Developing an Employee Engagement Guide for African Businesses

We helped Footprints Africa develop an accessible guide for businesses on why engaging employees matters, and practical actions they can take.

Footprints Africa team high fiving in a circle

Footprints Africa exists to advance sustainable, scalable and inclusive approaches to development of local African economies. Recognising that companies needed to value investing in people before they could maximize the benefits of the B Corp framework, the charity engaged Junxion to help research, write, design and promote a practical guide for African companies setting out how engaging employees can drive business success.

The Challenge

Footprints Africa seeks to build capacity, empower local delivery partners and create role model businesses in Africa. To that end, Junxion and Footprints Africa previously partnered on a project designed to train African consultancies to take local businesses through the B Corp assessment.

Reflecting on that work, Footprints Africa realized that before companies could make the most of the B Corp assessment they needed to connect employee engagement with business success.

We believe purpose and profit can actually reinforce one another and people are the vital link between the two.

The best practice outlined in the Workers pillar of the B Corp assessment is predicated on an understanding that investing in employees is good for business.

Footprints Africa commissioned Junxion to produce a well-researched, practical guide, centered around real-life case studies, that could be distributed and used as a training tool for their client companies.

How We Helped

Junxion partnered with the Footprints Africa team to research academic literature on employee engagement and review examples of successful businesses to make the case for investing in employees.

We synthesized the findings and created an accessible guide titled People, Purpose and Profit: How your employees are the link between business success and social impact.

The guide defines employee engagement and sets out what makes a good employer. The content is structured around three key employee management competencies – careful listening, building culture, and leadership & growth.

For each competency, the guide offers best practice guidance and sets out practical actions that business owners can take, illustrated with examples drawn from the global B Corp community.

Photo of a smiling man holding up links to symbolise the link between business success and social impact

Measuring Success

Together with Footprints Africa and B Lab East Africa, Junxion presented the research findings in a successful workshop to launch the guide, explore the topic in more detail and seed best practice into the African business community.

The artful way Junxion structured and professionally managed the work from day one gave huge clarity to the research project. It allowed very junior members of our team to play a big role and work autonomously with regular guidance. This was a huge professional development opportunity for my team and meant that our organisation ended the project stronger than when we started.

– Joanna BinghamCEO, Footprints Africa

Download Case Study

Footprints Africa Case Study (1.32 MB PDF)

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