How to execute your employee volunteering programme.
Once you have decided whether your program needs a cause and have developed a suitable skills based strategy for your organisation, you are ready to send your employees out to represent your company, support the community, and learn valuable skills (and hopefully have a great time while they’re at it!).
A successful and sustainable employee volunteering programme, however, requires attention throughout — its successful continuation will depend on how aware your employees are that they can volunteer and how comfortable they are doing so. Fostering this positive engagement is often easier said than done.
One effective method is for senior management to get involved in the programme. When employees see their leaders doing it, they will have more confidence to book time off to volunteer themselves. Furthermore, expanding the programme to all levels of seniority can help develop a sense of togetherness in the company, and increase employee engagement even further.
However, your employees aren’t the only players you need to think about. A successful volunteering programme also entails stakeholder management with charity partners. Often, demand for volunteering opportunities can surpass the number of opportunities you are able to offer. In this case, developing and maintaining good relations with charity partners is essential in keeping the flow of opportunities coming.
One technique to ensure regular opportunities is to tie financial support to your volunteering agreement, either on an individual level or through corporate donations. However, while many charities benefit from receiving matched funding during or after a corporate volunteering partnership, do keep in mind that employees are acutely sensitive to their managers “strongly” suggesting donating their own money.
The continued success of your employee volunteering program will also depend on the right use of tools. Depending on the size of your company and the scale of the volunteering program, you may want to consider using external agencies to find volunteering opportunities and charity partners for you. Also, while an Excel spreadsheet might help in keeping track of hours volunteered in a small team, larger companies may miss out on a lot of relevant data and information (or absolutely crucial data and information in the case of compliance issues).
Finally, as you scale up your volunteering program, keep in mind that the administrative burden on your volunteering management team will increase exponentially. At this stage, you may want to consider selecting a SaaS provider who can automate a lot of the administrative process for you, and free you up to spend more time developing relationships with charity partners, and working on strategy.
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