10 09 16 Debatte 08 engl€¦ · VI. IMPLEMENTING EMPLOYEE COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT • Update the language • Don’t use civic sector volunteering as a stepping stone to employee community

published by

CCCD Centrum für Corporate Citizenship Deutschland

THE END OF EMPLOYEE VOLUNTEERING:

A Necessary Step to Substantive Employee

Engagement in the Community

Bea Boccalandro

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About the author:

Bea Boccalandro is a member of the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship faculty and is president of Vera-Works, a global consulting firm that helps companies design, execute and measure their corporate citizenship.

Boccalandro has helped Aetna, Bank of America, Levi Strauss & Company, The Walt Disney Company and many othercompanies around the globe develop and enhance their corporate citizenship programs and is author of Mapping Suc-cess in Employee Volunteering: The Drivers of Effectiveness for Employee Volunteering and Giving Programs and Fortune500 Performance and The Methods Behind the Magic: Examining the Practices of Atlanta’s Exemplary Employee Volun-teer Programs.

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CCCD – the Center for Corporate Citizenship Germany is a non-profit organisation at the interface between business,academia, and politics. In cooperation with leading companies, both domestic and foreign, academic institutions andcivil society organisations, CCCD acts as a think space and competence centre, providing a platform for dialogue; act-ing as catalyst and host.

In this capacity, the CCCD arranges forums for exchange between corporate citizens, business, academia, politics andcivil society, supplies and carries out applied research, facilitates learning processes through debate and skilling oppor-tunities, and supports cooperation between businesses and partners from civil society, academia, and/or politics.Using workshops, publications and public events, CCCD also acts as a driving force for the corporate citizenship debatein Germany and for the practical efforts by businesses taking an active role in society.

CCCD is the German partner of the Center for Corporate Citizenship at Boston College, USA, as well as a partner of Busi-ness in the Community, UK.

Kontakt:CCCD – Centrum für Corporate Citizenship DeutschlandKollwitzstr. 73D-10435 Berlin+49 (0)30 – 41 71 72 [email protected]

Executive Summary

I. THE PLANET’S GREATEST UNTAPPED FORCE FOR GOOD

II. SUPERIMPOSING STRATEGY ON EMPLOYEE VOLUNTEERING IS SELF-LIMITING

III. UNDERSTANDING THE TENSION BETWEEN TRUE AND STRATEGIC VOLUNTEERING

• Altruism versus win-win• Individual free will versus project effectiveness• Personal versus professionalized experience

IV. WHY OUR ATTEMPTS TO BALANCE TRUE AND STRATEGIC VOLUNTEERING FAIL

V. BEYOND EMPLOYEE VOLUNTEERING TO EMPLOYEE COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

VI. IMPLEMENTING EMPLOYEE COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

• Update the language• Don’t use civic sector volunteering as a stepping stone to employee community engagement• Position activities first as business, second as community engagement• If you are going to balance true and strategic volunteering, balance between (not within)

offerings

VII. CONCLUSION

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Bea Boccalandro: The End of Employee Volunteering

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If one is to believe a growing number of civic sector lead-ers, employee volunteering has the power to dramatical-ly strengthen our communities, mitigate humanity’s moststubborn problems and elevate civilization to new heights.Not just any employee volunteering will accomplish thisfeat, however. Only employee volunteering deliberatelydesigned to efficiently draw from the strengths of its hostcompany or – in other words – strategic volunteering, willunleash this awesome potential for good.

Sadly, the formidable force for good contained withinemployee volunteering is largely untapped. Researchfinds that distressingly few employee volunteer programsare configured to effectively draw on the companies’strengths in order to substantively support the civic sector.Most programs are scarcely different from a random col-lection of individuals volunteering on their own. Compa-nies typically back their employee volunteers with nothingmore than facilitation and encouragement. Thus, theyforgo the opportunity to build a strategic, or high-impact,program. Meanwhile our civic sector challenges – fromcrime to AIDS epidemics – remain largely unaided andunimproved, despite the immense potential of employeevolunteering.

Community involvement managers face a terrific chal-lenge in guiding employee volunteering toward a morestrategic model. On the one hand community involve-ment managers are increasingly, and appropriately,charged with developing a strategic program: one that islogically designed to maximize impact on the civic sec-tor. Such a strategic program necessarily accrues busi-ness benefits, might not be entirely voluntary and cannotuphold the personal qualities of the volunteer experience.On the other hand, their programs are about “volunteer-ing” which, at least in most of our minds, means that theactivities are altruistic, voluntary and personal. Most com-munity involvement managers try to resolve this tensionbetween “strategic” and “true” volunteering by attempt-

ing to balance their employee volunteer programs so thatthey accomplish both. However, this results in compro-mised programs on both counts. Volunteering – with itsaltruistic, voluntary and personal character – cannot blos-som within the hard confines of a strategic model. Con-versely, the business quest for a strategic program that isdesigned to maximize effectiveness can never thrivewhen the program is expected to honor the idealistictenets of volunteering. As a result, our employee volun-teering underperforms.

To maximize civic sector impact involves ending “employ-ee volunteering” as we know it. Instead, we need todesign strategic employee community engagement pro-grams – avoiding the term “volunteering” itself – that don’ttry to live up to the ideals we assign to volunteering and,therefore, can draw from the full prowess of business. Thepurpose of strategic employee community engagementis to fully leverage the business context to generate thegreatest amount of societal benefit, not to offer true vol-unteering. Such employee community engagementmakes evidence-based decisions on what to support andnot support, even if this results in disregarding needs at thecompany’s doorstep; chooses civic sector issues thatsupport the business, even if this is blatantly nonaltruistic;and otherwise applies strategic processes to what wasformerly called employee volunteering. The well-being ofthe planet will be affected by businesses’ ability, or inabil-ity, to make this transition from employee volunteering toemployee community engagement.

Seneca, the Roman philosopher, said that “every newbeginning comes from some other beginning's end.” Thebright beginning of the last century, employee volunteer-ing, has completed its shining moment. Now we need thecourage to end employee volunteering as we know it inorder to begin a more effective and impactful era ofemployee community engagement.

Executive Summary

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If one is to believe a growing number of civic sector lead-ers, a resource exists that can dramatically strengthen ourcommunities, mitigate humanity’s most stubborn prob-lems and elevate our civilization to new heights. MichaelBürsch, founding member of the CCCD in Germany andformer member of the German Parliament, states that thisresource has immense power to help meet “every singleone of the great challenges we are facing in politics andin society.” In the United States, Aaron Hurst cites a studyconducted by the organization he heads, the TaprootFoundation, that dubbed this resource the “$1.5 billionopportunity,” referring to the value it could add to the U.S.civic sector in a single year. In the United Kingdom, ChrisWest, director of the Shell Foundation, calls it “the way for-ward” because it represents one of the best hopes foreffective international development.1 These are just a fewof the voices in an increasingly loud chorus heralding thepowers of this great resource.

This resource is not hidden, but plainly visible. It is not rare,but plentiful. It is not remote, but ubiquitous. Each of theseexperts might be focusing on particular aspects of thisresource and might call it something different, but theyare all referring to the same underlying force. They arereferring to the ancient and very human tradition of help-ing our neighbors, but they have added a modern twistthat adds impact: employer support.

Whether we call it employee volunteering, corporate vol-unteering or employer supported volunteering,2 expertsfrom a variety of disciplines are looking at the large work-forces and broad competencies of business and reach-ing the same conclusion: the human resources con-tained within the corporate sector can be engaged in ourcommunities to solve our most difficult social problemsand improve our lot as a civilization.

But it is also now clear that not just any employee volun-teering has the power to transform the world. Indeed, ifdropped at the site of a common employee volunteerproject – for example, a group of bank employees cladin company T-shirts, wielding shovels and pushing wheel-barrows on the grounds of a local nonprofit – Bürsch, Hurstand West would most likely shake their heads and say,“That’s not what I had in mind.” Bürsch would explain thatthis project misses the mark because effective employeevolunteering supports sociopolitical structures for civicengagement. Its value is greater than simply accomplish-ing prescribed civic activities.3 Hurst would say that the$1.5 billion opportunity lays in repurposing workplacestrategic management skills to support nonprofit partners,not in using employees for unskilled volunteer tasks. AndWest would say that for employees to effectively support

civic sector causes, their volunteering needs to concen-trate in areas that reflect company competencies, andbe conducted with carefully selected nonprofit partners.

In other words, these thought leaders share a rallying cry:employee volunteering needs to be strategic to be highimpact. That is, employee volunteering has to be deliber-ately designed to efficiently draw from the strengths of itshost company if it is to help “meet all our challenges,”offer “$1.5 billion” worth of value, or “point the way for-ward” per Bürsch, Hurst and West’s respective visions.

And this is where the tune changes from hopeful to heart-breaking. The enormous potential for good containedwithin employee volunteering is largely untapped. Mostemployee volunteer programs are similar to the onedescribed above: scarcely different from a random col-lection of individuals volunteering on their own. Compa-nies typically contribute very little to employee volunteer-ing beyond basic facilitation and encouragement. Thus,they forgo the opportunity to build a strategic, or high-impact, program.

The Drivers of Effectiveness for Employee Volunteering andGiving Programs (“Drivers of Effectiveness”) developed bythe Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship arethe only evidence-based standards that measure howwell an employee volunteer program is designed tomake a positive impact on the civic sector, as well as onthe business. Research on the Drivers of Effectiveness findsthat distressingly few employee volunteer programs areconfigured to effectively put the companies’ strengths inservice of civic sector issues. Only 8 percent of surveyedFortune 500 companies have compliance levels of 50percent or more with the Drivers of Effectiveness. In otherwords, 92 percent of Fortune 500 respondents fail toexhibit even a simple majority of the strategic practiceslisted in the Drivers of Effectiveness. Indeed, on average,Fortune 500 respondents exhibit only 26 percent of thesepractices. The majority of Fortune 500 respondentemployee volunteer programs lack even the most basicstrategic elements expected of any business endeavor,such as written goals and measurement systems to trackprogress toward those goals. Lest we think that the prob-lem is limited to Fortune 500 companies, non-Fortune 500

I. The planet’s greatest untapped force for good

1 Tomkins, Richard, “Should Today's Companies Be Doing More To MakeSociety Better? - Part 1; Stories –Philanthropy,” Financial Times. (London, UK:Jan 17, 2009. pg. 22).

2 This paper will use the most common term, “employee volunteering.”

3 Boccalandro, Bea, Mapping Success in Employee Volunteering: The Dri-vers of Effectiveness for Employee Volunteering and Giving Programs andFortune 500 Performance (Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, US: Boston Col-lege Center for Corporate Citizenship, 2009).

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U.S. respondents, Canadian respondents and Germanrespondents (the three main countries represented in thedatabase) all had average compliance rates with the Dri-vers of Effectiveness of under 30 percent.4 Clearly, there isample room for improvement when it comes to makingour employee volunteer programs more strategic.

The business sector’s failure to generate strategic employ-ee volunteering is costly to society. Our civic sector chal-lenges – from teenage crime to AIDS epidemics – remainlargely unaided and unimproved despite the immensepotential of employee volunteers.

Figure 1. The Drivers of Effectiveness for Employee Volunteering and Giving Programs

Driver Indicators

Driver 1: Cause-effective Configuration

Highly effective Employee Volunteering and GivingPrograms (EVGPs) are structured to support socialcauses and nonprofit partners productively

1.1 Cause focus: Focuses on causes for which the company is especiallywell suited to support

1.2 Asset leveraging: Leverages the company’s assets to support theEVGP

1.3 Philanthropic integration: Is integrated into the company’s philan-thropic program

1.4 Productive partnerships: Has procedures and systems to supporteffective partnerships with nonprofit/government organizations servedby the EVGP

Driver 2: Strategic Business Positioning

Highly effective EVGPs are internally positioned tocontribute toward business success

2.1 Business goals: Has employee-accessible written goals that explicitlystate the business benefits the program promotes

2.2 Aligned infrastructure: Benefits from procedures/practices/guidancefrom department(s) charged with the business goals the EVGP pro-gram seeks to promote

2.3 Resonant cause(s): Focuses on cause(s) that connect to the business

2.4 Integration with corporate citizenship: Is integrated into the compa-ny’s overall corporate citizenship/social responsibility plans

Driver 3: Sufficient Investment

Highly effective EVGPs receive company resourcescommensurate with corporate efforts of similarscope (this driver not applicable to companieswith fewer than 3,000 employees)

3.1 Strong team: Has at least one full-time paid professional position forevery 10,000 employees, and not less than two total, to manage theprogram (not organize events)

3.2 Adequate operating budget: Expends at least $30 per employee inoperations, and not less than $500,000 total (operating budgetexcludes salaries and grants)

3.3 Grant support: Company grants to nonprofits in support of employeevolunteering total at least $100 per employee (e.g., dollars for doers,team grants, other grants tied to volunteer events, but not matchinggift grants unless they are limited to organizations where employeesvolunteer)

Driver 4: Culture of Engagement

Highly effective EVGPs benefit from companywidefacilitation and encouragement of employeeinvolvement in the community

4.1 Facilitative procedures: Has universal procedures/practices/guidanceto facilitate employee involvement

4.2 Formal encouragement: Has universal procedures/practices/guid-ance to create interest and enthusiasm for employee volunteering

4.3 Business department support: Business units supported by EVGP, perthe EVGP’s business goals, promote employee involvement

4.4 Middle-management outreach: Educates middle managers on therelevance of the EVGP to their responsibilities

4.5 Senior-management modeling: Has senior executive public partici-pation

4.6 Accessible information: Makes information on how to get involvedeasily available

4 www.volunteerbenchmark.com.

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Source: Mapping Success in Employee Volunteering: The Drivers of Effectiveness for Employee Volunteering and Fortune500 Performance by Bea Boccalandro, Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship, 2009.

Driver Indicators

Driver 5: Strong Participation

Highly effective EVGPs have meaningful levels ofinvolvement from the majority of employees

5.1 Majority participation: Involves at least 50 percent of employees inEVGP-supported volunteering

5.2 Substantial scale: Generates at least eight hours, on average, of vol-unteering per employee per year

Driver 6: Actionable Evaluation

Highly effective EVGPs track their efforts, holdthemselves accountable to their outcome goalsand implement evidence-based improvements

6.1 Participation metrics: Tracks employee participation in EVGP volun-teering

6.2 Volume metrics: Tracks employee EVGP volunteer hours

6.3 Employee feedback: Collects employee feedback

6.4 Nonprofit feedback: Collects nonprofit partner feedback

6.5 Business outcomes metrics: Tracks business outcomes

6.6 Social sector outcomes metrics: Tracks community outcomes

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As a codification of the practices that research indicateslead to civic sector and business impact, the Drivers ofEffectiveness lay out a path to strategic employee volun-teering for community involvement professionals to follow.Of course, the Drivers of Effectiveness have their limita-tions. As evidence-based practices, they only coverresearched areas and they do not apply equally wellacross all companies, for example. Nevertheless, there islittle doubt that moving toward greater compliance withthe Drivers of Effectiveness will increase the strategic valueand impact of employee volunteer programs.5

However, despite the path set out by the Drivers of Effec-tiveness, realizing the strategic value of employee volun-teering is not a simple matter of superimposing strategicpractices on our volunteer programs. This approach willlikely backfire by eroding support from many of our mostcommitted employee volunteers, senior managers andmembers of the employee base. Indeed, communityinvolvement professionals might even feel uncomfortablenudging the employee volunteer programs they managetoward a more strategic incarnation. That is, our currentconception of volunteering is not sufficiently plastic toallow for movement toward a strategic employee volun-teer program, as illustrated below.

Imagine your company currently offers a “release timepolicy” establishing that employees are entitled to 16hours of paid time a year to volunteer for a nonprofitorganization of their choosing, in the same way they areentitled to vacation time and medical leave. Chancesare, no one would consider this policy anything other thana company endorsement of good-hearted volunteering.

Now imagine you add an evaluation component to thisemployee volunteer program. Under the supposition thatthose employees connected to their communities arebetter at selling, you track which sales force employeesuse release time and compare their sales performancewith that of similar employees who do not participate.How do you feel about this? How might employees reactto the program now? Some might claim that their privacyhas been invaded by linking their personal volunteer datato work performance data. Others might find offense intheir company attempting to profit from their altruistic vol-unteering. As the steward of the program, you might feelconflicted about its duality.

Next, imagine you redesign the program to serve as aleadership development tool. Instead of 16 hours ofrelease time for volunteering per year, it is now one

month. However, this release time is open only to theminority of employees whose job performance is in thetop 20 percent. How many employees would embracethis service program without hesitation? It’s likely that somewould think, “Why does the company assume that onlytop-performing employees are willing or capable of help-ing their communities?” As the community involvementmanager, you might find it challenging to answer thisquestion.

Finally, let’s imagine a few more changes to your employ-ee volunteer program. The company now selects whichnonprofits employees will serve, what project they will workon and who their team members are. Furthermore, theprogram only serves nonprofits in developing countriesconsidered high-potential growth markets for the compa-ny’s commercial products. Some employees will nowmost likely vociferously complain that the company is notsupporting their volunteering, but rather pursuing its ownaims through the employee volunteer program. Somemight even accuse the company of misleading employ-ees by cloaking a corporate program in a volunteer pro-gram shell. Again, these claims have merit and put com-munity involvement professionals in a quandary.

In other words, the evolution of the program describedabove would have resulted in offended, distanced, skep-tical and even oppositional employees at all levels; andmay have led to your own discomfort as a communityinvolvement manager. However, all of these adjustmentsare reasonable steps toward complying with the Drivers ofEffectiveness. That is, they were good ideas in terms ofmaking the program more strategic and, thus, higherimpact. Indeed, by executing such changes, you wouldhave created an employee volunteer program similar toone of the most strategic and respected: IBM’s CorporateService Corps, a program through which employees per-form community-driven economic development projectsin Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America; workingat the intersection of business, technology and society.

II. Superimposing strategy on employee volunteering is self-limiting

5 The Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship’s Drivers of Effec-tiveness for Employee Volunteering and Giving Programs BenchmarkingSurvey Tool supports companies in applying the Drivers to their own caseby: scoring their program against the ideal, per the evidence-based Dri-vers of Effectiveness for Employee Volunteering and Giving Programs;identifying their program’s strengths and weaknesses so that they can bet-ter develop strategic plans, garner internal support and make operationaldecisions; and comparing their program to desired groups of respondentcompanies, such as the Fortune 500, retail companies or internationalcompanies. Use of the tool is free of charge, courtesy of Bank of America.Go to tool: www.volunteerbenchmark.com.

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Ironically, the strategic modifications that can makeemployee volunteering less attractive to many volunteersmake the program more effective at serving worthy caus-

es – whether helping victims of domestic violence, reduc-ing the spread of malaria or helping children obtain aneducation.

As seen above, transforming a volunteer program fromhands-off support for employees’ personal volunteering toa focused and structured company-defined programcan undermine support for the program. Even seniormanagers – who can halt progress with a few utterances– can be skeptical of a charitable effort turned strategic.Understanding why the popularity of employee volunteer-ing tends to deteriorate as the program becomes morestrategic is the first step toward managing this resistancerespectfully and productively.

Our distaste for strategic employee volunteering reflects atension between our preconceived, and somewhatmythical, notion of “true” volunteering and the volunteer-ing of a strategic employee volunteer program. While thistension between true and strategic volunteering is affect-ed by culture, geography, politics, demographics andother factors, it also appears to be widespread, if not uni-versal. Volunteering is certainly not uniform across theglobe. In some cultures volunteering is informal and con-ducted largely between individuals. Other cultures havestrong civic sector institutions that offer formal volunteer-ing. The character of the volunteering itself also varies,including how it relates to family, religion and other socialorganisms. Nevertheless, volunteering is a human phe-nomenon, not a cultural construct. In every culture acrossthe globe individuals “volunteer,” per a commonlyaccepted definition: working on behalf of others or a par-ticular cause, without payment for time and services.7,8

Virtually every workforce in every global location, then,has been exposed to the concept and the practice ofvolunteering in civil society – although many would knowit by another term. Therefore, whether you are managingemployee volunteers in Germany, Japan or Peru, yourprogram is likely affected by preexisting notions of volun-teering. Furthermore, while other aspects of volunteeringvary greatly, preconceptions on the essential nature ofvolunteering are remarkably consistent across cultures,nations and other dimensions.9 Humans generally expectvolunteer acts to be altruistic, voluntary and personal. Yet,these preconceived notions of “true” volunteering are inconflict with the strategic volunteering that employee vol-unteer programs are expected to offer. Each of thesepoints of tension is described below.

Altruism versus win-win

Many people, including many we hope to engage inemployee volunteering, consider selflessness a key criteri-on for establishing whether an act is truly volunteering. We

believe the essence of volunteering is service to otherswithout regard for personal gain or, at least, not muchregard. In reality, research has found that many of thosewe consider volunteers are not motivated solely, or evenprincipally, by altruism. What researchers have called“egoistic” motivators such as building social networks,developing skills, improving their curriculum vitae, etc.,account for much of the volunteering currently takingplace in our communities.10 Nevertheless, our beliefs donot reflect reality. We hold firm to our idealistic view thatulterior motives degrade the purity of volunteering. Forexample, researchers have found that people across theglobe, including in Canada, India, Italy, Netherlands andthe United States, consider anybody who receives bene-fits from volunteering less of a volunteer.11

However, virtually all corporate citizenship experts – includ-ing Harvard University’s Michael Porter and Boston Col-lege’s Brad Googins and Phil Mirvis – consider businessbenefits an imperative for best-practice corporate citizen-ship endeavors, including employee volunteer programs.Research supports their claim. The Drivers of Effectivenessestablish that the employee volunteer program that doesthe most charitable good is one that also serves the busi-ness. Serving business interests ultimately leads to moresustainable programs of greater scale and charitableimpact. Conversely, dedicating resources to an employ-ee volunteer program that does not generate a businessreturn puts the company at a competitive disadvantageand is, therefore, not sustainable. Stan Litow, vice presi-dent of Corporate Citizenship and Corporate Affairs atIBM, explained that while Corporate Service Corps,

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III. Understanding the tension between true and strategic volunteering

7 Randle, Melanie and Sara Dolnicar, “Does Cultural Background AffectVolunteering Behavior?” in Journal of Nonprofit & Public Sector Marketing.(Binghamton, NY, US: Apr 2009. Vol. 21, Iss. 2; pg. 225).

8 Handy, Femida, Ram A. Cnaan, Jeffrey L. Brudney, Ugo Ascoli, Lucas C.M. P. Meijs, and Shree Ranade, “Public Perception of ‘Who is a Volunteer’:An Examination of the Net-Cost Approach from a Cross-Cultural Perspec-tive” in Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organiza-tions, Vol. 11, No. 1, 2000.


10 Hartenian, Linda S. Bryan Lilly, “Egoism and Commitment: A Multidimen-sional Approach to Understanding Sustained Volunteering” in Journal ofManagerial Issues, Spring 2009. Vol. 21, Iss. 1; p. 97.


described earlier, had lofty civic sector goals, it was onlysustainable because it was “grounded in leadershipdevelopment and business strategy.”11

Business benefits might be a hallmark of an effectiveemployee volunteer program, but they are also an affrontto our conception of true volunteering. As a result, com-munity involvement managers rightly hesitate to accruebusiness benefits and employee volunteer programsremain less strategic and less effective than they mightbe. A German company representative, for example,explained that she could not invite the media to volunteerevents because employees would not tolerate their “altru-ism being exploited for PR gains.”

Another way employee volunteering is a slight to altruismis its penchant for “paying” volunteers. Although exceptionis sometimes granted for living expenses and otherstipends, virtually all definitions of volunteering from acrossthe globe state that volunteers cannot accrue financialreward.13 Yet, paid time off for “volunteering” is often adesirable component of high-impact employee volun-teer programs. There is no doubt, for example, that theschool-focused community involvement of U.S. companyUGI Utilities is enhanced by a policy that allows employ-ees to volunteer during paid time, as it allows more chil-dren to be served. But those UGI employees are not tech-nically true volunteers.

Making an employee volunteer program more strategicoften bumps up against our belief, whether accurate ornot, that true volunteering is – and should be – altruistic.Thus, movement in a strategic direction produces resist-ance from many individuals.

Individual free will versus project effectiveness

Virtually every definition of volunteering contains therequirement that the act be, not surprisingly, voluntary.14

Personal choice is a defining element of volunteering.However, a strategic program sometimes eliminates or atleast diminishes individual choice regarding participation.Similarly, it often makes decisions, such as which causesto support and how to best serve them, based on effi-ciency and not on participant personal preference.

Pursuit of ways to effectively leverage employee time andtalent for the benefit of the civic sector can naturally leadto practices that strongly encourage or even requireemployee volunteering. Many companies have compul-sory board service for executives, and some even includevolunteering in department or employee scorecards. Fur-thermore, a strategic employee volunteer program oftenincludes practices, such as days of service or departmentteam-building events that leverage the collective strengthof employee volunteering by requiring that an entire

group participate in the “volunteer” event. Clearly, thesepractices, while perfectly reasonable methods for achiev-ing greater strategic value, diminish the voluntary natureof the service.

A corollary of the free-will tenet of volunteering is that truevolunteers decide not only if they will volunteer, but whatthey will contribute. That is, most people believe that truevolunteering occurs when compelling need moves usinto action for the benefit of others. Any company with anarrow cause focus – for example, the environment orelder care – violates this conception of true volunteering.However, a cause focus is a key component of a strate-gic employee volunteer program, clearly associated withgreater impact.

In other words, our efforts to generate strategic employeevolunteering can, and often do, clash with our views thatvolunteering is, and should remain, voluntary.

Personal versus professionalized experience

Volunteering has become increasingly professionalizedover the past few decades, meaning it has becomemore structured, disciplined and results oriented.15 Despitethis civic sector trend, many workplace volunteers areresistant to undermining the distinct warm and personalcharacter of volunteering with procedures, metrics andother instruments of effectiveness. However, these areprecisely the practices that a strategic program needs forproper management. That their employers are the onesimposing these practices only intensifies resistance fromemployee volunteers. Illustrating how oppressive someemployees consider the application of professional toolson their volunteering, a German employee describedmeasurement efforts under way as a “prison of quantita-tive data,” and a Canadian employee considered a 30-minute web-based orientation to the volunteer activity asso burdensome and formal as to be “anathema to thefree spirit of giving.”

The personal versus professionalized tension also shows uparound skills-based volunteering, where workplace skills

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12 Hamm, Steve, “The World Is IBM's Classroom” in BusinessWeek, March12, 2009, accompanying interview video at http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_12/b4124056268652.htm.

13 Handy, Femida, Ram A. Cnaan, Jeffrey L. Brudney, Ugo Ascoli, LucasC. M. P. Meijs, and Shree Ranade, “Public Perception of ‘Who is a Volun-teer’: An Examination of the Net-Cost Approach from a Cross-CulturalPerspective” in Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and NonprofitOrganizations, Vol. 11, No. 1, 2000.

14 Cnaan, R. A., Handy, Femida and Margaret Wadsworth, “DefiningWho is a Volunteer: Conceptual an Empirical Considerations in Nonprofitan Voluntary Sector Quarterly” in Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarter-ly, 1996, 25, 364–383.

15 Putman, Robert D., Bowling Alone (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster,1999).

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are repurposed to offer higher impact services to the civicsector than “extra-pair-of-hands” volunteering. Althoughskills-based volunteering is a logical way to increase theeffectiveness of employee volunteering, many programmanagers report employee resistance. While employeesare often enthusiastic about the big team events wherethey paint walls, pick up trash and engage in otherunskilled tasks, some are less agreeable to volunteering inroles similar to their workplace responsibilities. This is notsurprising considering that many individuals consider vol-unteering an opportunity for leisure and, therefore, seekactivities different from their daily experiences.16

A final area of resistance for some employees is theexamination and evaluation that comes with a strategicprogram. There is a sense that volunteering is more a ritu-al performed in one’s private life than a project to bescrutinized by one’s employer. For example, a group ofPeruvian employees expressed discontent at being askedto complete a survey tracking impact. They explainedthat volunteering was a “very private and human endeav-or” and “about relationships,” and not something to besubmitted to institutional scrutiny and judgment. Similarly,an American employee explained that she objected toevaluation of the volunteer program because “you don’tlook a gift horse in the mouth.”

In other words, some employees are attached to the per-sonal and less structured nature of the private volunteer-ing they have done in the past; and are not keen to par-ticipate in more strategic volunteering that diminishes, bynecessity, these qualities.

Given the three ways that strategic employee volunteer-ing chips away at the most hallowed tenets of our con-cept of true volunteering – that it is altruistic, voluntary andpersonal – it’s not surprising that we are skeptical, or atleast wary, of an employee “volunteer” program that isstrategic. It does not matter that our conception of “true”volunteering is largely myth in that not even civic sectorvolunteering fully lives up to the standards have we for it.When a business’ pursuit of greater strategic design tram-ples on our vision of true volunteering, regardless of theaccuracy of that view, many of us are offended andeven resistant. Ironically, this attempt to protect the sanc-tity of volunteering undermines our ability to tap into thelatent power of employee volunteering that Bürsch, Hurst,West and many others believe can elevate volunteeringto heightened levels of greatness.

16 Stebbins, Robert A., and Margaret M. Graham, ed., Volunteering asLeisure / Leisure as Volunteering: An International Assessment, Wallingford,Oxon, UK: CAB International, 2004.

Altruism

Benefits only the civic sector cause

Volunteers are not paid

Win-win return

Benefits the company, as well asthe civic sector cause

Volunteers can be paid

Individual free will

Participation is voluntary

Selection of cause is by the volun-teer

Tasks are selected/defined by thevolunteer

Project effectiveness

Participation can be expected orcompulsory

Selection of cause can be madeby the company

Tasks can be defined by the com-pany

Personal giving

Experience is often unstructured

Service performed is often of anunskilled nature

Privacy is high and scrutiny is low(often)

Professionalized service

Experience is structured

Service performed is often of theskilled nature

Privacy is low and scrutiny is high

Employees are most comfortablewith “true” volunteering

characterized by…

But to maximize impact, the com-pany needs to promote “strategic”

volunteering characterized by…

Selection criteria

Motivation

Figure 2. Key points of tension between true and strategic volunteering

Nature of the experience

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Community involvement managers have the unenviabletask of managing inherently conflicted employee volun-teer programs. On the one hand they are increasingly,and appropriately, charged with developing a strategicprogram: one that is logically designed to maximizeimpact on the civic sector and the business. On the otherhand, their programs are about “volunteering;” which, atleast in our minds, is a personal experience based onaltruism and determined by free will. This conflict betweentrue and strategic volunteering is not merely a theoreticalartifact. It is a professional challenge. Participants havebrought it up in every Boston College Center for Corpo-rate Citizenship Course on employee volunteering overthe last three years. Interviews and surveys with 42 com-munity involvement managers from Canada, Germany,the United Kingdom and the United States revealed that98 percent found the tension between strategic and truevolunteering a job challenge.17 Clearly, the true-strategictension in employee volunteering is a thorn in the side ofcommunity involvement professionals.

Today, most community involvement managers try to bal-ance their employee volunteer programs to serve theexpectations of both true and strategic volunteering.Eighty-three percent of the 42 interviewed communityinvolvement professionals said they managed the true-strategic volunteering tension by “balancing” the two val-ues. One respondent described his job as “balancingwhat is nice and what is business … and not letting eithertrample over the other.”

Balancing true volunteering with strategic volunteering isunlikely to upset stakeholders on either side of spectrumand is, therefore, low risk. Yet, while an employee volun-teer program that balances true and strategic tendencieswill not get managers in trouble, it will also never reach theheights of efficiency required for employee volunteeringto live up to its awesome potential for good.

True volunteering and strategic volunteering might not bemutually exclusive, but they are in direct conflict oftenenough to chronically undermine one another. From lim-iting the civic sector causes to tracking business benefits,aligning employee volunteering with strategy almostalways undermines the program’s spirit of true volun-teerism. Similarly, from supporting employee interest incauses in which the company has no particular expertiseto ensuring no employee feels their private experienceshave been inappropriately shared, respecting the cher-ished values of true volunteering often undermines thestrategic value of the program. The result is that true vol-unteering and strategic volunteering often cannot coexist

in the same experience to any significant degree. Volun-teer experiences that balance true volunteering againststrategic volunteering are most often a serious compro-mise on both fronts. Community involvement then, iscrowded with disaster response efforts that ship unhelpfulitems collected by employees to disaster response agen-cies; projects that set up computer labs that the recipientnonprofit cannot maintain; and with other volunteerefforts that do not serve civic sector causes effectively.

The experience of an American company that thought itwas successfully balancing true and strategic volunteer-ing illustrates the limitations of this approach. The compa-ny implemented a dollars-for-doers program, offeringemployees grants for the organizations where they volun-teer 20 hours or more, with openness to any cause and ahands-off approach. When the CEO sent notes to knownvolunteers, per dollars-for-doers records, and to theirsupervisors thanking them for their service, dozens ofemployees complained that it was unconscionable thattheir private volunteer records had been shared with indi-viduals who had authority over their careers. Coming fromthe perspective of true volunteering, these employeeshad a valid complaint. We don’t expect our employers tofreely share HR information pertaining to our medicalleave or vacations. If volunteering is viewed as a person-al endeavor that we do as private citizens, the companyhad violated customary standards of privacy. On theother hand, how can a company be expected to man-age a program, much less make it strategic, if its mostbasic records cannot be openly shared with key stake-holders? Similarly, a representative from a German com-pany lamented that she had no way of emailing employ-ee volunteers for feedback because participationrecords were deliberately not kept in order to accordemployees the privacy they expected in relation to volun-teering. Clearly, as long as community involvement man-agers are expected to ascribe to the values of true volun-teering, their hands will be tied in terms of managing in away that generates substantive value.

The fallacy of balancing our way to success is evidencedby the fact that, as covered earlier, this is the most com-mon approach to moving our programs toward greaterstrategic value, yet the current state of employee volun-teering is overwhelmingly not strategic. As mentioned ear-lier, the overwhelming majority of the 400-plus surveyrespondents of the Drivers of Effectiveness BenchmarkingSurvey Tool, the most rigorous test of the strategic value of

17 Boccalandro, Bea. Surveys and interviews administered to 42 com-munity involvement managers as background for this paper, unpub-lished, 2009.

IV. Why our attempts to balance true and strategic volunteering fail

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an employee volunteer program, have fewer than 50percent of the identified strategic practices (the indicatorsunder each Driver) in place.18 Experts across the globe,including Harvard’s Michael Porter, agree that corporate-community involvement as currently practiced does noteffectively leverage what the business can offer.19

Balancing the true-strategic tension might be the bestshort-term option for community involvement profession-als charged with managing an employee volunteer pro-gram, however it is not an effective long-term solution tothe conflict between true and strategic volunteering. Bal-ancing will not properly honor true volunteering, nor will iteffectively tap into the force for good embodied inemployee volunteering.

18 www.volunteerbenchmark.com.

19 Porter, Michael E., and Mark R. Kramer. “Strategy and Society: The LinkBetween Competitive Advantage and Corporate Social Responsibility” inHarvard Business Review, December, 2006. Reprint R0612D. p. 2.

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Resolving the tension between true and strategic volun-teering requires a bold new conception of strategicemployee volunteering distinct and separate from theconcept of true volunteering. Only a program that is freefrom the expectations we ascribe to volunteering will beable to reach high strategic value and, thus, greatimpact. This new strategic employee volunteering has thepurpose of fully leveraging the business context to gener-ate the greatest amount of societal benefit. It does notaim to offer true volunteering.

As established above, a business’ attempt to offer truevolunteering hinders its ability to effectively serve the civicsector. A company can’t leverage its business prowess tosupport community involvement without having the free-dom to use its business skills, to focus on the causes it hasthe capacity to support, to eliminate charitable effortsthat its evaluation finds are ineffective, to resist respondingto every heartbreaking civic sector need, to make com-munity involvement compulsory and to engage in otherpractices that may be anathema to true volunteering.

Another reason to abandon our attempts at true employ-ee volunteering is that business is not an appropriate hostfor true volunteering. The vested interest of employers, thesometimes-controlling workplace policies and the profes-sionalized culture naturally stifle employee charitableresponse. Healthy skepticism leads employees to wonderhow measurements of volunteer activities will affect theirperformance reviews – or even if the volunteering itself isa way for the company to compel them to do somethingthey aren’t willing to do as part of their jobs, such as rep-resent the company positively to reporters, for example.Clearly, even very talented community involvement pro-fessionals are set up for failure if they are expected tooffer true volunteering in the workplace.

Indeed, by trying to offer true volunteering, businessesmight be doing more harm than good to the future of vol-unteering. Volunteering is a dynamic concept thatevolves per the manifestations we create for it. If we insistthat employers continue to try to offer volunteering, weare likely to erode the concept of volunteering into amore self-serving, conflicted and stilted version. Instead,businesses might best support global volunteering by notmeddling with it. The natural home for true volunteering isthe civic sector, which has the mission alignment, knowl-edge, and neutrality to more effectively live up to ourexpectations of true volunteering.

For our civic sector to best benefit from the employeecontributions of time and talent, then, we need a new

form of strategic employee engagement in the commu-nity that is distinct from “volunteering” and that focuses onmaximizing societal benefits. Although this article will notattempt to name this new generation program, promisingterms, in English at least, include employee communityengagement, employee community involvement andemployee community action. These terms still positionemployees as the core of the program, communicatethat the emphasis is on serving the civic sector and, mostimportant, free the program from association with volun-teering, or what has been dubbed “true volunteering” inthis paper.20

In truth, our employee volunteer programs have alreadystrayed a long way from true volunteering. They oftenaccrue benefits well outside of altruistic rewards, pay vol-unteers and are not truly voluntary, for example. Coininga new term, then, is simply a way to be accurate andtransparent about the current character and future direc-tion of our programs. If we offer “employee communityengagement” instead of “employee volunteering” oppor-tunities, there is no suggestion that the service is altruistic,unpaid or voluntary; and no tension if it is none of these.An employee community engagement program wouldcomfortably encompass compulsory board service forhigh-level managers, workplace greening efforts that takeplace during work hours and paid pro bono service. Inother words, shifting from volunteering to communityengagement vanquishes much of the resistance andmany of the contradictions community involvementmanagers face when applying the Drivers of Effectivenessor when otherwise trying to move toward a strategicmodel. By redefining their employee volunteering ascommunity engagement, community involvement man-agers lay out a more direct and less obstructed path tosuccess.

As seen in Figure 3, employee community engagementis not just new language, it is new territory. The aim is notaltruism, but to fully leverage the business context ofemployee volunteering in order to do the most societalgood. Causes are selected in accordance to their abilityto benefit from employee skills and other corporate assetsand to benefit the business. Finally, participant recruit-ment is based on employee community engagementbeing a refreshing and meaningful twist on business. Forexample, a leadership program might have a servicecomponent; and a department team-building eventmight include cleaning up a beach.

V. BEYOND EMPLOYEE VOLUNTEERING TO EMPLOYEE COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

20 For the sake of simplicity, this paper will use the term “employeecommunity engagement” to represent the newly conceived form ofemployee engagement in the community.

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If it seems radical to invent a new concept to get usbeyond the true-strategic volunteering tension, take heartthat several companies already have. IBM’s CorporateService Corps (CSC), mentioned earlier, is essentially anexample of an employee community engagement pro-gram as described above. The international service pro-gram, in which teams of employees serve on issues thatrelate to IBM’s business, was modeled on the U.S. PeaceCorps, not on a traditional volunteer program. CSC doesnot have the word “volunteer” in its name and does notclaim to be altruistic. To the contrary, IBM has been com-pletely transparent in communicating that – while CSC isa corporate citizenship program designed to make a

civic sector contribution – it is first and foremost a leader-ship development program meant to help IBM functionwell in tomorrow’s global context. Furthermore, an admis-sion criteria based on job performance precludes mostemployees from participating. In other words, CSC is, byits own admission, not a true volunteer program: it aims tobenefit the business, it is closed to most employees and itis paid. Yet precisely because IBM was willing to breakaway from the tradition of employee volunteering, CSC isa thriving program that provides substantial and mean-ingful support to worthy causes. CSC delivers much morevalue than one can imagine a customary employee “vol-unteer” program could.

Figure 3. Key features of employee volunteering versus employee community engagement

Customary employee volunteering that triesto balance true and strategic volunteering

New employee community engagement

Raison d'etre Balance of altruism, on the one hand, andbusiness benefits on the other hand

Fully leverage the business context to gener-ate the greatest amount of societal benefit

Cause selection Balance of employee choice, on the onehand, and what the company can best sup-port and what can best support the companyon the other hand

What the company can best support andwhat can best support the company

Recruitment based on Balance of doing the right thing, on onehand, and supporting the business on theother hand

Doing business in a way that more strategical-ly supports the community

While upgrading from employee volunteering to employ-ee community engagement will boost the program’seffectiveness, there is currently little guidance for makingthis transition. Community involvement managers willneed to use judgment and ingenuity, and will undoubted-ly encounter unforeseen challenges. As with all innova-tions, early adopters will need to be especially diligent indetecting and solving issues. For those ready to take onthis leadership challenge, below are suggestions for tran-sitioning from employee volunteering toward strategicemployee community engagement.

Update the language

As covered earlier, the term “volunteering” elicits specificheartfelt values, including altruism and optional participa-tion that result in tension and opposition to attempts at astrategic program. Thus, effectiveness, as well as trans-parency and clarity, suggest that community involvementmanagers interested in high-impact employee volunteer-ing stop using the term volunteering.

Naming a “nonvolunteer” employee community en-gagement program is neither difficult nor radical. The U.S.government’s AmeriCorps program, which provides indi-viduals a living stipend for their full-time service, success-fully transitioned out of using the term volunteering aftermany objected that anybody who received a stipendwas not a volunteer. It now uses the term “service.” Exam-ples of employee community engagement programswith nonvolunteer names include Aetna EmployeesReaching Out, Team Bank of America, The Home Depots’Team Depot, Thrivent Financial for Lutherans’ STAR (SharingTime, Activities and Resources), and US Airway’s Do Crew.Similarly, employees who participate in employee com-munity engagement programs can be referred to as par-ticipants, fellows, corps members or team members, forexample, instead of “volunteers.”

In other words, moving beyond the term volunteering isboth productive and feasible.

Don’t use civic sector volunteering as a stepping stoneto employee community engagement

Emerging efforts to involve employees in the communityneed not take the detour of attempting to offer true vol-unteer programs in the workplace and then institutingpractices to make these strategic. Instead, new effortscan begin from a strategic platform and avoid many ofthe difficulties existing programs face.

In other words, future employee community engagement

programs will be best served by eschewing the phases ofdevelopment that most existing programs have followed.Current employee volunteering is, in large part, the resultof citizens bringing civic sector volunteering to their placesof employment, especially in the United States. Thereceptionist who volunteered at her daughter’s soccerclub, the vice president who served on the board of thelocal environmental organization and other employeeswho volunteered in their private lives urged coworkers tojoin them, talked their bosses into holding a collection attheir holiday parties, and otherwise systematically nudgedtheir companies toward what eventually became formal-ized employee volunteer programs. However, asdescribed above, having an employee communityengagement program with roots in civic sector volunteer-ing is problematic.

Because the United States is often regarded a leader inemployee volunteering, many community involvementprofessionals across the globe interpret the progressionfollowed by American companies over decades as step-by-step instructions for developing their own programs.Unfortunately, following in the footsteps of U.S. employeevolunteering results in programs that attempt to replicatecivic sector volunteering in the workplace, precisely whatis not feasible and what represents a core weakness ofcurrent programs. For example, drawing from commonpractices adopted by U.S. programs early in their devel-opment, many community involvement managerslaunch their programs with a standard dollars-for-doerspolicy, in which employees can direct a small companygrant to nonprofit organizations they serve through volun-teering. Such a policy, however, is better aligned with thetrue volunteering of the civic sector than with strategicemployee community engagement. Such a first step,then, might set a direction for the program that will subse-quently require course correction.

Instead of replicating the meandering path toward strate-gic value typical of present programs, companies mightconsider starting at the outset with strategic employeecommunity engagement. For example, instead of a stan-dard dollars-for-doers policy, which simply provides a gen-tle boost to employee’s personal volunteering, the firstemployee community engagement activity might be ateam dollars-for-doers program that supports employeeskills-based team projects in a cause area in which thecompany has expertise. This policy encourages contribu-tions that are more sophisticated and likely to offergreater benefit to the nonprofit than “extra-hands volun-teering,” focuses on causes where the company is likely tomake a difference, draws on the company’s expertiseand leverages the power of teams. In other words, it is far

VI. IMPLEMENTING EMPLOYEE COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT


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more strategic than the typical first element historicallyinstituted by U.S. programs, the standard dollars-for-doersprograms.

For companies with a choice, a direct route toward strate-gic employee community engagement will serve thecivic sector better and sooner than trying first to developa true volunteering model and then working to transformthis program into strategic employee communityengagement.

Position activities first as business, second as communityengagement

Most employee volunteer programs inadvertently positionthemselves as a diminished version of true volunteering.For example, a company might issue this invitation: “par-ticipate in our community giveback contest on April 4 inwhich teams compete around best ways to feed our lessfortunate neighbors,” which includes in small print“(department participation in this team-building event issubject to department head’s approval).” This presenta-tion essentially says “come participate in something thatwe are calling community engagement, but isn’t reallysince we are imposing a team-building component on itand since you can’t serve the community without yourdepartment head’s approval.” Clearly, it is difficult to sell aprogram that is such a twisted version of what it claims tobe.

A better option is to position the event as a business activ-ity that is enhanced with community engagement.Employee community engagement resides somewherebetween true volunteering and pure business operations.Thus, the program can use either of these anchors todefine the program. The message above could insteadbe “participate in our interdepartment team-buildingcontest on April 4 in which teams compete around bestways to feed our less fortunate neighbors (departmentparticipation subject to department head’s approval).”From this perspective, the department head’s approval isappropriate because it is a team-building activity first andforemost. With this positioning, it is a plus that the compa-ny added a community involvement component to ateam-building event that might otherwise have had nocivic sector value. This positioning is no longer about pro-moting a corrupted version of community involvement; itis about promoting a compassionate version of a team-building activity.

An illustration of the compelling character of businesspositioning comes from a department at an Americanfinancial institution that conducted an annual team-build-ing event. During the first few years, they held paint ball,ropes course and picnic team-building events. In a sub-sequent year, they held a service project and from then

on, every team-building event was a service project.Once they experienced the joy of service, the depart-ment head explained, “employees considered otherforms of team building cheap and shallow.” Had the firstfew years consisted of service events and the team-build-ing component was superimposed later, the depart-ment’s team-building events might not be as popular asthey are today. Adding a community involvement com-ponent to a team-building event is generally consideredan enrichment of the experience and a welcomedupgrade in the social responsibility of the event, butadding a team-building component to a communityengagement event might be considered a dilution of theexperience and an inappropriate intrusion of business.

When presented with the suggestion to position theemployee community engagement activities first as busi-ness and second as community engagement, commu-nity involvement professionals often worry that a service-enhanced business endeavor is a less compelling recruit-ment message than a pure community involvementendeavor. However, research shows this is not the caseand, if anything, the transparency of the first option mightsupport recruitment. Research shows that when it comesto recruiting employees in community engagement pro-grams, win-win appeals are more effective than appealsto altruism alone.21 The experience of IBM’s Corporate Ser-vice Corps (CSC) corroborates this finding. CSC was neverpositioned as volunteering. Indeed, when asked aboutthe purpose of CSC, Stan Litow, vice president of Corpo-rate Citizenship and Corporate Affairs, started with purebusiness strategy: “It is part of the basic change in IBM tobecome a globally integrated enterprise.” He then con-tinued by describing how it develops leaders before evenmentioning how it engages the civic sector.22 This businesspositioning, however, does not appear to have negative-ly affected interest. CSC received more than 5,000 appli-cations from over 50 countries, smashing expectationsthat applications would number in the mere hundreds.

In other words, a business activity with a communityengagement component appears to be more com-pelling and less problematic than a community engage-ment activity with a business component.

If you are going to balance true and strategic volun-teering, balance between (not within) offerings

As covered earlier, balancing the tension between trueand strategic volunteering is a self-limiting approach that

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21 Peloza, John, Simon Hudson, Derek N. Hassay, “The Marketing ofEmployee Volunteerism” in Journal of Business Ethics, 2009, 85:371–386.

22 Hamm, Steve, “The World Is IBM's Classroom” in BusinessWeek, March12, 2009, accompanying interview video athttp://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_12/b4124056268652.htm.

most likely results in a low-impact program. However,there is no denying that sometimes employee expecta-tions of employer support for their private volunteering aretoo high to ignore, especially if the company has a histo-ry of offering such support. If a company decides to offerboth volunteering and strategic community engage-ment, it should consider crafting distinct offerings foreach, rather than trying to have one employee experi-ence serve both purposes.

Accenture in the United Kingdom, for example, has apowerful strategic employee community engagementprogram where new hires are offered the opportunity tospend the first two years of their career teaching in a chal-lenging school through nonprofit partner Teach First. Theprogram is a substantial and thoughtful investment ineducation that is likely to have an impact. It also strategi-cally helps Accenture because, as the program’s market-ing materials explain, it prepares new employees for any-thing that a career at Accenture might expose them to.Other strategic employee community engagementopportunities at Accenture include pro bono services and

the Accenture Development Partnership, which providesstrategic advice and technical project managementsupport to civic sector organizations operating in thedevelopment sector. Nevertheless, because it considers itvital for the health of its workplace culture, Accenture alsooffers a balanced portfolio of service options that includefund-raising opportunities, days of service and other „non-strategic“ service opportunities.

It is more honest and productive to balance employeevolunteering and strategic employee communityengagement across the portfolio of employee engage-ment options, rather than within one experience.

In addition to the above suggestions, of course, the evo-lution from employee volunteering to strategic employeecommunity engagement has implications for how thecompany manages relationships with the civic sector,how it makes philanthropic contributions and how it man-ages other aspects of its corporate citizenship that areoutside the scope of this paper.

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It is said that the wisest man in ancient Athens, Solon,declared in the fifth century B.C. that service to others wasthe highest good.23 Humanity has not only conducted, butalso extolled, human acts of service to others for millen-nia and will, hopefully, for millennia more.

Yet, as historical forces have changed the structure ofsociety, humans have adapted the irrepressible spirit ofservice to each new structure. In the middle ages, edu-cational and literary outposts emerged in churches; in the19th century, the International Committee of the RedCross emerged from wars; and in the 20th century, serv-ice learning, which combines academic classroom cur-riculum with meaningful service, emerged from our for-mal education system.

The modern concept of volunteering originated out of thecivic sector that developed over the last few centuriesacross many countries. Thus, volunteering is designed towork directly with civic organizations that serve the poor,preserve culture, clean up the environment, fight for jus-tice or otherwise promote societal benefits. When industri-alization populated our society with highly structured work-places, we started bringing this concept of volunteeringto work with us and, over several generations, createdwhat we now know as “employee volunteering.”

However, volunteering has not been properly adapted tothe workplace, nor can it be without becoming some-thing less than volunteering. Volunteering – with its altruis-tic, voluntary and personal character – cannot blossomwithin the hard confines of the workplace that is con-strained by business considerations. Conversely, the busi-ness quest for a strategic program that is logicallydesigned to maximize effectiveness can never thrivewhen the program is expected to honor the idealisticnature of volunteering. The result is that our employee vol-unteering is seriously undermined, and the awesome sup-port it could offer civic sector causes remains latent. Thecollection of volunteer activities contributed by most

employee volunteer programs is virtually identical to whatthe employee base would do privately. A company mightadd a small grant or event coordination, but rarely backsemployee volunteering with anything more than modestsupport. Meanwhile a treasure of corporate assets – fromspecialized skills to logistics with global reach – that coulddramatically augment the impact of these programs,don’t serve this higher purpose.

Maximizing civic sector impact involves ending “employ-ee volunteering” as we know it. We need to design strate-gic employee community engagement programs –avoiding the term “volunteering” itself – that don’t try tolive up to the ideals we assign to volunteering and, there-fore, can draw from the full prowess of business. The pur-pose of strategic employee community engagement isto fully leverage the business context to generate thegreatest amount of societal benefit, not to offer true vol-unteering. Such employee community engagementmakes evidence-based decisions on what to support andnot support, even if this results in disregarding some needsat the company’s doorstep; chooses issues that can sup-port its business, even if this is inherently nonaltruistic; andotherwise applies strategic processes to employeeinvolvement in the community. This attention to logicaldesign at the expense of heartfelt preferences mightappear uncompassionate. Yet, what could be morecompassionate than ensuring our employee engage-ment programs are as effective as possible at helping theless fortunate, supporting our children, protecting our envi-ronment and otherwise serving society?

Seneca, the Roman philosopher, said that “every newbeginning comes from some other beginning's end.” Thebright beginning of the last century, employee volunteer-ing, has completed its shining moment. Now we need thecourage to end employee volunteering as we know it inorder to begin a more effective and impactful era ofemployee community engagement.

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VII. CONCLUSION

23 Herodotus (author), John Marincola (editor), The Histories. London, UK:Penguin Classics, 2003.

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10 09 16 Debatte 08 engl€¦ · VI. IMPLEMENTING EMPLOYEE COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT • Update the language • Don’t use civic sector volunteering as a stepping stone to employee community