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Is employee volunteering the management tool of the 21st century?
By Bea Boccalandro, Boston College Center educator
The outdoor clothing store Patagonia is looking for sales associates who “provide a complete shopping experience for our customers, involving product knowledge and environmental involvement.” Yes, you read that correctly: community involvement is a leading sales job requirement, second only to product knowledge.
Having environmental activists on the sales floor supports Patagonia’s counter-culture, outdoors-oriented brand. It also ensures that those selling Patagonia products have an intimate connection to the place where those products are used – the outdoors.
When Aetna recruiters visit college campuses to find new hires, employee volunteers come along and hold blood drives. Students gain insight into working at Aetna by witnessing the beyond-the-job commitment to a strong health care system embodied by regular, everyday employees.
Patagonia and Aetna’s use of employee volunteering to support sales and recruitment are certainly novel. Yet, they are also a continuation of a decades-old trend of integrating volunteering into mainstream business functions that started with marketing and continued with morale and skill development. More than half of the Fortune 500 companies participating in recent Center for Corporate Citizenship research use volunteering to support reputation, morale or skill-development goals. “Service sabbaticals” and “team-building volunteering” are becoming common ways businesses serve communities and themselves.
The infiltration of employee volunteering into corporate departments is largely due to its ability to provide an increasingly valuable management benefit: meaningful connections. You might not consider creating meaning as a vital component to a successful business endeavor. But several recent books, including Daniel Pink’s Whole New Mind and Dev Patnaik’s Wired to Care make compelling cases that business success in the 21st century will hinge largely on the ability of companies to create higher meaning and deeper connections with customers and other stakeholders. Businesses such as Apple, IBM, Target and Intel are recognizing that more activities that foster what Patnaik calls empathy and Pink calls meaning are key to the company’s ability to develop effective products, stay globally competitive and overcome everyday business challenges.
Employee volunteering can go a long way toward meeting businesses’ urgent need for meaningful connections. What could be more meaningful than assuaging humanity’s most pressing problems? What could be a stronger basis for connecting with stakeholders than through cherished causes?
In the 20th century the discipline of management defined several functions as vital for business endeavors, including information technology management, operations management and human resources management. It’s time to add “community involvement management” as a key management function.
What would our companies would be like if every department, from catering to auditing to grounds, had a budget for employee volunteering and an assigned Community Involvement Department representative? What would our communities be like?
August 11th, 2009 at 1:50 PM
I don’t know if it’s the management tool of the 21st century as it’s only 2009, and we have a long way to go but I will say that is something that seems to be the buzz word these days. I just got off of a volunteer training session with VolunteerMatch as I wanted to enhance my skills ( a little refresher course.)
With the economy in the position it is in, people are watching their money even more these days and many are skeptical about spending or donating it – even if for a good cause. I think volunteerism is up for a number of reasons. 1) Some people don’t have a job but want to keep busy and in volunteering you can enhance your skillset and or at least keep active with what you were doing by offering your talents/expertise to an organization who can use it. 2) President Obama called us to action in volunteerism back in January 2009 with MLK Jr.’s birthday. As a volunteer, I’ve always thought it was important to give back, besides it feels good to do so, but these days it just makes good sense to do it – you never know if it will be you one day. And, I don’t want a hand out, but I will ask for help, knowing I’ve given my time in the past. In addition, #3, this new generation Y workforce who is coming through corporate doors has an expectation to not only volunteer themselves but for others around them to volunteer, including the company they will work for. Some even choose which companies to work for based on their community involvement and employee engagement initiatives. So, yes maybe afterall, volunteer management is the tool of the 21st century, at least until the next best thing comes along.
One thing is for certain, if everyone volunteers and tries to make a difference in their communities, the world will be better off for it and maybe just one day, we will all feel as though our efforts are paying off and our communities will be safe again. Not, just in affluent neighborhoods but all over. I remember when I was young, I could borrow a cup of sugar from next door, these days some people don’t even know their neighbors, and that’s not how life should be. Sometimes it takes a crisis for us to get to know those we live next to, but we should take this opportunity to start making a difference. Volunteer today and help out someone, in an area that matters to you! It feels oh, sooooo good!
August 13th, 2009 at 2:39 AM
I strongly agree with this statement and I want to add ‘international’ to employee volunteering. Today we live in a dynamic and rapidly changing world. Ethical Management will be a determinate factor in the world after the crisis. Stakeholders will even demand more transparancy and expect companies to take social responsibilities as a corporate citizen. These new viewpoints create opportunities and risks. Developing strong leadership in combination with the upcoming cultural creatives who demand this of their employer a broader view is needed to manage change and create lasting value for companies and the world at large.
To inspire authentic leadership SharePeople brings professionals out of their
comfort zone. In innovative, high pressure programmes managers are fully
engaged in real life business cases in countries such as India or Kenya. Companies use these exceptional learning experience as a management function, to develop a better understanding of successful change management and meaningful connections.
And by this they take a great part in enhancing the economic opportunities
for small ventures in developing countries
August 17th, 2009 at 1:32 PM
Traci and Jeroen, good point! It certainly appears that our poignant global economy, troubling international social order (disorder?) and fragmented local communities have us reflecting more deeply on our values and actions. Indeed, that’s one reason I carved time out of a busy summer to write the above post. I’m hoping current conditions will help the meaning-rich approach to volunteering that I advocate resonate across the globe.
It has long been true that the majority of non-volunteers in the US believe that volunteers are critical to a healthy society. Although I have not seen data on other countries, this gap between attitude and action likely exists elsewhere as well. In other words, many of those employees who don’t yet volunteer in our employee volunteer programs likely believe in volunteering. As you both suggest, greater and smarter corporate attention to volunteering during this time when employees are inclined to reflect on this discrepancy in their own lives might help them fully live, finally, their values around service.
September 14th, 2009 at 2:23 PM
Excellent Article!
I draw your attention to the results of my long term study with Molson Coors Canada on this very issue.
http://www.philanthropyjournal.org/news/death-grip-and-grin
Sincerely,
Mary
Founder the National Mentoring Program
Visiting Professor, Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, Canada