Why do 200 million hours of corporate volunteering go unused every year?

UK corporates give employees an estimated 11 million days of paid volunteering time to play with every year. That’s equivalent to a whopping ￡2 billion in annual good deeds. But there’s a problem... The London Benchmarking Group worked out that the actual engagement in employee volunteering is just 14.3%. 

That’s over 200 million hours of corporate volunteering going to waste every single year. With 64% of millennials saying they wouldn’t take a job unless the company demonstrates that they have a strong corporate social responsibility policy (CONE Communications 2016), we don’t think it’s because of lack of desire. 

Clearly “traditional” corporate volunteering is broken. To work out how we can stop that precious time going to waste, we need to work out why it’s happening. The good news is we think there are 3 main factors that could reverse this trend. 

Time constraints.

Professionals are busy, and the past 6 months has seen most of us deciding what’s really important. If you’re going to spend precious time doing anything, it’s got to be worthwhile. And it also has to fit into your schedule. The 2013-2014 NCVO survey found that a lack of time was the biggest obstacle to continued volunteering. To volunteer as a Listener for the Samaritans, you need to partake in ten weeks of training and commit to 4 hours of volunteering a week, with one of the shifts each month being at anti-social hours. Most of us can’t commit to that. 

Micro volunteering (volunteering in small, bite-size chunks) has been increasing in popularity for the past 20 years, and it has the potential to drastically increase participation in employee volunteering. Those that can’t commit to a full day of ‘conventional’ help, like spending the day working at a soup kitchen, can be empowered to do good through micro-opportunities like taking Margaret’s dog for a walk or collecting a prescription for John on a lunch break (or even better - an hour during work that your company encourages you to take). The Institute for Volunteering Research found that 78% of people involved in micro-volunteering in 2013 were between 16-34 years old. By 2025, millennials will take up ?’s of the workplace (CONE Communications 2016). It’s now not a question of whether you want to get millennials volunteering, it’s how. 

The Personal Experience.

We mentioned earlier how we think corporate volunteering is broken. We think this is largely due to the archaic way most organisations go about organising it. Micro-volunteering became a mainstream phenomenon online, and it’s continuing to grow and develop, with technology as the key driver. Think about the apps you use on a daily basis, Tinder, Nike+, Duolingo… How much of the Duolingo app is actually about learning a language and how much is it about enjoying the app experience (and competing to jump up leaderboards, earn gems and make sure you don’t upset an animated owl)? If we really want to make a difference it can’t be just about the simple act of volunteering anymore, it has to be about everything else that goes with it: super-slick tech that enables the volunteering experience has to be the norm.

Points and leaderboards are all well and good but if the opportunities on offer aren’t something volunteers will be interested in then that gives you another problem. Again, this is why micro-volunteering is the way forward. It makes things flexible and opens up a whole host of new volunteering opportunities that you wouldn’t have otherwise. 

Using an app that provides lots of different task types puts the user in the driver’s seat and gives them freedom to pick and choose based on preference. Micro-volunteering can be done remotely, online, outdoors, in groups, individually, as one-offs or more regularly. This fits in perfectly with a busy millennial life-style. 

In a recent survey by BIT, 42% of respondents said that not knowing where or how to sign-up is a big barrier for them getting involved. Using a simple app to onboard volunteers makes things clear and straightforward, breaking down yet another obstacle. 

Trackability.

If you’re wanting to invest in efforts to make a huge difference to your community as an organisation, you’re going to need to show people how much of an impact you’re actually making. The issue of tracking social impact isn’t limited to social entrepreneurs or philanthropy. The same issues are seen with senior executives who want to show that their companies are making a social contribution while meeting or exceeding their financial objectives. With limited resources and time to do this, it’s hard to know where to start. But, what’s clear is, from the board room, to your customers and to your employees: responsible business is not just a nice to have anymore. If you want to make a difference, you have to track it.

If you succeed in tracking impact, research conducted by Northern Rock Foundation suggests that setting clear targets and measurements “galvanises staff and volunteers to be able to see quite clearly where the organisation wants to go”. It gives employees a sense of purpose in what they’re doing and is another reason why gamification works. We love competing with ourselves. Show us our own statistics and we’re going to want to beat them. Social impact measurement is hard to do well… So you’re most likely going to need some tech to help you do it. 

Summary

By offering your employees a highly-personalised, measured experience, you could greatly increase the amount of employee participation in your volunteering initiatives. Giving employees a volunteering experience that’s engaging, flexible and makes a positive social impact isn’t impossible, you just have to find the right people to help you do it. 

We know we’ve just described onHand, but traditional corporate volunteering alone will not reclaim the 200 million hours of wasted corporate volunteering each year. That’s why we exist. The good news is we are growing.