What is Employer-Supported Volunteering?
Read our guide to find out what it is and the benefits for your company
Employer-supported volunteering is a great way to give either time or expertise to good causes.
The benefits of volunteering in terms of employee satisfaction, building skills and confidence and creating a positive social impact on the community have been proven time and again.
We take a look at how companies can encourage employees to volunteer and report on the social impact of their volunteering as part of their Environmental Social and Corporate Governance (ESG).
We break down the opportunities, the challenges and share the best practice.
What’s the difference between volunteering and employer-supported volunteering?
Volunteering
Volunteering means donating your time or skills to a good cause.
According to The National Council for Voluntary Organisations, the central principle of volunteering is that it “must be a choice freely made by each individual.”
It defines volunteering as “any activity that involves spending time, unpaid, doing something that aims to benefit the environment, individuals or groups”.
While volunteering is by its nature often a deeply personal thing to do, there are good reasons employers might encourage their workforce to volunteer.
Employer-supported volunteering
Businesses are increasingly encouraging employees to take on voluntary work during paid office hours. Members of the workforce might engage in one-off projects in the community, such as planting a vegetable patch at a local primary school, or take on ongoing volunteer work.
Employer-supported volunteering is sometimes known as “corporate volunteering”, “employee volunteering” or “business supported volunteering.” Volunteering of this kind might be in-person or virtual, a one-time thing or it might last for months or even years.
Employee volunteers might respond specifically to the needs of a charity or nonprofit organisation; or they might approach a cause themselves and suggest something.
What are the benefits of employer supported volunteering?
The benefits of volunteering for charities and good causes aren’t only apparent to the recipients.
Employer-supported volunteering has been shown in numerous recent surveys to improve job satisfaction among employees. Increased employee satisfaction is known to boost productivity levels.
There’s also clear evidence that volunteering can help build teams within workforces and even benefit engagement with clients.
Volunteering schemes might also help businesses to attract talent. A recent Deloitte survey found that half of candidates will raise social responsibility with for-profit employers at the interview stage.
Employers can see the benefits of volunteering from the recruitment stage right through to employee engagement and retention.
What types of volunteering are there?
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Community volunteering
Community volunteering means providing practical help or doing one-off tasks which in some way benefits the community.
This might be the community near to where your offices are located, or where parts of your business operate.
Examples of community volunteering might include painting the interior of a community hall, gardening at an old people’s home, or building play equipment at a children’s centre.
A charity or nonprofit organisation can get a much-needed job or renovation sorted without having to fundraise and find tradespeople who will do the work.
It is also an opportunity for employees to meet people in the community, take part in something both fun and worthwhile, and build skills.
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Skills-based volunteering
This is where an employee uses their legal or professional skills to support a charity or nonprofit organisation.
This is sometimes referred to as pro bono work. But it can take many different forms.
Critically, skills-based volunteering is where an organisation provides a solution to a charity or nonprofit that it might otherwise be too expensive or difficult for them to get.
This is an opportunity for both employers and employees to also build skills and experience while supporting a good cause they may be passionate about.
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Virtual volunteering
The increased use of Zoom and other forms of video conferencing to speak with colleagues, or to hold large events online, has created fantastic opportunities for virtual volunteering.
Virtual volunteering can be either skills-based or community-based, one-off or ongoing.
It offers versatility for employees to find time to support the causes they care about during working hours, but without either parties involved having to travel.
Charities and nonprofit organisations can also fit volunteering opportunities into their schedules more easily, without having to organise meeting rooms or cover other costs.
How to measure the impact of volunteering?
Tracking the outcomes of employer-supported volunteering is not as simple as tracking the number of hours that have been volunteered by your workforce.
Increasingly, the focus is shifting toward measuring the positive social impact of volunteering. The metrics for measuring impact will vary widely, but it can be useful to look at the frameworks around ESG.
In this way, we can begin to look more accurately at the positive impact volunteering makes beyond the number of hours and the amount of money it equates to.
Like anything that is regulated, the frameworks can vary and be interpreted differently. But the key to meeting these reporting challenges is having the right data.
What one of our customers has to say about volunteering
“Volunteering has so many positive layers and benefits.
We’re committed to our employees' wellbeing as well as the wellbeing of our communities. Whether it be across education, supporting social mobility, or cleaning up a park, we know that volunteering has so many positive layers and benefits.
There’s the obvious positive impact we hope our volunteering will have on the communities where our employees live or work.
In addition, there are many positive effects volunteering can have on our employees when we support their passions to make a difference.”
— Kathleen Martinez, Senior Director, Global Education and Employability, People & Culture, BP
How to boost employee volunteering
Companies can boost their employee’s interest in volunteering by offering an equivalent cash donation to the charity. Usually, matching employee giving means matching the amount of money raised or donated. It’s slightly more complicated for volunteering.
Matched volunteering might take the form of a cash donation (£10 per hour, for example) to match every hour of time spent volunteering. It might also be a larger sum of money offered once a number of volunteer hours is reached.
Crucially, the key is to get employees to track their time effectively.
Make a volunteering directory
While it is important for employees to resonate personally with a cause, it isn’t always clear how volunteering time can help. It can also be tricky to know where to begin volunteering.
Having a database of volunteering opportunities means that charities and nonprofits can tell businesses and their employees about the needs they have. This is a proactive way for businesses or individuals to see how their skills can be of positive benefit to good causes.
A volunteering directory can also act as a source of ideas and knowledge-sharing between employees and charities. It works both ways.
Where to find volunteering opportunities for your employees
Here are a few ideas:
Get in touch with community groups and talk to them about potential opportunities
Contact the council about gardening public spaces like parks and verges
Volunteering at your child’s school for day trips and creative projects
Offer mentoring and professional development opportunities via charities
Organising food bank collections and drop offs
Provide drop-in clinics for legal or financial advice if your skillset allows
Donate time and skills to transcribe documents or provide copy editing
Cooking for elderly or those that are less-abled and dropping off food for them
Offer reading sessions for schools and education groups.
Use volunteering platforms like Reach Volunteering or Vinspired
How GivingForce can help companies to manage their employer-supported volunteer programmes
At GivingForce, we help companies keep track of the great work their employees are doing as well as help them report on their impact. Tracking employee-supported volunteering is one of the key things the portal was designed to do. Employees can log their own hours using the platform. It’s amazing to see how the small blocks of time can add up.
Employees can also request for their volunteer hours to be matched if you wish to operate such a scheme. Administrators can create rules or settings around matching, such as the value of a matched volunteer hour, or the minimum or maximum amount that can be matched.
Although in most countries it isn’t mandatory, there are increasing ESG data reporting requirements from the regulators. Within this landscape, most businesses understand the importance of being able to support their work in ESG with hard, accurate data. As a result, many companies are voluntarily providing their ESG data, often as part of their annual or quarterly reports, for the simple reason that it is good practice to do so.
GivingForce gives companies the reporting tools they need to fully analyse, report and promote the positive impact of their employer-supported volunteer programmes for a variety of purposes.
Find out more about the GivingForce employee volunteering module and book a demonstration for your company.
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