Employee volunteering and giving platforms are revolutionizing how organizations manage their corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts.
Corporate volunteerism initiatives are excellent at leveraging the talents and motivation of employees to positively impact the community. from fostering a positive internal culture, increasing employee engagement, and gaining a good brand reputation. Yet, more often than not, these employee volunteering programs might not be handled right, and monitoring them can be a challenge. Especially if your organization has recently taken steps to implement such a strategy or you already have a program in place but aren't necessarily reaping all the proverbial benefits your corporate volunteering program has to offer.
Upon slight reflection, you might find the reason you haven't been able to unlock the full potential of your employee engagement program is that you haven't been measuring the program well. Many a time, these CSR programs are built due to pressure from stakeholders or from a retention standpoint, which leaves them susceptible to neglect. You might just be gathering data for the sake of records but the what and why of the process might be foggy.
CSR programs frequently experience the effects of budget reduction first. Therefore, it is essential to be able to demonstrate the worth of volunteer programs in order to increase and maintain support. This blog will show you how to keep track of your corporate volunteering activities, evaluate your results, and improve your volunteer program for all stakeholders.
Before you move on to the measuring phase of your program, it is important that you have a clear understanding of what objectives you set for your employee volunteer program and the kind of impact you hoped to create. This will give you direction while deciding on what statistics will help you review your progress.
One of the first and most important metrics to track a corporate volunteer program is the number of employees that participate in your program. This is a useful introductory statistic for any presentation on corporate volunteering success since it will show you how involved your entire workforce is in your program. This illustrates how relevant and simple it is for them to participate as well. The number of volunteers divided by the total workforce equals the volunteering involvement rate.
If you have a dedicated platform for employee volunteering, Then the platform you use might already provide you with these statistics. A deep analysis of this employee volunteering data should provide you with the answers to which segment of employees are participating more and for what programs.
The number of volunteer opportunities you create for your employees is crucial when tracking as you will know what the capacity of your program was. Based on the number of participants your program required, you can compare these numbers to the statistics of the participants to evaluate how successful your program was. The simple logic is that if you don't have enough projects, the number of participants required will be lower as a result the overall number of participants will also be low.
By tracking what kind of projects received the most applicants and participants, you will be able to judge what kind of projects interest your employees. Whether it is fundraising, Excel training classes, or graphic design, this data will help you add more projects your employees are interested in working on. This way you will be able to gain more employee engagement for your CSR program.
Again, this metric is fantastic to showcase your hard work and the work of your employees. If you have goals set based on the number of hours you require your employees to volunteer for then this metric will be right up there to see if you have met your goals. These statistics can also help set a benchmark to help push employees to contribute more of their time in the coming years. Stakeholders will also benefit from these numbers as it shows the amount of time your company has spent on activities that help the community.
The type of volunteering activity compiled with the number of hours your employees volunteered for will be able to give you an estimated figure of how much you might have been able to contribute to the organization in monetary terms. These figures can provide encouragement to your employees to contribute further and to your stakeholders, these numbers can be a great value addition.
When you design your corporate volunteer programs, the most important element is your employees. They are the ones who participate in the program and stand to benefit the most. To get an absolute picture of how successful your volunteer program is, you must take these qualitative factors into consideration. This will allow your corporate giving program to fulfill its mission.
Personal satisfaction can come from volunteering. Better levels of volunteerism were linked to higher levels of overall life satisfaction, according to a Harvard study. Collecting employee success stories is crucial. Ask staff members how they felt when volunteering, what they learned, and what they cherished most about it. Document these success stories in the form of case studies.
These accounts will enable employees to more effectively reflect on their experience, persuade their peers to support the cause, and communicate the employee impact to project stakeholders.
Feedback from nonprofits can also show how effective your volunteer program is. Receiving feedback on one's involvement with a nonprofit might assist volunteers in better comprehending the results of their efforts. Feedback from nonprofits can help you strengthen your working connections and provide organizations with prospective volunteers who are even more perfectly matched.
We've written a lot about the positive effects volunteerism initiatives may have on fostering a company culture and raising morale among employees. The most visible indicator of involvement is participation, expressed as the number of volunteers or volunteer hours contributed. This just truly addresses the what of your EVP program, though. Examining the why will help you determine the true impact of employee volunteering more effectively. Why volunteers are important, and how it improves job satisfaction.
It's important to remember that even a volunteer program that is wildly successful won't be able to stop negative trends or resolve major problems on its own. Set objectives that are both feasible and mindful of the part your program plays in the overall context of your business, community, and society. You'll probably see some overlap when you select the metrics to monitor. This is natural. What benefits employees frequently benefits the community as well, which benefits the brand. Make space to consider how outcomes may combine by letting go of the need to define strict boundaries or classifications.
Chezuba is a CSR platform dedicated to making a difference while helping corporations like yours play their part in the process. Chezuba makes tracking all your key metrics easy by offering you the opportunity to customize your dashboards to measure all the metrics you need. In addition, we help collect feedback from partner nonprofits and employees and document success stories for you. Book a free demo to learn more.