CBCA - Benefits

Provides competitive employee benefits

Competitive benefits are an important strategy to enhance an employers’ ability to recruit and retain talented, committed staff. The arts are a magnet for skilled, innovative employees.

Arts opportunities are very attractive to employees – A 2004 Arts & Business Group study showed that 41% of employees have an interest in tickets to cultural facilities, compared with only 32% interested in gym discounts. Over 600,000 metro Denver residents supported the November 2004 ballot measure authorizing sales tax to support Denver’s Scientific and Cultural Facilities District, demonstrating their strong interest in arts and cultural opportunities.

CBCA arts benefits are one component of strong human resource policies that contribute to business success. In her book The Change Masters, Rosabeth Moss Kanter compared 47 companies, chosen by human resource professionals for their progressive policies, with firms of equal size in their industries. The progressive companies were more profitable and enjoyed greater growth and return on investment over a twenty-year span than the comparison companies.

Increases Employee Loyalty

Employees with a favorable impression of a company’s philanthropy are as many as four times as likely to feel a sense of commitment to the company they work for and plan on working there in the future.

Up to two-thirds of employees agree that:
A good giving record is a main reason for staying with an employer
Corporate generosity is one of the main reasons that differentiates a company
A company that does good deeds gains their admiration

Recruiting and training employees is costly. Microsoft estimates that each employee it loses to the competition is worth $200,000 over the estimated average duration of employment.

Strengthens company leadership

Recent surveys consistently identify imagination, inspiration, inventiveness, improvisational ability, collaborative and inter-cultural skills, adaptability, and presentation as among the most sought-after attributes of business leadership.

Ray Cortines, Executive Director of Pew Network for Standards-based Reform at Stanford University notes, “Employers want much more than students who have mastered basic skills…The workplace demands much more. The ‘much more’ that the workplace wants is precisely what art delivers: critical thinking, nimbleness in judgment, creativity and imagination, cooperative decision making, leadership, high level literacy and communication.”

Helps your business and employees excel!

The arts are clearly a major element in developing the specific skills, working style, and corporate culture important to industry today. A stimulating environment energizes talented employees and unleashes the creative potential of organizations, helping them to remain agile, inventive – and competitive.

Arts aid in “core competencies” needed for employment, according to a US Labor Dept. report (SCANS, Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills). The arts are cited as important for certain “foundation” skills which include thinking creatively, problem solving, exercising individual responsibility, sociability, and self-esteem.

Companies use arts programs to foster creative thinking, promote the development of new leadership models, strengthen employee skills in critical areas such as collaboration, conflict resolution, change management, presentation/public performance, and intercultural communication, and provide a work environment that fosters morale, creativity, and interaction. Respondents to the BCA national Workplace Art Survey agree that a company’s involvement with arts-related activities helps them address key challenges:
Broadening employee appreciation of diversity and encouraging discussions, and expression of opinions (77% agree)
Enhancing morale (67% agree)
Increasing creativity and productivity (64% agree)

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