Giving staff the opportunity to help social causes, during work hours, boosts motivation, says Mario Cacciottolo, PR and branding manager at Blexr.
Wondering how you can boost your staff’s motivation and productivity? How about giving them time off from the office to work in the community instead?
At Blexr we’ve found that giving our people the chance to step away from their desks and help social causes, during work hours, has provided a real boost to their morale and motivation.
We’ve started holding what we call community days. This has seen a number of our staff volunteering at Maltese charities, doing gardening at a dog sanctuary for instance. We also applied cheerful hues of paint to wooden kennels at a cat sanctuary. Seeing a bunch of millennial office workers paint something for the first time in their lives was as satisfying for Blexr’s management as it was for the cats. Crucially, all this happened during the working week, with transport laid on by the company. This made it easier for our staff, with their busy lives and other commitments, to find the time to help a good cause.
Encouraging our people to work hard, play hard, but also care hard about something bigger than themselves
We’ve also had environmental campaigner Cami Appelgren come to our office and talk to the staff about the need to tackle pollution in the ocean. Blexr then sponsored her efforts to kayak around Malta to pick plastic up from the seas.
Our staff were so enthused by this that two of them even joined Appelgren’s kayaking team and went all the way around the island with her as well.
We organised a collection for our local food banks in Malta and Barcelona, the places where we have offices, and to which the staff gave with enthusiasm. And we organised an inter-company football tournament involving teams from across the iGaming sector, which raised €4,000 for cancer charity Hospice Malta.
It was great to see so many young people coming together to play sport, have fun and support such an important cause at the same time. Several of the participating companies even did their own fundraising events, so as to pay more than the minimum tournament entry fee.
All of this work by Blexr to benefit the communities where we’re based has reaped dividends, not just for the charities, but for the company too. Such efforts are brilliant for team-building, and help to forge bonds across the company as our volunteers get to rub shoulders with people from different teams, who they don’t usually deal with.
And these activities enthuse our employees about the company they work for, because it’s setting a good example and makes them realise their employer doesn’t just provide a pay cheque, but also cares about the society in which they all live and work, and in many cases are actually from, as we employ a lot of Maltese.
Actively engaging with the community also creates a healthy company culture, encouraging our people to work hard, play hard, but also care hard about something bigger than themselves. That’s a message the whole world is increasingly getting behind, and we’re proud to play our part in it too.
Visit Blexr.com to learn more about our community work and our open positions.
