just start, you know, contributing wherever I can to continue kind of building that legacy and and keep in that moving forward. I guess construction has a visually and and impactfully is a much bigger thing than a printer, although I do love my printer, but you know, I entirely get where you're coming from. Yeah, it's really, that's going to be great. Yeah, I'm really excited about it. Stephanie, it's been fantastic having you on the show. Thank you so much. Thank you. It's been awesome.