CSR management, Employees

Employee volunteering is going from strength to strength. Engage, the Prince of Wales' inspired campaign, for example, has just published a detailed how-to-do-it handbook for company practitioners, and continues to extend its network of agencies around the world who can help broker local involvement. The evidence from companies is that volunteering works - in building teams and corporate cohesion; in developing skills; in challenging preconceptions; in getting people out of the corporate box to see the world as their customers live it; and, beyond the business, in helping employees to get personally involved sometimes for the first time.

And yet a note of caution is warranted. Do communities really benefit from the sudden influx of help for an afternoon 'challenge' - what cynics might call community tourism by day-trippers? And does the cultural model really work universally? Looking at the origins of the employee volunteer movement, it's no coincidence that all the companies we report above with 'world days' are of North American parentage. Imperialism - cultural or otherwise - is a sensitive subject right now, just as much as when the world map was coloured pink.

As ever, it's a question of getting the balance right. Employee volunteering has a valuable but limited role to play. It needs to sit alongside more long term, substantive engagement. And it should be focused on that wider community strategy and help to deliver it. One good test of whether employee volunteering activity can add value is 'can we measure the community benefits?' If yes, it's likely to be an effective contribution. Otherwise, it's probably the people equivalent of cash philanthropy: likely to be reactive and scattergun in approach, and ultimately unsustainable if it gets beyond a small proportion of activity.

Corporate Citizenship Briefing, issue no: 73 - January, 2004