Altruism is one of humanity’s most important virtues, and it doesn’t have to be associated only with personal giving. Companies can make a significant difference in the communities that they serve through sophisticated volunteer programs that leverage the resources and talents of their employees for the greater good. And it’s transformative for your employees too! Research from Galaxy Digital shows that employees who participate in employer-sponsored volunteering are five times more engaged in their work than those who do not.
In this article, we’re going to explore what this can look like practically, as well as how it can benefit you as the company, your employees, and the people that you serve – all at the same time. It’s the ultimate win-win, and we hope that this can inspire you to start a program of your own.
How Does Volunteering Help Employees?
Volunteering can be incredibly rewarding for your staff, and it can ignite in them an energy and gratitude that emanates throughout the rest of the organization. Here are just a few ways that engaging in volunteering can get these results:
- It can help your employees feel more empowered. When your staff gets the chance to contribute to causes that mean something to them, it empowers them to feel like they’re contributing to the greater good. This impact can heighten the level of commitment to the company and provide plenty of space for personal growth and development.
- It allows employees to develop and share their unique skills. Volunteering opens up new ways for staff members to express themselves and leverage their hard-fought skills in creative ways. Just by changing the application of these skills away from your company itself and toward a worthy cause, you’ll find that employees can develop themselves and find new insights about their skills that can only serve to improve their effectiveness elsewhere.
- It can make your employees happier. The secret of volunteerism is that the people volunteering actually get as much out of it as the people who are being helped. Giving your time and energy to someone else makes you happier, and your employees will benefit from this as well. You should always seek to improve morale, and this is a great way to do this while also making a real difference in your community.
- It can help your employees develop leadership potential. When your staff steps into volunteering, they have a chance to take the lead and develop skills in project management, delegation, goal setting, and other key leadership dynamics. This goes a long way to enhancing their professional development and turning them into more capable and empowered leaders in all aspects of their lives.
These are just a few ways that volunteering can be highly beneficial for your employees, both personally and professionally.
How Does Volunteering Help You as a Company?
Now, let’s turn that around and look at some of the ways that volunteering can be beneficial for your company.
- Volunteering helps businesses attract and retain talent. The workers of today want to be able to contribute to the wider world and make a difference in their communities. Therefore, by making volunteerism a key component of your company’s value proposition, you’ll be able to attract and retain this talent more effectively because of your mission. Those people who connect with the vision are going to want to work for you because of the impact that you make, and that can give you the edge in the highly competitive war for talent.
- Volunteering can improve a brand’s image. We should not be naïve about the branding and marketing opportunities that come with volunteer programs. Your company can benefit immensely by being associated with key causes that your clients care about – and this can transform how your brand is perceived by the outside world. Of course, this shouldn’t be the only reason that you’re aiming to do good, but it is a valuable by-product that can make your charitable efforts more sustainable and more aligned with what you’re trying to achieve as a company.
- Volunteering can boost employee engagement. As we mentioned in the employee section above, volunteering makes for happier, healthier, and more engaged staff members who perform better at their jobs. The improved productivity and morale help to nurture a better working environment that can make a significant difference to the company’s trajectory and success.
These reasons all point toward the value of crafting a meaningful volunteer program, so now, let’s look at what they mean from an operational standpoint.
How Should You Create Your Employee Volunteer Program?
If you’ve decided to start a volunteer program for your employees, then there are some best practices that you should be aware of as you move along the journey. Understanding and applying these principles will help you get the most out of your initiatives and ensure that all stakeholders can benefit from your efforts.
- Assess the needs of your community. The first place to start is an honest assessment of where the current needs are amongst the communities you serve. Do some research and understand the most important causes that need the sort of help that you can provide. These might surprise you and deviate from your initial intuitions, so during this research phase, be open-minded and focus on listening to the people you are trying to help. This can help you navigate your own biases and provide targeted assistance that really makes a difference.
- Align the volunteer program with your business goals. Your volunteering should be, wherever possible, aligned with your brand and consistent with your business goals. This will help you leverage the skills, resources, and economies of scale most effectively so that you can make the most impact possible. Additionally, it helps to re-emphasize to your staff and to your customers the mission that you are on as an organization.
- Ensure that you have buy-in for your volunteer initiatives. In order for your volunteer program to be sustainable, you need everyone to be on board with your plans and operational decisions. Therefore, you should allocate some time and effort to intentionally have those key conversations and win over any skeptics amongst your team so that you can show a united front and ensure that everyone is on the same page.
- Partner with other organizations where possible. Volunteering is a great opportunity to engage and interact with other organizations and find ways to help each other. These partnerships can be formal or informal and can come in a wide variety of different applications. Once you have decided on your key goals and outcomes for your volunteer program, be proactive in seeking out other people and companies that can play a role. This can also serve to start conversations that could be the catalyst for other business opportunities down the line.
- Provide volunteer resources for your employees. You should seek to provide not only volunteering opportunities for your employees but also resources that they can leverage to get better results. This shows that you actually care about the causes that you are supporting and that it’s not just a marketing exercise. These resources can be financial, but they can also be in terms of assets, time, and other intangible components.
- Use technology to monitor your impact. It is often a good idea to have some sort of monitoring system that tracks who is giving of their time, what tasks are being completed, and thus, what impact your program is having. This should not be done manually, however, because there are lots of digital services that can manage this for you. Enabling mobile check-in and hours submissions makes it easier to keep track of what has been happening, and that ensures the fair collection of data that informs appreciation, acknowledgment, and impact measurement.
- Shout it from the rooftops. Once your volunteering program is set up and running, you should spread awareness about it so that it can have as much reach as possible. Use your internal and external marketing channels to tell the stories of your efforts, and you’ll find that you garner more support and resources and attract the kinds of people who would be a great fit for the company.
- Acknowledge the work of your volunteers. Finally, you should be gracious and generous, showing appreciation to those who volunteer. This acknowledgment is what makes the program sustainable because it provides the rewards that people need to keep investing their time and effort. This is also the heart of where the improved morale comes from so don’t hold back on this. Acknowledge the efforts and encourage people to keep going so that there is longevity within the program and you can continue to make a difference in the local communities.
- Report on the impact of your program. This goes hand-in-hand with shouting it from the rooftops, but you should be very transparent about what is going into your volunteer program and what the community is getting out of it. This not only demonstrates to others how successful your work has been but also acts as an accountability structure for you to evaluate how well things are going. Your reporting should be holistic and include both quantitative and qualitative aspects so that you can capture the whole picture.
If you keep these pillars in mind and apply them along the way, you’ll be well-placed to grow and nurture a vibrant volunteering culture amongst your staff – which will allow you to reap the benefits that we’ve discussed above.
Building World-Class Teams to Impact Education and Communities
Here at The Renaissance Network (TRN), we’ve always been encouraged by how much impact the volunteering programs that we see from our clients are having and how they lead to stronger, healthier, and happier teams overall. At TRN, our own employees provide volunteer support to a local social impact partner, Saint Francis House, by advising individuals in challenging circumstances on how to position themselves in job interviews to re-enter the workforce. Our team highly values this opportunity to leverage their talent acquisition skills to help others in need.
If you would like to discuss how we can help you attract, recruit, and retain top talent that can make a difference for your organization for 2024, get in touch today… and let’s see how we can help.
