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If your boss offered you a paid day off to volunteer for a cause that you care about, would you use it?
You might think you would, but you probably wouldn’t.
In the US almost half of employers offer or plan to offer volunteer leave, allowing employees to spend a few days annually working for a good cause on company time, according to the consultants WTW. In the UK 70 per cent do. Yet only around 15 per cent of workers are thought to use their volunteering leave, according to William Fleming, research fellow at the University of Oxford Wellbeing Research Centre.
What if the first step were as painless as picking a movie to stream? That is the goal of OnHand, a UK tech business hoping to become “the Netflix” of volunteering. Companies pay for employee access to the app, which allows staff to browse and participate in volunteering opportunities at local charities. They range from picking up a prescription for a housebound neighbour to mentoring a jobseeker to “micro” actions like donating tins to a supermarket food bank collection.
OnHand is one of several volunteering platforms enjoying a boom as businesses strive to create purpose in hybrid workplaces, and demonstrate social impact to governments and ESG investors. Yet the ease of such initiatives can be problematic: while businesses are often looking for fun, friction-free opportunities for staff, this does not always match up with the needs of charities.
“The biggest barrier for most people is time. So, how do we make doing a good act possible for you without even having to take time to do it?” says Sanjay Lobo, OnHand founder and CEO. Allowing staff to volunteer on “their own terms”, he says, boosts take-up: within three months of an employer joining, 50 per cent of staff use the app, and nine out of ten do so again.
Where corporate volunteering has historically “been quite a heavy lift for employers”, platforms ease the burden by finding and vetting charities, logging hours and quantifying social value, says Steve Butterworth, CEO of Neighbourly. And while activities may be small, any nudge towards action “has to be a positive”. Attending a local litter-pick, for example, might “be the entry point” for someone who then might volunteer again, says Matt Hyde, co-founder of the Big Help Out, an initiative to boost volunteering.
Support for volunteering is “an attractive retention and recruiting tool” now expected by millennials, says Regan Gross, an adviser at US industry body the Society for Human Resource Management. Studies show volunteers enjoy a morale lift, feel better about their employer and learn skills, boosting engagement and productivity.
Holly Firmin, senior community and partnerships manager at Coca-Cola Europacific Partners in the UK, says both employers and charities benefit. Staff actions at the drinks company, for example, include working with local conservation groups to “find ways to replenish the water we use at our manufacturing sites”. Neighbourly allows “our people to connect to hyperlocal small charities . . . where we can have a direct impact,” she adds.
Whether this is actually doing good hinges on achieving a fit between the employer’s goals and the charity’s needs, which is not a given.
For charities, hosting volunteers can be burdensome, draining time, money and the effort of often already stretched permanent staff. Instead of offers to paint fences, charities want someone to “do your audit or run your payroll for free”, says Emily Cherry, CEO of Bikeability Trust, a cycling charity. But what volunteers have in mind is often “something different to the day job”, says Butterworth.
Technology that matches people’s professional skills with charities’ needs can help. Neighbourly is launching DigitalBridge, a campaign linking volunteers from companies including Virgin Media O2, with charities eager for knowhow, but hamstrung by lack of access.
Done well, collaborations offer a “leg-up”, says Richard Lupton, fundraiser for Alexandra Rose Charity which helps families access healthy food. Via a Teams link from his UK office to Portugal, Lupton is picking up tips from marketing specialists at food multinational Sodexo, reaping a fourfold rise in click-throughs to the charity’s donations campaigns.
For Sodexo’s Eduarda Almeida, the monthly sessions are a chance to swap ideas on advertising strategy, “contributing to my professional growth”, while doing some good.
“When I heard of the charity’s work, it touched me,” she says.
