Want to engage your call centre agents? Here’s how African Bank does it

At African Bank, corporate volunteering isn't just for employees with flexible schedules - it's a company-wide commitment that includes every team member, especially their dedicated call centre agents.

The bank has pioneered innovative approaches to ensure their customer service teams can actively participate in meaningful community impact initiatives without compromising their primary responsibilities.

The challenge African Bank faced

Like many financial institutions, African Bank employs hundreds of call centre agents who are essential to customer service delivery. These employees work in highly structured environments with strict adherence to schedules, productivity metrics and availability requirements. Traditional volunteering opportunities, even those held on-site, were impractical for agents who couldn't step away from their desks during operational hours.
This created an unintended divide in the company culture, where field-based and office employees could participate in community initiatives while call centre agents were inadvertently excluded from these meaningful experiences.

African Bank's Innovative Solutions: Bears and Blankets Initiative and Reading Sessions

African Bank's breakthrough came with their "Bears and Blankets" initiative, a programme specifically designed around the working reality of call centre agents. The bank provides knitting needles and wool directly to customer service agents at their workstations, enabling them to knit blanket squares during natural breaks between calls and official break times.

These individual squares are later collected and sewn together into complete blankets that provide warmth and comfort to vulnerable community members during South Africa's cold winter months. The initiative has become a cornerstone of African Bank's employee engagement strategy, demonstrating that meaningful community impact doesn't require leaving one's desk.
African Bank also involved employees in online reading sessions where they could for 10 – 15 minutes read a story book on video to children from an ECD centre. A short, yet impactful activity.

The Impact on employee engagement

African Bank's inclusive approach to volunteering has yielded significant results in employee engagement and retention among their call centre teams. Agents report feeling more connected to the bank's values and mission, with many expressing pride in being able to contribute to community welfare while excelling in their customer service roles.
The Bears and Blankets initiative alone has produced hundreds of blankets annually, while the broader volunteering programme has strengthened team cohesion and created a shared sense of purpose across all departments.

How you can expand on this approach

Here are additional desk-friendly volunteering opportunities you can initiate with your workforce:

• Microvolunteering Tasks: Call centre agents participate in 5-10 minute digital volunteering activities during downtime, including writing encouragement letters to hospital patients and supporting literacy initiatives through proof-reading educational materials for local NGOs.
• Non-Desk Assembly Drives: Transform sections of the call centre floors into mini-assembly stations where agents help pack school supply kits and hygiene care packages for underprivileged communities. These activities are scheduled during slower call periods and managed in coordination with workforce planning.
• Multilingual Audio Content Creation: Leverage agents' diverse language skills and record children's stories and educational content in multiple South African languages, creating valuable resources for early childhood development programmes.
• Reserved Volunteering Time Slots: For larger company-wide volunteering events, work closely with their Workforce Management team to reserve specific time slots during off-peak hours, ensuring call centre agents can participate in high-visibility community initiatives alongside their colleagues.
  

Key Success Factors:

• Working with operational constraints rather than against them: All initiatives are designed to fit within existing work structures.
• Providing necessary materials and support: The bank invests in supplies and clear instructions to make participation seamless
• Celebrating contributions equally: Agents' volunteering efforts receive the same recognition as other employees' community involvement
• Collaborative planning: Close partnership with Workforce Management ensures initiatives don't impact customer service delivery.

African Bank's innovative approach to inclusive volunteering serves as a model for other organisations seeking to engage their entire workforce in meaningful community impact, proving that with creativity and commitment, no employee needs to be left behind in the drive to do good.