Trialogue’s primary research shows that 78% of large South African companies have employee volunteering programmes (EVPs) and 65% of those with EVPs have policies in place. How can your company design an EVP that can provide optimal benefits for all stakeholders? Kate Francis explores the options.
What is employee volunteering and why is it important?
Employee volunteering can be defined as any developmental activity employees undertake for the benefit of others, with the sanction and support of their employer. These activities can take place either within or outside working hours.
Successful EVPs can have important benefits for three key stakeholder groups: employees, the company as a whole and society.
Potential benefits for employees include increased engagement, strengthened relationships, the impression that work is meaningful, skills development, improved mental health and happiness, and enhanced career prospects.
Benefits to companies include a reduction in staff turnover, enhancement of brand and reputation, and becoming an employer of choice. Trialogue research findings support this: in 2023, 83% of corporate volunteers said they were proud to work for companies committed to communities and 67% reported a positive impact on skills development acquired through volunteering programmes.
Benefits to society, through partnerships with non-profit organisations (NPOs) or communities, will vary depending on the types of activities supported, but can include skills transfer, improvements to wellbeing and quality of life, improved management and operational processes, expanded connections with companies and better fundraising opportunities for the organisations involved.
Types of volunteering initiatives
There are a range of volunteering initiatives from which to choose when developing an EVP. This section outlines those most commonly implemented by companies.
Business considerations | Developmental considerations | ||
Company-organised volunteering Employees join a group of colleagues to support an initiative, usually during work hours. | • Relatively easy and cost-efficient in securing high levels of employee participation • PR-friendly and aligns with Mandela Day expectations • Risks associated with transporting and placing large numbers of employees at a host organisation | • Useful for labour-intensive inputs such as planting trees or painting buildings • Can be disruptive and costly for NPOs to host large groups of volunteers • Limited opportunity for sustained outcomes • Can raise profile of partner organisations | |
Time off for individuals to volunteer during working hours Employees identify opportunities to volunteer by themselves, supported by the company through time off. | • Limited scope for alignment with CSI/business strategy • Caters to employees’ interests • May be labour intensive for EVP team to manage • Can allow for a longer-term engagement between NPO and employee | • Potential for continuity and sustained outcomes due to longer relationships | |
Fundraising or collection drives Employees join a group of colleagues to collectively raise funds to support an initiative. | • Easy to secure high levels of employee participation • PR-friendly • Can be difficult to align to CSI strategy | • Fosters autonomy and empowerment of NPOs as donations can be allocated to their specific needs • Few productivity costs | |
Matched-cash funding/matched-time funding Matched time: Companies provide donations to an initiative to match the time volunteered by employees. Matched cash: Companies match the funds raised by employees through fundraising efforts or payroll giving. | • Potential to contribute to loyalty from employees and enhance morale, as their efforts are validated and augmented through financial donations • Could become costly if not well scoped and well managed | • Access to regular income for supported NPOs, which can be allocated to their specific needs • No large costs to NPOs | |
Give as you earn/Payroll giving Employees donate an amount from their salary towards an initiative on an ongoing basis. This is often combined with matched cash funding where the company will match donated employee funds. | • Allows time-poor employees to contribute to EVP efforts • Relatively easy to scale • Business resources are required to set up and manage | • Access to regular income for supported NPOs, which can be allocated to their specific needs • No large costs to NPOs | |
Skills-based volunteering Employees use their professional skills to support an organisation. | • Contributes to professional skills and experience for employees • Limited scale for high levels of employee participation | • NPOs gain access to professional services for free • Potential for sustained outcomes if skills are transferred from company to NPO • Risk mitigation required to protect NPO against poor professional practice |
There may not always be alignment between the most desirable initiatives from a company perspective and those most welcomed by NPO partners. Trialogue’s research shows that although company-organised volunteering is the most popular for companies, it tends to be the least liked type of initiative for NPOs. NPOs prefer cash/fundraising-related initiatives as they require less support from an often already stretched staff complement.
Strategic elements to consider
Volunteering budgets
Trialogue research has found that most companies (73%) allocate between 1% and 5% of their CSI budgets to EVPs, and only a fifth (23%) allocate 6% to 10% of their budgets to volunteering. Given the benefits of EVPs, there is a decision to be made around the size of the budget and whether it should be provided or augmented by the human resources (HR) department and individual business units in an organisation or stay the responsibility of CSI.
Departmental responsibility
Whether to run the EVP centrally through the CSI or HR department, or to decentralise responsibility to individual business units, is a matter of company preference. However, it is recommended that both the HR and CSI departments are involved: the HR team to manage and capture staff volunteering time, assist with motivating staff and manage the risk when staff leave the premises, and the CSI team to preserve the developmental integrity of the programme.
Causes and NPOs to support: company vs employee choice
A company needs to decide whether to align the EVP with the CSI/business strategy, or allow employees to choose their own causes – or opt for a hybrid approach. The first approach has the advantage of creating a brand identity for the programme and increasing scale and impact. However, employee choice could increase participation.
Trialogue research has found that over half of companies (51%) do not restrict EVP initiatives to existing CSI projects, while 47% do.
Types of volunteering initiatives offered
According to Trialogue research, companies offer 3.5 types of EVP initiatives, on average. A key consideration is providing a range of initiatives to cater to the different needs and desires of a variety of staff members. The combination of initiatives should result in a strategic offering with a balance between breadth and depth. Breadth allows for engagement with large numbers of staff, albeit with a shallower developmental impact, while depth enables higher developmental impact through longer-term, deeper engagement for a smaller number of employees.
Encouraging participation
Global research on volunteering finds that, most of the time, understanding the impact volunteers are making motivates them to stay engaged. However, an incentive strategy and robust communication plan are essential for driving participation. Some examples of incentives include:
- Provide time off work to volunteer (the South African median is eight hours per year, whereas internationally it is 16 hours)
- Appoint volunteer champions from senior leadership to legitimise volunteering
- Host awards ceremonies to create hype and recognition.
Measuring impact
EVPs need a plan for measuring both developmental and business impact. Measuring business impact provides evidence for how the EVP contributes to a company’s employee value proposition and can encourage leadership’s participation and support. Measuring developmental impact is essential for creating a feedback loop so that employees are aware of the difference they are making through volunteering.
Companies may need to temper expectations around the potential developmental impact of short-term initiatives. In these cases, it may be preferable to measure contribution rather than outcomes.
In summary, a well-designed volunteering strategy creates tangible benefits for employees, companies and society. Given the many different strategic elements, companies should endeavour to develop a programme that meets business and developmental goals while catering to its unique set of staff preferences.
CASE STUDY
How to develop an EVP strategy – A Sanlam Foundation case study
Nozizwe Vundla, Head of the Sanlam Foundation, highlighted the importance of embedding employee volunteering in company culture:
“Culture is one of the key metrics that leaders within the organisation are held accountable for, and the EVP has been clearly identified by the top leadership of the organisation as a lever to improve and maintain a healthy culture. Therefore, instead of being viewed as ‘one more onerous thing to do’, the EVP has been framed as something desirable and accessible, which improves and maintains a healthy culture in the organisation.”
In 2021, Trialogue assisted the Sanlam Foundation with its EVP strategy. Developing the strategy began with benchmarking Sanlam’s existing programme against five other companies. This was followed by a process to understand Sanlam’s current employee volunteering offering and ascertain the desired new direction.
This involved a desktop review of current programming documents, interviews with executives and a staff-wide survey to gauge employee interest in the various types of staff volunteerism activities and causes to support. These inputs helped inform a strategy workshop to discuss and agree on the key strategic elements for the new strategy, which was then documented and finalised through an engagement process.
Regarding uptake of the EVP, Vundla explained that although it has been challenging to introduce a new EVP in a large, federated organisation like Sanlam where business clusters operate independently, three elements have helped enormously.
“Firstly, there has been unequivocal support for the EVP from the very top of the organisation. This serves to underscore that EVPs have to be leader-led to succeed. Secondly, we developed an accessible, user-friendly, state-of-the art digital platform that makes it easy for employees to find opportunities to volunteer, either as individuals or in groups. Thirdly, the game-changer for us was asking the Group Exco to personally promote the EVP within each of their clusters, and simultaneously appointing EVP Champions who would be responsible for increasing and maintaining uptake of the EVP in their business areas.”
Source: The original version of this article was published in the Trialogue Business in Society Handbook 2023 (26th edition).