The latest GivingForum event was held on the 7th February 2018, where senior Corporate Responsibility professionals gathered at Barclays’ offices in Canary Wharf to discuss the challenges and successes of employee volunteering and share best practice.
The event began with a presentation by Natalie Tucker (Three Hands) and Andrea Barrett (Centrica) who spoke about research recently completed by Three Hands on charities’ experiences of employee volunteering. Natalie and Andrea presented key highlights, reflections, and recommendations from their report.
These included findings that charities main motivations for taking on employee volunteers is hope for more engagement with the business, that the real cost to charities of employee volunteers is often higher than we think, and that there is a big difference between the skills required by charities and those being offered by employers.
This final topic was the focus of our table discussion, which produced some insightful discussions on how we can foster a more skills-based approach to volunteering in our organisations.
In the second half of the event, Rachel Murphy and Clare Moses from Barclays presented to the room on Barclay’s highly successful skills-based volunteering programmes, including the best practices they employ and lessons that have been learnt along the way. In particular, they discussed Barclays’ Life Skills programme, and their move away from general volunteering to focus on providing long-lasting and measurable impact.
The event concluded with an informal networking session – including drinks and an impressive Mexican inspired buffet – that gave guests the opportunity to continue the conversation and make connections with other individuals leading the way in UK and global CSR.
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