IBM‘s new volunteering and engagement initiative, On demand community, is designed to take the company’s community service to a new level by linking it to IBM’s e-business On demand strategy. Launched in November, it allows employees worldwide access to over 140 IBM technology assets and other innovative resources, strategies, programmes and tutorials via an intranet site. The initiative’s goal is to enable employees to share this information with the schools or community organisations where they volunteer. Regular employee volunteers who use On demand solutions can nominate their school or organisation for a donation of 63,500 in technology or 61,000 in cash. By mid 2004, the service will be available in ten languages. Contact Kendra Collins, IBM, on 00 1 914 499 4608 (http://www.ibm.com)
Community Champions
Income protection provider, Unum Provident, has launched a new Community champions network across its business to encourage active involvement in volunteering. The role of the champions is to support and grow work already undertaken. Unum Provident offers all its employees two paid days on a range of community projects from its main centres in Dorking, Basingstoke and Bristol.
Meanwhile, Unum Provident has raised over £20,000 for the charity Cancer and Leukaemia in Childhood by participating in an annual John O’Groats to Land’s End relay. Contact Victoria Secretan, UnumProvident, on 01306 646 065 (http://www.unum.co.uk)
Something for everyone
BskyB has partnered with the national volunteering charity, TimeBank, to launch a new volunteering scheme for employees, it was announced on November 17. The programme features team community challenges, which are specifically designed to meet the company’s workforce development needs. BSkyB will reward staff who volunteer their time by providing funding to the causes they have supported. Contact Emma Noble, Cohn & Wolfe, on 020 7331 5366 (http://www.bskyb.com)
Hope is in site
The Higgins Group, the housebuilding and contracting firm, has entered into a four-year partnership with CSV, the volunteering and training charity, to deliver pioneering onsite construction training centres in areas in need of social housing.
The £2m deal will deliver training and learning initiatives to residents from the surrounding areas. Onsite subcontractor employees will also have access to the training centres, as will individuals registered with CSV, local colleges and the Women’s education in building programme. Contact Jason Tanner, CSV, on 020 7643 1428 (http://www.csv.org.uk)
Community classroom
Companies should use corporate community engagement as a form of ‘action learning’, a new management primer by the International Business Leaders Forum argues. Published on December 15, The Learning Curve analyses the employee developments aspects of volunteering in three main sections:
Learning by Seeing – looks at the effectiveness of study visits for getting people to see what is needed and what they can achieve;
Learning by Doing – explores how to leverage community engagement programmes with the skills and talents of employees to add value to the community, employees and business;
Learning by Partnering – explains the different types of partnership and the tools and learning impacts that can be achieved through community involvement.
More than a thousand UPS employees around the world participated in a new week of synchronised community service in October. Global volunteer week is designed to build on the company’s spirit of volunteerism by creating an organised way for employees to improve their communities together. The event was held in tandem with the company’s Neighbour to neighbour service challenge in the US, which aimed to achieve a million employee volunteer hours by November 14. Contact Rebecca Treacy-Lenda, UPS, on 00 1 404 828 8396 (http://www.ups.com)
Similarly, thousands of McDonald’s restaurants in more than 100 countries participated in World Children’s Day on November 20, an annual global fundraiser benefiting Ronald McDonald House Charities and local children’s causes. Contact Joanne Jacobs, McDonald’s, on 00 1 630 623 7943 (http://www.mcdonalds.com)
Another US-based company with global operations, Alcoa, held a Worldwide week of community service in November. More than 6,000 employees in over 150 communities participated in the week of volunteer events, which focused particularly on conservation and sustainability. Contact Jake Siewert, Alcoa, on 00 1 212 836 2733 (http://www.alcoa.com)
GE Quartz employees recently embarked on a global volunteer project, the GE Quartz global day of caring, at several sites around the world. Employees took part in community service projects to support children’s agencies. Contact Louise Binns, GE, on 00 32 2 235 6912 (http://www.ge.com)
840 Nike employees volunteered at 42 locations as part of Nike‘s fifth annual Community involvement day in late October. Employees worked side-by-side with teams from local social service agencies to provide services to the local community. Nike contributed 610 for every hour volunteered, with a total of 642,000 of grants going to organisations benefiting from volunteers. Contact Jill Zanger, Nike, on 00 1 503 532 0316 (http://www.nike.com)
Editorial Comment
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.
The role played by employee volunteering as part of wider community engagement is growing strongly, both in the UK and around the world. But it’s culturally associated with American companies, so some caution is needed.
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.
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