If you want to attract and retain the best talent in your startup, one of the areas that you'll need to focus on is the perks and benefits package that you offer your employees. And whilst benefits such as annual leave policy, flexible working and health and wellbeing support are of course hugely important, one of the most rewarding elements that you can add to that package is Employee Volunteering.
After all, by providing your employees with opportunities to get involved in volunteering, it won't just benefit them, it will benefit your startup as a whole and the wider community too. And since it is National Volunteers’ Week from 1st - 7th June, we thought it would be quite timely to outline a few of the reasons why it is so important and also highlight some of the fab resources that can help you identify, source and manage volunteering opportunities for your startup team.
Why Employee Volunteering Matters…
Strengthening the culture and brand
By allowing employees to have a day or a few days off to volunteer for a good cause, you will be strengthening the overall culture within your startup. It can boost employee morale, create a sense of camaraderie as well as enhance the workplace atmosphere.
If your employees are volunteering as a team, it can also improve how they interact and help them to get to know each other better, particularly if they are currently availing of your hybrid working policy. New relationships can be developed and that shared sense of achievement will go a long way to creating a positive culture within your startup.
And even though improving your own startup's brand should not be the primary motivation for your team volunteering, it can still have this effect. If your employees are proactively involved in supporting worthwhile causes and helping to deliver social impact, they will be indirectly showcasing your startup and highlighting to prospective employees why it would be a good place to work.
Empowering and retaining your employees
It’s also not enough to declare on your website or Careers page that you have a CSR policy and have an interest in particular issues or causes. Prospective employees want to see that you are proactive in your commitments to social good too - and providing them with opportunities to get hands-on and stuck into supporting a worthwhile social cause can be one of the best ways to do just that.
Volunteering can also help with staff retention. If you provide opportunities for your employees to be actively involved in giving back, it can actually lead to a happier environment and encourage them to have a deeper commitment and connection to the work they do for you too.
This is particularly the case if you adopt a flexible approach to volunteering and give your employees the choice of where and how they can volunteer. There will be much higher levels of engagement and commitment if they can volunteer for causes that they are genuinely interested in and passionate about or issues that truly reflect their hobbies and interests. If you try to impose your own choices on your team, it might be viewed in a somewhat negative way and that in turn will affect your retention levels.
Skills Development
If you provide volunteering opportunities that your entire startup team can get involved in, it will have a knock-on effect on both the communication and team-working skills within your startup too. That shared volunteering experience can strengthen how your employees work together, creating greater mutual respect which can provide them with a renewed energy and commitment to work together when they’re back in your workplace too.
Volunteering can also help your employees to identify and develop new skills which will benefit them on both a personal and professional level. This, of course, will further enhance the range of skills that you have within your startup's team as a whole. You could also support your employees’ growth and skills development by incorporating volunteering into any leadership development programmes that you offer.
Where to find Employee Volunteering opportunities…
onHand is the world’s first on-demand volunteering solution. They can provide opportunities for either individual employees or your entire team to volunteer and those opportunities cover everything from the Environment and Food Waste to supporting Youth and the Elderly. You can assess the impact of your team’s volunteering and also see what areas and activities, in particular, they are most engaged with. onHand also provides lots of opportunities to support remote and hybrid teams so if that’s how your startup works, this could be a fab option.
Alayagood helps companies to build a purpose-driven culture and engage their employees to make a meaningful impact, one act at a time. It enables employees to volunteer and donate to causes that matter to them and also provides both online and physical volunteering opportunities. It also has a tracking function so that you can monitor the number of hours that an individual or indeed your startup team as a whole has volunteered, together with the impact that their volunteering has had.
Doit aims to help employees build meaningful connections, do good things, and feel healthier and happier as a result! As the UK’s largest marketplace of volunteering opportunities, you will have plenty of choice for your startup's employees and employee wellbeing is at the core of everything they offer. All sorts of opportunities are listed on this national database and you can search by interest, activity or location.
Hands on London offers a flexible approach to their volunteering opportunities, enabling people to volunteer one day at a time, when and where it suits best. The focus of their employee volunteering opportunities is on older people's organisations, reconnecting with nature and the environment in addition to providing remote opportunities for teams that may want to volunteer at different times.
Kindlink is a fab service if you'd like to give your employees more flexibility and choice in where and how they can volunteer. Employees can find causes that they're really passionate about on the Kindlink marketplace and also schedule, keep track of their volunteering activities and share details of the whole experience on social media. There are also heaps of useful tools for employers to assess the impact that volunteering has had and how best to showcase the good work that employees are doing.
Groundwork is the place to go if you’d like your employees to get involved in environmental volunteering and help this organisation in its mission of creating a future where every neighbourhood is vibrant and green. So, whether you’re looking for a one-off team challenge or an ongoing programme of volunteering, they can help.
Social Good Connect is a digital search and platform aiming to connect employers and their employees to volunteering opportunities. What is particularly interesting is the fact that via their Search and Match function, it can match your employees with their ideal volunteering opportunities based on their skills, hobbies and passions! The platform features all sorts of opportunities including virtual and micro-volunteering opportunities and you can even download a free checklist to assess if your startup is really ready to “rock employee volunteering!”
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Offering personalised, consultative service, at TableCrowd Talent we’re a specialist recruitment agency with our finger on the pulse of the startup and scaleup scene. We are committed to matching graduates, professionals and C-level executives to exciting startup and scaleup jobs across London, the UK and Europe.
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