Uncovering the Purpose Behind the Withum Way

An Interview with Withum’s Communications Director and Director of Inclusion and Diversity

Withum is a top-25 trusted business advisory, tax and accounting firm founded on the principles of a commitment to its people, its clients and its communities. The firm’s 2022 Withum Week of Caring reached the greatest impact in its 12 years. The 2022 campaign launched during the three days leading up to Thanksgiving and was the first time the firm organized large-scale in-person volunteering since the pandemic.

Week of Caring Overview

We interviewed Bill Bradshaw, Withum’s Director of Inclusion and Diversity, and Heather Campisi, the firm’s Communications Director, to uncover how Withum infuses purpose into the core of their business and learn more about their 2023 goals for giving back.

Bill, can you give us a little background on how Withum makes giving back a part of the culture?

We have three pillars that are the guiding principles of our firm, our clients, our people and our communities. That foundation is integrated from day one when each team member joins the firm.

One specific way we make this a part of the culture is through our Week of Caring. In 2011, we established Withum Week of Caring, typically the week leading up to the U.S. Thanksgiving Holiday, where team members can step away from their day-to-day tasks to give back to their communities. All our leaders participate in this initiative to give back, and we strongly encourage all of our team members to participate. It has become a part of our DNA. This year, 2022, was our biggest week of caring yet, and even throughout the pandemic, when we weren’t physically together, we found ways to support nonprofits in our community.

Bill mentioned that employees are strongly encouraged to participate. Heather, what are three ways the communications team supports this effort to inform and engage team members with opportunities to give back?

I started my career at Withum as an industry marketer. When you look at communications from a marketing lens, it’s a strategic approach to engaging your audience. The firm has significantly grown since I started in 2009, and now, we have over 2,200 team members across the U.S. and internationally. We needed to reexamine how we communicate with our team members to enhance messaging around their engagement, including our giving initiatives. Aside from implementing YourCause, we held internal communications focus groups across the firm to hear first-hand what our team members needed and wanted.

We asked questions like:

• how do you want to be communicated with,
• where do you go for information, and
• what types of communication do you prioritize, among others.

Their feedback serves as a foundation to shape our communications strategy and execution.

1. Our internal communications team works hand-in-hand with our leaders. For example, specific to our giving efforts, we are actively connecting with Bill Bradshaw and his team to understand what message we need to share, what campaigns we need to run and what mediums we need to use to maximize team member engagement. Email is often necessary, but we also utilize Microsoft Teams, SharePoint and our intranet in different ways to expand our reach. We also partner with our in-house Creative Teams for videos and artwork to ensure our messaging is as effective as possible.
2. Most recently, we’ve started working with our Learning and Development Team to find ways to build a curriculum to support our charitable efforts. As Bill mentioned, we share our community impact priorities with our team members during onboarding. But we need to ensure they continue to receive this messaging long-term, so that’s where program development, training, firm-wide messaging and campaigns come in. This multi-faceted approach fuels our culture. It reminds our team members of the importance of getting involved in their communities and the why behind it.
3. We also look at message cascading. We start with our leaders and then look at how that messaging trickles across our offices. That is a little marketing trick we use because we know that you can’t just share a message once; you have to repeat it in different ways to stick with people.

Bill, we know your team is excited about the possibilities of making an even bigger impact in 2023. Can you talk about some of the ideas you have for expanding the employee giving and volunteer campaigns?

There are several things that I’m excited about for 2023. We’ve termed the YourCause platform, WithumCares, and the technology is revolutionizing how we engage with our team members to give back their time and treasure. You’ll hear me say time and treasures quite often, as that is something I use instead of asking people to give their money.

Expanding with Virtual Groups

We are working towards expanding the virtual groups’ functionality within the platform to integrate with our employee resources group. I’m excited for our ERGs to get their hands on this tool and have something they can use to support their charity and cause efforts.

Introducing the Platform in the New Hire Onboarding

For the first time in 2022, we introduced the platform into our new hire onboarding process. We task each new hire group with a community service initiative. We help them find a charity to support and then challenge them to work together to come up with innovative ways to fundraise for that charity for the year. Now that we have onboarded YourCause, we can say here is your charity and the mechanism; let’s see what you can do. We create this friendly game of competition where all our teams and individual offices have a place to participate and engage with our firm-wide initiatives and these initiatives among the groups.

Providing Data Transparency to our Leaders

I’m taking the time to get my hands dirty and really get into the platform to understand all the features and learn about the reporting. The biggest thing I’m excited about is using the platform to provide transparency to our leaders about how are people are serving and giving back. We haven’t been able to fully track what team members are doing on their own time, and this tool allows people to log their time and the treasures they have given throughout the year.

Heather, please add anything you are excited about for 2023 and share your thoughts on why it is so important to capture purpose as a part of Withum’s brand story.

For 2023, I’m excited about tracking board member participation. We have struggled with tracking board membership effectively, so I’m looking forward to having WithumCares give us that transparency. It’s valuable from a business development perspective but also ensures we align our core values to the organizations we support and do so equitably.

We also want to give our team members visibility into their impact. We ask them to show up and get involved throughout the year; now, they can see everything on a dashboard. Philanthropy is part of their career development, performance evaluations and promotions at Withum. So having that at their fingertips is valuable.

We take the data, pictures and video captured by our team members at their events and create an impact video. These videos are fantastic ways for us to relive those moments and share a piece of our brand story and what makes Withum special.

Purpose is at the heart of what we do. As a company, if you don’t have a purpose, then what are you doing, why are you doing it and where are you going? Withum’s purpose statement is to be a catalyst for growth and success – for our people, clients and communities. It’s important to remember that we’re all consumers. People want to engage with a company and brand that shares their same vision, values and beliefs, so that purpose has to be transparent. And WithumCares, YourCause, will help us tell more of that story.

We know there is a lot of economic uncertainty from the recession and budgets may be getting tight for a lot of organizations. Can you share what things will remain a top priority for Withum?

Bill: # 1 is to take care of our people. My personal mantra has always been, “turn your passion into action.” Leading with empathy in a time of unknown and uncertainty is imperative for us. We saw that during the pandemic, and we will continue to be transparent with our team members, communicate, lead with empathy, and check in on our people. We don’t have a crystal ball, so we can’t predict what will happen, but we are working toward thinking outside the box. That includes looking at the skill set of our people, finding out what they are passionate about and seeing if there are opportunities to move them to different roles. We want to make sure our people have a vibrant Withum story. That is a 360-degree approach to who that person is. Not only are they a great tax accountant or business advisor, but what are they passionate about. When people are empowered, they succeed professionally and personally. Heather knows I say this all the time, but we want our people to dance. We want them to show up and have the ability to feel like they can dance like no one is watching.

Heather: Like Bill said, our commitment will always be to our people first. When you take care of your people, they care for our clients and their communities. If anything, we lean into that even more throughout uncertainty. As a professional services firm and their trusted advisor, we know our clients will need our support when things get a little murky – we saw that ten-fold throughout the pandemic, especially in the beginning. We will continue our giving efforts and encourage our team members to give back in whatever capacity they have – time, treasure or skill, everyone can create a positive impact.