How to Inspire Employees to Engage in Community Service Activities

Recently, a PIO asked me for advice about how to get recruits and members involved in the department’s community service activities. I told him that his message must be compelling. The fastest way to grab any audience’s attention is to tell them up front what’s in it for them to do whatever it is you’re asking. You also have to help people connect emotionally with the cause: while facts make us think, emotion makes us act. With those concepts in mind, here are a few specific suggestions for inspiring people to engage in community service activities:

1. Start out with what’s in it for your members to get involved in community service, then tell them how they can achieve that outcome. For example, you could ask a series of questions such as, “How would you like to feel really good about yourself? How would you like to feel even prouder of your department and your colleagues than you do now? How would you like to show the community that we truly live our core values, that they’re not just words?” THEN tell them how they can have all those outcomes by participating in a given community service project.
2. Connect the “dots” between community service and your colleagues’ best interests. You want to be sure they draw the conclusions YOU want them to draw.
3. One way to connect the dots is to tell personal stories. Tell a couple of short stories about your and/or others’ experiences while engaging in specific community service activities. Provide enough details that people can picture the story as if they had been there. Talk about how the experience affected you personally – e.g., of the  increased level of pride in being part of a department whose members give of their time and talents so generously, of the joy in seeing the smiles on the faces of pediatric cancer patients, of the memories you create and will cherish forever, of the satisfaction you get from bringing happiness to others’ lives, of the example your participation sets for your kids by teaching them how to help make the world a better place.
4. Talk about the pride you feel when you do good things for other people. Most public safety professionals want to be of service to others. Taking part in community events is another way to provide service – and have fun at the same time.
5. Remind them that participating in community events is a great way to get to know your colleagues and their families, and to increase the bonds with them.
6. Tell them that engaging in community events enables people to put faces and connect acts of kindnesses to a public safety agency. When the department needs something, the community is much more likely to support it when people have had positive interactions with its members and know them as neighbors as well as city workers.
7. Show some pictures, such as those of firefighters pushing kids in wheelchairs around the hospital halls at Halloween with their bags of candy, of law enforcement personnel participating in the Special Olympics Torch Run, or of EMS personnel donating their time to teach CPR classes. Show them the faces of kids who have received toys during the holidays, or of families who are “adopted” by public sector agencies for special attention. Most public safety professionals have families and children, so they can relate on a personal level. Once you humanize the community efforts by putting faces to numbers or events, you create a connection. Members will see faces and, because they feel strongly about serving, they will respond.
8. Read a few of the letters the department gets from people who have experienced the benefits of the community events in which members have participated.

In short, if you want to ensure that service remains an integral part of public safety agencies’ culture, remind people of how little it really takes to brighten someone’s day – including their own.

© 2013 Pat Lynch. All rights reserved.