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FROM THE JUDGES:

With a 100% participation rate and company matching, it punches well above its weight.

Greenhill & Co. has a long standing workplace giving program that has always been an important part of the firm’s culture.  Over time, the levels of WPG participation started to fall below the targets the company set, so Greenhill & Co., working together with The Australian Charities Fund, developed a re-invigorated strategy for the program to encourage even further participation.

In just four months since the program’s relaunch, employee participation has reached an astounding 100%, the highest level of participation Greenhill & Co. has ever achieved.

The rebooted strategy includes dollar-for-dollar donation matching and a flexible approach that allows the 34 employees to support their charity of choice. Staff who were already supporting charities outside of work were happy with the opportunity to redirect this through the program to benefit from the company matching and the ease of donations going direct from their pay to the charity, with an immediate tax benefit.

New employees learn about workplace giving during their onboarding process and in their starter pack. They are automatically signed up to the program via a process called ‘opt-out’, but can choose to withdraw.

Leader endorsement has been key to the program’s success and WPG is now a regular agenda item at firm strategy days.

In 2015, employee donations through workplace giving were $8,352, with the charities receiving double this with the company matching the donations. Greenhill projects that in 2016 payroll donations will exceed $23,000, totalling over $46,000 with matching.

Greenhill looks forward to maintaining company-wide participation by making the workplace giving program an entrenched part of company culture, with regular internal communications and sharing of program achievements.