Corporate volunteerism is a practice pertaining to the private sector that emerged in the USA in the late 1970s. The principles inspiring corporate volunteering are related to the practice of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and are based on the premise that socially responsible behavior carried out by companies, contribute to the development of the society as a whole. Increasing pressure and growing demands for compliance with ethical standards coming from many stakeholders (consumers, investors, citizens, employees) have caused companies to increase their social engagement and to adopt socially and environmentally responsible behavior. It therefore seems desirable that any sensitive corporate response to these demands should include a greater degree of corporate volunteering for the benefit of the community. This can be achieved both through activities carried out by employees ,who volunteer their time and energy, but also through the commitment of the company itself, utilizing its human and financial resources to serve the community as part of its job.
It is now widely acknowledged that the private sector needs to shoulder some of the responsibility for social development and environmental protection. This can be achieved by adhering to collectively agreed ethical standards and through the integration of environmental, social and economic concerns into a company’s business strategy. The World Bank Institute in its report Business Action for the MDGs: Private Sector Involvement as a Vital Factor in Achieving the Millennium Development Goals (2005) stressed the fact that “business can contribute to accelerating the rise in income and opportunity also by volunteering talent and time toward a particular issue”. And according to research carried out by UNDP and the UWI Institute of Business, volunteerism and “employee skills and time to support local communities and strengthen the work of local developmental organizations” are among the key areas in which businesses can make an important contribution to the achievement of the MDGs.
In Trinidad and Tobago, a small island state whose marketplace is characterized both by Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) employing 95% of the workforce as well as multinational corporations active in the country’s oil and gas industry, corporate volunteering can make a significant contribution towards achieving national development priorities as outlined in the National Strategic Plan, Vision 2020) as well as towards the successful implementation of the international development agenda and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Benefits
While still lacking in popularity among many businesses in Trinidad and Tobago, corporate volunteering provides multiple benefits for communities and the environment as well as for employee volunteers itself.
Corporate volunteerism creates new social connections, additional skills, psychological motivation, individual fulfillment and personal satisfaction. Voluntary initiatives developed by companies and driven by staff contribute to a more loyal and productive workforce while improving the image and strengthening the brand of the business. If carried out in support of corporate CSR projects, staff volunteering makes a direct and immediate contribution towards a company’s risk management f reputation.
Problems
Unfortunately, there is an only partial incorporation of the constituent principles and components of corporate volunteerism and an only patchwork-style integration of employee outreach into the work programs of many companies. SMEs are facing the biggest challenges in mobilizing volunteers while the much greater financial resources and organizational capacities of larger companies, especially in the energy sector make the task of volunteer management somewhat easier for others. Some of these major are the following:
-Lack of awareness on the part of many SMEs regarding the business benefits to be derived from employee volunteering. Routinely, volunteerism is seen not as a strategic investment beneficial for business but as an additional expense and organizational burden distracting from a company’s core business interests. More pro-active forms of civic engagement going beyond charitable donations or corporate sponsorship are often viewed as activities outside the scope of entrepreneurial responsibility.
- Lack of disclosure and dissemination of information including corporate reporting on social and environmental programs supported by voluntary activities.
- ‘Ad hoc’ character of many projects which have no clear implementation guidelines and suffer from a lack of a strategic development and planning. In many cases, existing projects are stand-alone initiatives neither aligned with the country`s development goals nor in support of the company’s strategic interests
- Weak Results-Based Management (RBM). Most of the companies fail to adopt a results-based approach in the planning and implementation of their volunteer programs and therefore can`t enhance the sustainability of their initiatives or incorporate any “lessons learned” into their business plans.
-The lack of an effective and systematic approach to Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) to measure the social and environmental impact of initiatives. Given that many companies do not have resources to conduct regular impact assessments, M&E of corporate volunteerism is conducted through informal or semi-formal channels. Moreover, many companies still determine their success or the impact of their social engagement by narrowly focusing on mere profitability rather than balancing societal gains and corporate benefits including skill development of company volunteers.
- The often only passive role given to employees in the development of a company’s corporate volunteer schemes. In many SMEs, senior managers are the only stakeholders involved in the planning process while employees remain largely ‘excluded’ from playing a more active part in the conceptualization of corporate volunteerism activities.
The Six Drivers of effective employee volunteering
According to the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship, the following six ‘drivers’, provide a benchmark for measuring the effectiveness of employee volunteering:
- Cause-effective configuration. Before committing to initiatives, companies should consider two important dimensions of corporate volunteering. The first dimension pertains to ‘business motivation’, i.e. the way a company articulates the purpose of its volunteer activities in the context of its business strategy. The second dimension stresses the issue of leveraging a company’s expertise, in other words the degree to which corporate volunteer programs draw on the professional skills of employees in providing high- value services.
-Strategic business positioning. This driver seeks to ensure that employee volunteering should help to improve the competitiveness of the company and support its financial results. It stresses the regularly overlooked fact that employee volunteering can improve the company’s human resource development , especially with regards to recruitment and retention, skills development, team building, public relations, branding and sales
-Sufficient investment. A company should ensure that employee volunteering has the operating budget and staff support required for successful operations. An example of this kind of investment is the way in which volunteers are being recruited, trained and engaged in voluntary workplace activities.
- Culture of encouragement. This driver encompasses two components: Facilitative procedures/ practices and as well as workplace culture. While procedures for the facilitation of the volunteering process are a necessary pre-requisite , the successful mobilizing of corporate volunteers does also require a workplace culture that considers volunteering relevant to the company’s operations. An example would be the opportunity for employees to post their volunteer stories on the company’s website or intranet.
- Strong participation. To stimulate a stronger commitment by employees to voluntary activities and to attract those who may not otherwise volunteer, it is useful to provide them with incentives (such as additional vacation time) and to more strongly match employees’ interests and skills to existing volunteer opportunities
-Actionable evaluation. This component stresses the importance of measuring progress toward goals of analyzing and learning from the data in order to make appropriate management adjustments. Examples for measuring outcomes would be the conduct of satisfaction surveys among employees and collaboration with other corporations in order to draw from the broadest possible range of competencies and expertise.
Experiences in Trinidad and Tobago – CSR and Corporate Volunteerism
In spite of the challenges, there have been already some Best Practices and success stories across Trinidad and Tobago. On the occasion of last year’s CSR Leadership Awards hosted by the South Trinidad Chamber of Industry and Commerce (STCIC), a number of companies were recognized for achieving remarkable success thanks to their corporate volunteering activities.
BG Trinidad and Tobago Limited, the multinational energy company, obtained the ‘Commitment to Transparency Award’ as well as ‘the Commitment to Local Business Development Award’ for its voluntary provision of services aiding Port of Spain’s beautification and cleanliness.
Guardian Holding Limited, a financial company, organized an important initiative in 2008 to improve employee volunteerism. The ‘Guardian Initiative for Transformation (GIFT)’ includes a number of projects implemented by TEAM GHL, a team of Guardian employees aiming at improving life for those less fortunate. GHL’s employee community initiatives provide opportunities for the employer and the employee and the company as a whole, improving the image of the company, promoting team building, fostering employee interests in community involvement and their skills, building loyalty in the company and reinforcing internal values. GIFT also includes two programs, the Employee-Driven Program with volunteers developing their own projects and the Employee-Partnering Programs, where volunteer work results from partnerships with Non-Governmental Organization (NGO).
Finally, in the ‘Recognizing the Value of People’ category, the STCIC CSR award was won by Methanex, a company of the energy sector which scored highly in the opinion of its own employees. Methanex operates a system of employee engagement surveys as a way of tracking employees’ commitment to the company. The surveys provide a vehicle for employee input about aspects of the workplace that were viewed positively and those that need further improvement. The findings showed that employees’ voluntary engagement brings grater financial success, attraction and a happier and more productive workforce.
Among local companies, there are substantial differences in managing corporate volunteerism depending on the specific sector they are involved in. Companies operating in the energy sector like Atlantic LNG and the National Gas Company of Trinidad & Tobago Ltd. have adopted a more structured approach towards corporate volunteering and are finding themselves predominantly involved in the protection of the environment, in the improvement of infrastructures and in the development of programs on education through scholarships and sponsorships of sporting and cultural activities.
The National Gas Company of Trinidad &Tobago Ltd (NGC) for example is committed to youth through both an indirect and direct involvement of the company. This interest in schools takes on a number of different forms, among which there are employees’ visits of primary and secondary schools to educate students about the natural gas industry and pipeline safety.
Another good example of employee involvement in the promotion of volunteerism with local communities is provided by Powergen, a local energy company. It has designated a small department devoted to the development of social programs. This has created a competitive spirit among employees to select the best project proposals, which the company will support financially, with the added benefit of time-off for employees involved in the program.
Experiences in other countriesAn important international event related to corporate volunteering, was the signing of an agreement at the 20th World Volunteer Conference held in Panama in 2008. At the event, the International Association for Volunteer Effort Global Corporate Volunteer Council publicly presented a new system of performance indicators which it offers to its member companies. The ’Performance Indicators for High Impact Corporate Volunteer Programs’, is an online system which enables companies to diagnose the level of development of their volunteer programs, identifying strengths and weak points. Thanks to this program, the companies will be able to compare the stage of development of their programs in comparison to that of other companies. The main objective is to create a global database of current corporate volunteer programs and to help companies to determine their strengths and the opportunities for improvement.
Another approach to corporate volunteerism comes from food giant KRAFFT. In 2007 Kraft Foods supported a small jam-making factory (IRAY) located in Madagascar with the objective to improve product and packaging quality as well as developing a new line of products and packaging. In order to provide the C2C expertise, a team of three Kraft corporate volunteers assisted to their counterparts in Madagascar thus helping to unlock the corporate knowledge existing in a large company for the benefit of a smaller market participant.
Elsewhere, the United Parcel Service (UPS) through its employee volunteerism program supports community development projects. UPS staff ranging from the most senior levels of management to part-time employees makes their skills available by participating in knowledge sharing, and skills-based volunteerism. Since 2003, UPS has designated a week in October as Global Volunteer Week, but now the program has grown into a month long commitment of the ‘Global Volunteer Month’ to build, beautify and better communities. The volunteer efforts are characterized by an increasing number of UPS employees participating in painting schools, assisting food banks, renovating shelters and many other tasks in their communities in the United States, Canada, Latin America, Europe and Asia. UPS employees in each participating location select partners and volunteer activities to best serve the area’s specific needs and identify specific projects where the support of the company can help produce a measurable social impact. Carrying out these activities, the company provides assistance to programs that address social and community issues including education, poverty, homelessness, hunger, illness and unemployment.
As part of Global Volunteer Month, in November 2008 UPS employees in the Emirates organized a breast cancer awareness campaign and donated their time to a full day of desert clean-up operations. To boost environmental awareness they also removed rubbish from the desert, to help restore the natural beauty of one of Dubai’s most popular tourism destinations.
OutlookAs in the case of national CSR initiatives, corporate volunteerism in Trinidad and Tobago faces the fundamental challenge of increasing managerial understanding of its conceptual relevance as a corporate development tool particularly among SMEs. Furthermore, the idea of voluntary employee contributions to social and environmental causes often lacks any meaningful and thorough integration into corporation’s overall business plans and strategic framework.
While many companies mobilize staff for the almost proverbial beach-cleaning campaign on a more or less regular basis, they rarely seek to draw on the specific skills employees bring to the workplace in order to maximize on the effectiveness of their voluntary engagements. A more professional approach towards corporate volunteerism would also entail the preparedness of senior managers to train staff volunteers for specific projects as well as to take steps towards fostering a culture of volunteerism within corporations that reflects the willingness of managers and staff to embrace voluntary activities as a priority issue in the workplace.
Securing buy-in for voluntary commitment by employees requires the determination to take staff suggestions, ideas and feedback seriously and to put corporate volunteers effectively into the driver’s seat of project development and execution.
New pathways for cooperation and organizational learning can cut across different markets and can be established from company to company. By exchanging knowledge on societal engagement between corporate actors, the benefits of conceptual cross-fertilization can be multiplied with local experiences informing corporate planning of volunteerism initiatives across companies.
While purists may argue that volunteerism as a quintessential expression of altruism should not need any rewards or perks in order to flourish, the question of incentive management remains one of the more important issues and may well be an appropriate tool to encourage more staff to join corporate efforts at volunteering.
