Social challenges do not refer to social problems or challenges that are difficult to solve at a political level, for example. Instead, social challenges are specific tasks with concrete objectives that employees have to tackle within a certain time frame during their day-to-day work, either individually or in groups.
Such a challenge would be, for example, to come to work without a car for a week or to provide a certain number of plants in the office, etc.
However, a challenge can also last just one day or an entire month. Such challenges offer a great opportunity to introduce employees to new environmentally or socially sustainable practices in their day-to-day work in a relaxed and sometimes even funny way.
On the other hand, it can also support corporate goals in the area of social commitment or sustainability and promote the active involvement of employees.
“How can I establish sustainability in my company in a practical and even fun or exciting way?” Quite a few team leaders, CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) managers or HR officers ask themselves this question. This may be the origin of the idea of social challenges in companies, which is not new itself.
Habits determine our everyday lives more than we think! To be precise, according to social psychologist Bas Verplanken, around 30-50% of our actions day in, day out are based on habits. That's quite a lot, isn't it? Whether at work, at home or out and about in our free time. Changing patterns and habits is no easy task. Neither as an individual and even less in a group with many different views and routines. It takes longer than a week to adjust habits, that makes sense.
However, many challenges don't last very long - so what's the point? Well, if you don't start at all, you won't achieve any changes. In this sense, the challenge is not a revolutionary concept, but an important impulse for the introduction of new routines and, if done well, also a team-building measure. It is about breaking out of the familiar. Once this has been achieved, the difficult beginning is already done!
1. Clear target and impact definition
Which topic should be changed? Where do we need new routines and in which areas of employees' day-to-day work is there realistic and effective potential for improvement? What or how much participation and impact do we want to achieve through this Challenge? In the case of a vegan day challenge, for example, it should be clear what this measure is intended to achieve and what level of participation we are aiming for.
It makes sense to think about these questions before initiating a challenge.
2. Understanding the purpose
Speaking of purpose. We are probably all familiar with this phenomenon, at least from our school days: people simply put less, if any, effort into things where they see no direct sense or benefit. That's why it's very important to emphasize the good purpose and personal added value of a challenge when introducing or carrying it out. For example, the vegan challenge could focus on animal welfare and personal health. However, it is often important (see self-optimization) not to fall into the role of a moral apostle.
3. Measurability
A challenge, no matter how much fun it was, is of no use to anyone if you can't see what it actually achieved afterwards. On the one hand, we are talking about the personal benefits of completing the challenge. At the end, this should be noticeable on its own or should also emerge from discussions with colleagues. On the other hand, it is important to make the positive impact achieved visible in a sustainable or social context, so you should make sure that the impact per person is at least roughly measurable in the case of self-created challenges.
This also makes it possible to see afterwards how much an entire team has achieved. In the case of the vegan challenge, for example, the average CO2 saved per person due to the elimination of meat consumption would be one way of measuring the impact.
