How Technology is Changing the Face of Volunteering
Thanks to perpetual advances in technology, there are some unquestionably big changes waiting round the corner for businesses. With radical shifts expected to occur across all areas of business, this mini-series will focus in on one specific topic — employee engagement — and examine how technology presents exciting new opportunities for development.
To begin, we’ll be looking at how technology is changing the face of promoting and coordinating employee volunteering efforts in corporations.
Running volunteering programmes can be very time-consuming, requiring a lot of attention from the few people who know how things work. One of technology’s greatest contributions has been its potential to save us time, replacing pen and paper with spreadsheets, and later advanced integrated systems. So, what part can technology play in promoting, managing and measuring employee volunteering in an organisation?
Promotion
Many companies are moving away from traditional spaces for promoting volunteering, such as company “ad boards” and the home page of the company intranet (where space is at a premium). When you’ve got thousands of employees, having a dedicated space for employee volunteering (along with other CSR initiatives) is a must.
With a dedicated platform comes configurable email notifications, sent out to all the right people at the right times. It also gives a place for employees to share their activities and see who else is volunteering — a social element which is a key driver of participation. As with everything these days, mobile is paramount — apps can provide a vital connection between a company’s management system and the real volunteer out in the field, feeding back photos which help promote their activities and encourage others.
Management
Technology’s main role in managing a volunteering programme should be to ensure the “boring” details are handled without unnecessary time or effort spent on the part of the CSR team, volunteers or beneficiaries.
In 2017, individual cases of health and safety, risk assessment and compliance, or reminders and requests for documents do not need to be done manually. An effective software solution will allow an organisation to configure their own rules, and then keep things ticking over on their own, with email notifications sent out when any activity is required. Volunteers and administrators should be able to see all of their activities, logged automatically, in one place, vastly reducing time spent creating and maintaining records.
Measurement (as if by accident)
If done right, confirmation of volunteering, logging hours, and gathering feedback, impact surveys, personal stories and photos can happen almost as a byproduct of using technology. This allows for a clear and auditable trail of activity and communication.
Powerful and customisable data analysis technology can then be used to produce detailed reports with ease, so engagement and effectiveness can be much more accurately measured.
Technology’s role, therefore, is to both enhance the quality of experience and outcome, as well as to reduce the need for hours spent on administrative tasks and general management. Time saved on the part of a CSR team can be used instead to help drive strategy and creativity in the pursuit of a corporation’s organisational goals.
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