Idea in Brief
The Problem
The benefits of well-designed corporate volunteer programs have been clearly established: They boost productivity, increase employee engagement, and improve hiring and retention, to name just a few. But too often, firms’ programs fall short.
The Reason
In designing their volunteer programs, companies fall prey to common pitfalls: They blindly copy what other firms are doing, they prioritize leaders’ pet projects, or they pressure employees to participate, essentially making volunteering mandatory.
Best Practices
Such errors diminish the value of the programs to the company, employees, and society. Instead, firms should prioritize meaning, balance top-down structure with bottom-up passion, and seek to involve a variety of stakeholders in their initiatives.
Across society, volunteerism has been stagnant or trending slightly down in recent years. In the corporate world, however, it has been on the rise. In fact, paid time off for volunteering is one of the few employee benefits that has increased significantly in recent years. According to the Society for Human Resource Management, 47% of U.S. companies offered community volunteer programs in 2018, up from 40% in 2014. That percentage is even higher for large companies. The Chief Executives for Corporate Purpose—a global coalition of multibillion-dollar companies—reports that 66% of its member firms offered paid-time-off volunteer programs in 2019, compared with 56% in 2016.