What is the real value of employee volunteering?

Since the pandemic, the number of companies seeing the benefits of employee volunteering has soared. Corporate volunteering hours rose globally from 14.3m in 2022 to 20.2m in 2023 as businesses have increasingly begun to realise the benefits this kind of programme can bring.

As a socially responsible organisation, we are always looking for ways to act as a force for good in the communities in which we operate. We formally launched our Employee Volunteering policy in January 2023 and communicated guidance on participation to encourage our team to support charities and causes through paid volunteer days.

More than a year in, we’ve collectively logged more than a hundred hours of volunteering, with more than a fifth of our team taking advantage of the scheme. 

Beyond increasing our positive impact on the wider community, we’ve seen first-hand how volunteering days can give our people a renewed sense of purpose, deepen employee connections and create a sense of community.

One volunteer who had recently joined the business commented: “It was a good icebreaker for a new person in the company. It helped me gain some insight into other environmental issues and schemes, and I really enjoyed doing it as a team.”  

Susan Gow, Senior Consultant, who dedicated her volunteering day to helping out at Five Acre Farm in Bristol, remarked on how it served as a ‘reset’: “I enjoyed chatting to the people working there and seeing what they grow, how they do it and learning about their business model and their approach to farming. It was a real change from office life to be active and to connect with nature.”

For the first year of our volunteer scheme, we asked employees to select environmentally-focused opportunities as this aligns with our sustainable mission and focus as a company. Within this, we saw a wide variety of opportunities taken up supporting a range of ethically minded organisations, from organic farms and animal sanctuaries to baby banks, social enterprises and even festivals.

Jinny Uppington, CAG Somerset Lead, used her allocation to revisit some of her previous volunteering work:

“I was offered the opportunity to create a new volunteer stewarding team for this years festival, which I jumped at,” she explained. “Having previously been involved in a similar team and knew it was a really worthwhile and rewarding role.”

With these teams each volunteer steward’s time is logged and a donation is made to a charity the team has nominated. In this case, we collected money for a struggling school down my road. We won’t know the full worth of it until the Autumn but it’s a good amount of money for the charity.”

Despite requiring a fair amount of administrative management, Jinny found the experience rewarding: “It was definitely good to be reminded of the challenges of supporting a team of volunteers. It’s enjoyable to be able to give people volunteering opportunities that they really value, and you make people happy with free tickets. It’s a lovely role.”

Even as a business which specialises in advocating for, and supporting, the transition towards a more sustainable planet, this environmental focus has proven enlightening on both an individual and company-wide basis.

One group chose to head to Porthcawl, in South Wales, for the day to complete a self-guided microplastics survey supporting Just One Ocean’s research into the presence of microplastics in our oceans.  

The team descended on Newton and Sandy Bay beaches, using the packs, equipment and methodology they had been provided to identify nurdles (small plastic pieces used to make most plastic products).  While the area surveyed on Newton beach was completely clear, Sandy Bay – only half a mile away – was full of examples, showing how prevalent this issue is, yet also how localised it can be. 

“The subject matter was really interesting; it felt like we learnt a lot,” commented Policy Consultant Brendan Cooper, who helped to organise the self-guided research project. “It was interesting how it became a real team building day: we gelled as a group and split off into teams to do the work.”  

As we have moved into our second ‘volunteering year’ we have collected company-wide feedback from our team to give us the information we need to evolve the policy and ensure it provides more volunteering opportunities, especially those outside of our usual areas of expertise.

Volunteering has quickly become an important pillar in achieving our impact ambitions – and we hope that it continues to play a big role in our business in the years to come. It serves a hugely important role in bringing our team together, reconfirming our purpose and ensuring that we can give back to the wider community that we are part of.