Voice of Experience: Lessons from Corporate Volunteering Efforts

It’s just a couple weeks away: Volunteer Week 2011 is on track to be a record-setting event in the insurance industry. Teams from more than 100 companies have already signed up to participate during the week of Oct. 15-22, in the New York/Northeast region as well as on the West Coast. More than 300 volunteers from the Insurance Industry Charitable Foundation’s brand-new midwest division are also on board.

Countdown to Volunteer Week

Last week, this blog covered several “do’s and don’ts” for getting employees involved. This week, we offer a few more tips about the role of the company in employee volunteer efforts. These tips comes from leaders in insurance firms that have started up successful volunteer efforts:

• Get support. If you can, enlist the support of your organization so that employees may volunteer on company time. Why would a business leader let employees leave work on a paid basis to volunteer in the community? Executives who have done so tell us that volunteerism encourages teamwork and builds morale. That’s vital in today’s workplace. What’s more, there is an emerging ethic among workers of the millennial generation-who expect their company to be involved and give back to the community.
• Get the work done. You can expect more volunteers if people are allowed to volunteer Monday through Friday. But the work still has to get done. So plan ahead: Check company workflows and schedules to determine when it might be best to have people out of the office. For some insurance firms, letting employees volunteer at the beginning of the day might work best. For others, lunch or late in the workday might be better. Another idea: Split up the volunteers into teams; this has the side benefit of having employees on team B who stay behind hear (and get excited about) experiences when employees from team A return to the office after volunteering.
• Add fun to the efforts. Companies have ordered their Volunteer Week t-shirts, hosted in-house fundraisers, and held pre-volunteer-time kickoff events. One firm created a team challenge to raise a targeted amount of money for a cancer charity. Another suggestion is to split up employees into teams that can challenge each other to raise the most money or put up the most volunteer hours. Competitiveness and cooperation can go hand in hand, and many people enjoy this type of camaraderie. Of course, if those approaches don’t fit the culture of your office, don’t force anything.
• Let people see what you do. Create a bulletin board, either in a work area or online on an intranet site. Post pictures, updates or news about your volunteer work. This is a vital part of your volunteerism and should not be viewed as extraneous or self-serving. Let everyone see what the participants achieved. Sharing volunteer accomplishments recognizes employees who participated and makes those who didn’t curious about what they missed. Consider asking your communications department to send out an email message or write an intranet story about what your volunteer team does.
• Don’t stop. Even after Volunteer Week comes and goes, you can still keep your volunteer team going. Some insurance company teams used Volunteer Week 2010 as a jumping-off point to create a year-long or continuing volunteer effort. That’s certainly in the spirit of Volunteer Week!

My thanks go to IICF volunteers for contributing to these insights. If you have insights or ideas to share, please let me know at: emyatt@IICF.com.