Train Employees through Volunteering

AWOL or Added Value: Attract, Retain and Train Employees through Volunteering
By Steven Schad

Every business owner and manager has encountered it at least once in his or her career, probably more like several times a year. An employee requests time off to volunteer in the community. The company may even have a policy allowing, if not encouraging such a practice.

Meanwhile, the project end looms. The reporting deadlines approach. The quarter is ending. The customer gets more impatient. Not a great time to be down heads and hands, is it? If you are like many managers and business owners, wouldn't you rather dump the whole idea, rather than release your people for a "feel-good" day off?

Think again. Studies and the experiences of a number of successful companies are showing that the AWOL employee may actually be adding value to the company in the areas of recruitment and retention, morale, and skill building. Unless you have a community affairs department helping you with this kind of strategic thinking, you may be missing the boat on some hidden benefits of employee volunteering.

New Generations, New Expectations
The fastest way to an employee's heart is no longer through the wallet. That honor is fast coming to belong to, well... the heart.

Studies are showing that a striking number of potential hires are filtering their decision to accept a position through the lens of a company's community involvement reputation. One study by Cone Research pegged that number at 87% -- that is, nearly nine out of every ten applicants will decide whether or not to work for your company based on whether and how you are involved in the community. They'll even leave if they have to.

This is becoming even more the case with younger workers. Starting with Gen X, employees from each successive generation expect volunteering to be more and more a part of organizational life. The reason: in the late seventies and early eighties, the institutions in young people's lives started pushing youth and school-based volunteering.

Today, students have service learning courses, service hour graduation requirements, service clubs, days of service, and a host of other opportunities to give back. Whether it is because students are rewarded with grades, admission to college, a scholarship, or the feeling they got when done with a project, younger workers have made volunteering -- and expect volunteering to be -- a part of their lives.