Building an Effective Employee Volunteering Programme

Well-designed employee volunteering programmes can boost staff loyalty, skills development and brand alignment. In other words, they foster employee engagement – that elusive enthusiasm and interest from staff towards furthering their employers’ reputation and goals. It seems that work for no pay, pays - the catch is that it needs to be for a good cause.

The good news it that South African employees are on average 6% more satisfied than their international counterparts at work, with an engagement rate of 29%. This is according to Gallup's latest survey The State of the Global Workspace.

This is an increase of 14% from a "state of employee engagement survey conducted in 2014 by Business Development Director at PDT, Chris Clark.

forgood builds and manages customisable, branded platforms through which CSI teams can select verified Causes for their staff to get involved with, while tracking the number of hours committed and donations made. The platform includes a rating tool that enables star employees to stand out and receive recognition. While eight out of ten South African corporates offer allocated paid-release time for volunteering, the challenge is to align this with engagement programmes and business strategy. To do so successfully, CSI and HR teams should leverage off staff’s existing interests, monitor all social sector activities and incentivise greater commitment going forward by recognising work well done.

Six tips on how to build an effective volunteering programme:

1. Gauge staff social sector interests Giving staff the opportunity to work for a Cause, organisation or community that they care about is key. Give employees the choice to get involved with your CSI initiatives and they will be more likely to participate.

2. Match size with size In a small business, a single cause or two might satisfy employees’ desires to do good but as numbers grow, you need to find multiple Causes, organisations and opportunities.

3. Get tech Most CSI teams are under-resourced and do not have the capacity to manage relationships with the hundreds of organisations required for a volunteering programme at scale, especially if they are working towards strategic goals.

4. Work within your staff’s skills – but also look to expand them A financial firm can help prepare a Cause for an upcoming audit. An engineering company can offer expert advice. But, companies should also look to build their employees’ soft skills, latch on to their diverse talents and grow teams’ capabilities through volunteer work.

5. Promote it internally Internal marketing is key if you want to reap benefits from your employee programme. Staff will only get involved when they know their options to give back feel that these are both exciting and impactful.

6. Get executive buy-in Executives should lead the charge – without this, you cannot expect the team to follow. The first volunteer in any programme should be the CEO.

Visit forgood, Africa's largest volunteering and donation platform

Subscribe to our Volunteering and Social Impact Newsletter